Representative democracy may now be becoming obsolete

[luckybit]

The question is then... who will write these algorithms?  Can we ensuremthat these algos are not created by malevolent forces posing as benevolent in such a way that it looks for a long time (perhaps a couple decades) as though the algorithms are benevolent, but at some point "evolve" into a state where humanity is seen as something like a virus to be irradicated? 

I don't think avoiding technology is a realistic option when it gives a measurable advantage to whomever adopts the technology. We should make use of any algorithms which will improve our ability to operate profitable DACs and achieve the objectives Dan and Stan originally outlined.

So going by those objectives if you want a true Decentralized Autonmous Company, unmanned company, or Decentralized Autonomous Community, you're going to have to adopt the algorithms to improve decision making.

If the Bitshares community doesn't do this then Ethereum will because they don't seem afraid of trusting algorithms. In fact they went with Turing complete scripting and if you think about it that makes it easier to put AI at the center of the DAC.

An intel man with above top secret clearance once told me that what the general public knows about, as a rule of thumb, has usually been productively in use for 10-15 years before made known to the public.  If that is the case, could it be possible that quantum computing exists somewhere that could plot to a very high degree of accuracy how specific iterations of these kinds of algorithms would evolve?

I don't have top secret clearance but I can tell you that a lot of algorithms exist and are being used. The problem is those algorithms aren't being used to benefit the common man or liberate. When I say it's not of benefit I mean you have algorithms which predict who will be a criminal, which analyze our text on social media, which advertisers use to predict what we will want,

Perhaps even use the behavioral data they are currently stealing from our devices to design models with near perfect accuracy on a macro level?

That is sort of what I'm saying. These algorithms are going to exist whether it's used by law enforcement or used to improve democracy. Why not use the latest algorithms to make a better DAC? Why let Facebook, Google and others have a monopoly on the best algorithms? You can say it takes a while to make these algorithms but the Ethereum team has millions of dollars to make open source examples.

If so...malevolent forces (thinking of agenda 21 and other similar movements) could theororetically make algos that do seem benevolent and utopian simply to turn on people at a designated time.

I don't know about agenda 21. All I can say is we can do our own thing with these algorithms. Why let some other group have the algorithms? If these algorithms can make our lives better then why not put them to use for good?

I know this sounds crappy, but a discussion should occur here regarding even the most unpopular of possibilities.

In the system I am proposing. ?.we could easiky detract delegation of our vote from someone at any time and effect the weighting their vote has regarding certain issues. 

In the end...I lean more to the side of incentive structures that reward citizens being well informed and voting.  Being an informed and active voter should carry a reward (which, ironically would be accomplished through algorithms).

Prediction markets do make people well informed in some way but it's just not possible to process all the information of "Big Data" without using algorithms. Why not use software agents and algorithms to interact with the voters so that the algorithms can inform the voters based on the voters preferences? Why not let the algorithms suggest a vote without actually voting until they confirm it? The point is it will reach a level of complexity sooner or later where it wont be possible for ordinary people to ever be informed enough.

If I ask you to make a decision which requires you to analyze 100 different research papers and website to find a common trend you will not be able to do this without algorithms. An algorithm combined with statistical analysis can do this and that kind of process done by a software agent could affect how people vote.

The incetiveses should also passively punish those who hurt their followings' confidence by taking away the portion of the delegating voters reward that they would have received for representing those people.

Just thoughts...jeez this thread hurts my brain.

It's very complicated. The reason I have faith in algorithms is because I know there is a limit to how much I can be informed and how much information I can process in my lifetime. The world will keep becoming more complex until the people who best use the algorithms rule the world or we decentralize things so we can all use algorithms.

[fuzzy]

I'm not a fan of Algorithms replacing humans.  This is like saying human's do not deserve free will or sovereignty...and I reject that notion. 

That is not what I was arguing at all. I never said algorithms should replace humans. I said algorithms should help humans make better decisions and voting is just a decision making process. Humans still will be making decisions but algorithms can process information and help humans to remain rational in the face of propaganda.

There is no way we can realistically make good decisions when we cannot process all the available information. Algorithms are already used whether you're talking about using Google or something else. Since algorithms are used why not make use of the best algorithms which produce the decisions that lead to quantifiably better outcomes?

I am far more a fan of giving people the ability to delegate their votes on specific subject matter to those who they trust to have more specific subject matter expertise in those areas and who they feel are philosophically aligned with them. 

The problem with a person is if they are in a good mood that day they'll vote for Hitler but on another day vote for Stalin. In either case the human being doesn't really think rationally most of the time and in order to have good outcomes you require rationality in the decisions.

So the more you let humans vote randomly the less rational the behavior of the DAC will be. If the Bitshares community believes in keeping humans in charge of certain things that is fine but I will definitely put my money behind the community which trusts the algorithms simply because algorithms already produce results which humans cannot duplicate. Can humans manually index the entire Internet and then process key words?

I am also in favor of letting people be a part of their own little digital country without geographical boundaries.  Let people live anywhere but benefit from the social networks whose rules seem the most fair to them.  Or let them live on their own without attachment to said networks, but without the potential benefits they provide. 

On this we agree. I just think as a means to an end you need to trust algorithms more than people because people are inconsistent, unreliable, and irrational. It will likely be a situation where you'll have different communities or even different factions in this community where some people prefer the algorithmic democracy while others prefer to put their trust in people.

How much you trust in algorithms or in people is really up to you and I can respect that everyone has a different risk tolerance here.

Algorithmic voting seems to me that it carries with it a risk of making people see themselves as subjects to a "mathematical master" as opposed to an empowered embodiment of life whose will can alter the course of events and circumstance.

Again it is about risk tolerance. It's not that different from the kind of leap of faith people have to take with Bitcoin. Bitcoin seems like magic Internet money and no one really believed it would work early on but now that it has proven itself the price is $400.

I think algorithmic voting will be the same. At first people will say it's risky because they are used to dealing with human beings and the flaws humans have while in charge. At the same time eventually your car will be driving itself on algorithms and once you realize you don't have car accidents anymore you'll understand exactly the value of putting algorithms in charge.

There is the risk that for example if we have self driving cars or self piloting aircraft that the algorithms could start to crash into towers in acts of terrorism or deliberately crash the cars due to some bug. These are real dangers but depending on how much computer knowledge you have might have influence over whether or not you're someone who will have faith in these algorithms or not.

I don't blame anyone who thinks it is a gamble but the reward in my opinion is great enough to make it a gamble worth taking. If algorithms prove themselves to be better at something then to me it is proven and we should switch to using them. It's science to me really.

The question is then... who will write these algorithms?  Can we ensuremthat these algos are not created by malevolent forces posing as benevolent in such a way that it looks for a long time (perhaps a couple decades) as though the algorithms are benevolent, but at some point "evolve" into a state where humanity is seen as something like a virus to be irradicated? 

An intel man with above top secret clearance once told me that what the general public knows about, as a rule of thumb, has usually been productively in use for 10-15 years before made known to the public.  If that is the case, could it be possible that quantum computing exists somewhere that could plot to a very high degree of accuracy how specific iterations of these kinds of algorithms would evolve? Perhaps even use the behavioral data they are currently stealing from our devices to design models with near perfect accuracy on a macro level?

If so...malevolent forces (thinking of agenda 21 and other similar movements) could theororetically make algos that do seem benevolent and utopian simply to turn on people at a designated time.


I know this sounds crappy, but a discussion should occur here regarding even the most unpopular of possibilities.

In the system I am proposing. ?.we could easiky detract delegation of our vote from someone at any time and effect the weighting their vote has regarding certain issues. 

In the end...I lean more to the side of incentive structures that reward citizens being well informed and voting.  Being an informed and active voter should carry a reward (which, ironically would be accomplished through algorithms).  The incetiveses should also passively punish those who hurt their followings' confidence by taking away the portion of the delegating voters reward that they would have received for representing those people.

Just thoughts...jeez this thread hurts my brain.

[luckybit]

I'm not a fan of Algorithms replacing humans.  This is like saying human's do not deserve free will or sovereignty...and I reject that notion. 

That is not what I was arguing at all. I never said algorithms should replace humans. I said algorithms should help humans make better decisions and voting is just a decision making process. Humans still will be making decisions but algorithms can process information and help humans to remain rational in the face of propaganda.

There is no way we can realistically make good decisions when we cannot process all the available information. Algorithms are already used whether you're talking about using Google or something else. Since algorithms are used why not make use of the best algorithms which produce the decisions that lead to quantifiably better outcomes?

I am far more a fan of giving people the ability to delegate their votes on specific subject matter to those who they trust to have more specific subject matter expertise in those areas and who they feel are philosophically aligned with them. 

The problem with a person is if they are in a good mood that day they'll vote for Hitler but on another day vote for Stalin. In either case the human being doesn't really think rationally most of the time and in order to have good outcomes you require rationality in the decisions.

So the more you let humans vote randomly the less rational the behavior of the DAC will be. If the Bitshares community believes in keeping humans in charge of certain things that is fine but I will definitely put my money behind the community which trusts the algorithms simply because algorithms already produce results which humans cannot duplicate. Can humans manually index the entire Internet and then process key words?

I am also in favor of letting people be a part of their own little digital country without geographical boundaries.  Let people live anywhere but benefit from the social networks whose rules seem the most fair to them.  Or let them live on their own without attachment to said networks, but without the potential benefits they provide. 

On this we agree. I just think as a means to an end you need to trust algorithms more than people because people are inconsistent, unreliable, and irrational. It will likely be a situation where you'll have different communities or even different factions in this community where some people prefer the algorithmic democracy while others prefer to put their trust in people.

How much you trust in algorithms or in people is really up to you and I can respect that everyone has a different risk tolerance here.

Algorithmic voting seems to me that it carries with it a risk of making people see themselves as subjects to a "mathematical master" as opposed to an empowered embodiment of life whose will can alter the course of events and circumstance.

Again it is about risk tolerance. It's not that different from the kind of leap of faith people have to take with Bitcoin. Bitcoin seems like magic Internet money and no one really believed it would work early on but now that it has proven itself the price is $400.

I think algorithmic voting will be the same. At first people will say it's risky because they are used to dealing with human beings and the flaws humans have while in charge. At the same time eventually your car will be driving itself on algorithms and once you realize you don't have car accidents anymore you'll understand exactly the value of putting algorithms in charge.

There is the risk that for example if we have self driving cars or self piloting aircraft that the algorithms could start to crash into towers in acts of terrorism or deliberately crash the cars due to some bug. These are real dangers but depending on how much computer knowledge you have might have influence over whether or not you're someone who will have faith in these algorithms or not.

I don't blame anyone who thinks it is a gamble but the reward in my opinion is great enough to make it a gamble worth taking. If algorithms prove themselves to be better at something then to me it is proven and we should switch to using them. It's science to me really.

[fuzzy]

I'm not a fan of Algorithms replacing humans.  This is like saying human's do not deserve free will or sovereignty...and I reject that notion. 

I am far more a fan of giving people the ability to delegate their votes on specific subject matter to those who they trust to have more specific subject matter expertise in those areas and who they feel are philosophically aligned with them. 

I am also in favor of letting people be a part of their own little digital country without geographical boundaries.  Let people live anywhere but benefit from the social networks whose rules seem the most fair to them.  Or let them live on their own without attachment to said networks, but without the potential benefits they provide. 

Algorithmic voting seems to me that it carries with it a risk of making people see themselves as subjects to a "mathematical master" as opposed to an empowered embodiment of life whose will can alter the course of events and circumstance. 

[Thom]

TLDR - this is a science-fiction, meant to be discussed over beers or in Off-Topic forum sections.  Cool in theory, completely unobtainable in reality for this community.

 

-5% -5%

I disagree with the opinions you expressed in this thread, and I'll leave it at that.

luckybit, what I meant by "skyNet is this:

So I'm not sure what you mean by "SkyNet". If you mean killer robots then we seem to have that already in the military. If you mean the algorithms could grow out of control in terms of complexity and take us over that could be happening already because no human being is able to process all the information that gets collected by "Big Data". So if we know we can never keep up with the data collected we must rely on algorithms and data scientists.

If it is happening already it's b/c there's little (benevolent) oversight on military programs. We in the BitShares community should do better, and that won't be easy or fast. It also has to do with individual moral values or the lack thereof.

I think the "A" in DAC is fitting: Dumb Automaton Children, at least in terms of how most people live their lives without getting to know who they are, what motivates them and how much they childhood has "programed" their behaviors. As Socrates said, "Know thyself".

[matt608]

TLDR - this is a science-fiction, meant to be discussed over beers or in Off-Topic forum sections.  Cool in theory, completely unobtainable in reality for this community.

 

[fluxer555]

I think luckybit and arhag should team up and work for BitShares. They are two of the brightest minds here, and their ideas need to be implemented.

[sschechter]

Shut this thread down and move it to Off-Topic.  Its not happening.  Amazon has thousands of on call employees working ridiculous hours until they burn out and move on with their lives.  Their recommendation algorithm is a recommendation, it doesn't shop for you, and the moment it did you would have thousands of pissed off customers.  Netflix paid a million dollar bounty to someone who could create a better algorithm for better movie recommendations.  What you are suggesting is a multi-million effort in which the solution is fuzzy and not very well defined - a scenario which guarantees a low probability for success.  It will never happen. Ever. Move on.

The same exact arguments were used when Bitcoin was first discussed. When Bitshares was first being discussed I saw the same arguments again about how it's just not possible and we still see people who believe in PoW saying DPoS is vulnerable to the "nothing at stake" vulnerability.

Conditional preference networks are a topic you should Google. If you Google that topic and the topic of Computational Voting and still think what I'm talking about is unrealistic then that is fine. I don't think it's fine however to suppress the topic and throw it into the off topic forum. Why shouldn't we at least discuss it philosophically? Btw all my references are in my posts so you can track my line of thought back to the sources.

Reference
http://www.amazon.com/Working-Preferences-Less-Cognitive-Technologies/dp/3642172792
http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV70Truyen.pdf

Yes, its perfectly fine to have a philosophical discussion.  I prefer to remain pragmatic.  Luckybit, I think you have a lot of great ideas, but this one falls far into the realm of fantasy - at lease to the point where it will ever be implemented by the bitshares community.  My own personal recommendation (take it for whatever its worth), is that before you spend another precious brain-cycle determining what you want this to look like, you first ask yourself the following:

Who is going to build it?
How much is it going to cost?
How many hours will it take to build?
Where did you get your hours from, did you break it down into manageable tasks?
What are the dependencies? (hint Turing complete scripting language is one)
How long will those dependencies take to be completed?
How will you measure the success of your solution?
How will you test this solution?
How will you maintain it?
Does this solution only need to be written once or perpetually updated in an iterative process?
How can you make it so it can't be gamed?
Who is going to pay for it?
What will it cost?
What will it cost?
What will it cost?
If the community pays for this solution, what will they have to give up in its place?
Will this be the best way to spend the communities money?
Could the community ever be convinced that this is the best way to spend its money (Me: no way in hell you'll ever convince me)
Will the community see ROI on this implementation? Is that ROI measurable?

TLDR - this is a science-fiction, meant to be discussed over beers or in Off-Topic forum sections.  Cool in theory, completely unobtainable in reality for this community.

[luckybit]

You may be right, but I think the concept deserves considerably more thought & discussion.

You didn't even address the "SkyNet" issue or seem to be concerned about what the power of BOT voting could do to destroy whole ecosystem.

The US military already has Skynet in the form of unmanned drones. Algorithms already recognize our face and the FBI is using facial recognition databases. The are also pre crime algorithms being used by the police.

So I'm not sure what you mean by "SkyNet". If you mean killer robots then we seem to have that already in the military. If you mean the algorithms could grow out of control in terms of complexity and take us over that could be happening already because no human being is able to process all the information that gets collected by "Big Data". So if we know we can never keep up with the data collected we must rely on algorithms and data scientists.

This is an implementation as well as philosophical consideration. Should an aggregate of BOT rules be allowed to centralize the ecosystem such that we end up with a duplicate of the current financial (i.e. non crypto) structure? That's what I mean by a prime directive. 

If you have networks of conditional preferences then it's more like a map of your preferences in a tree like design which branches out according to what happens. So if certain events happen then your voting pattern will change as a result. This would require we have oracles but delegates can be used for that I think.

It could be argued that requiring a large majority of human votes to change the prime directive doesn't prevent the centralization scenario, but it slows down radical change that otherwise would be hyperfast with BOTs.

I'm not sure what you mean here. You have to explain better.
Conditional preferences turn your issue by issue voting into a tree with branches that go on and on as events shape the pattern. So once your preferences are known and the algorithm knows your voting agenda then at least in theory it can direct your voting power to push your voting agenda.

Suppose you could describe your voting agenda in a voting language or algorithm. The voting agenda could have all your stances on all the important issues and it will then direct the flow of your votes toward whatever you determined is your voting policy. It would hire delegates, elect politicians, who fit the attributes which suit your policy agenda. If they stop meeting that agenda then they get fired immediately as your votes are revoked.

So in the case of delegates I can't think of a better way to hire and fire delegates. As far as whether or not it can lead to SkyNet where we become slaves to our technology I think if that is going to happen it will happen much easier without democracy to try to protect our human and inalienable rights. Instead of us using algorithms to protect our rights the algorithms will be used to enslave and kill us.

Reference
http://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/archive/2014/November/Pages/AutonomousMachinestoDefeatThreatsBeyondtheSpeedofThought.aspx
http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/16/5724538/what-happened-at-the-un-killer-robot-debate
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2756641/FBI-facial-recognition-database-pick-crowd-CCTV-shots-fully-operational.html
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/19/5419854/the-minority-report-this-computer-predicts-crime-but-is-it-racist

[Brent.Allsop]

To YOU luckybit, you're really onto something here!

I completely agree.  Constitutions, congress, primitive voting once every 4 years, and all that just polarize people and don't work, and we can obviously do way better.

I also think algorithmic voting and AI must be a big part of the most successful future methods of governance.  But this isn't everything.  I don't know what side of the 'global warming is a problem' fence you are sitting on, but let's just assume, for a moment, that there really isn't as much "scientific consensus" as some experts claim there is on this issue, and that in fact all the time so many experts are wasting on this, could be channeled to something that would benefit society trillions of times more than all the brain power currently being spent on getting everyone to fear global warming.  Let's say an algorithm/AI is able to see this?  What do you do then?  How do you get all these so called expert consensus scientists to abandon all the effort they are wasting, and get them to put some of their capital towards something of value?  Heck, let's say an AI can see that DPOS is way better than prof of waste?  How do you get all the people investing in mining, to change dirrections towards something that will help the world?

In fact, just the idea of 'voting' seems a completely wrong  paradigm. 200 years ago, wee needed a way to take the power away from the guy at the top, and give more power to the guy at the bottom, so we came up with Voting, once every 4 years, as a step in the right direction.

To me, it isn't about voting, it is all about consensus building.  For example, you have started a spark, here, and multiple people are jumping on board.  The question is, how do you measure how successful you are being, compared to other critically important issues, and also, how do you get something like this to quickly educate and scale to include millions of people?  As other have pointed out, it takes millions of dollars and man years to develop the kind of AIs you are talking about.  So how do we build enough consensus, to commit enough capital. to get it done.  If you think about it, the only hard part, is building enough consensus.  Once you have enough supporters of any idea, no matter how costly, it will just happen.  Building consensus, and getting everyone on board is the only hard part.

Brent Allsop

[luckybit]

Shut this thread down and move it to Off-Topic.  Its not happening.  Amazon has thousands of on call employees working ridiculous hours until they burn out and move on with their lives.  Their recommendation algorithm is a recommendation, it doesn't shop for you, and the moment it did you would have thousands of pissed off customers.  Netflix paid a million dollar bounty to someone who could create a better algorithm for better movie recommendations.  What you are suggesting is a multi-million effort in which the solution is fuzzy and not very well defined - a scenario which guarantees a low probability for success.  It will never happen. Ever. Move on.

The same exact arguments were used when Bitcoin was first discussed. When Bitshares was first being discussed I saw the same arguments again about how it's just not possible and we still see people who believe in PoW saying DPoS is vulnerable to the "nothing at stake" vulnerability.

Conditional preference networks are a topic you should Google. If you Google that topic and the topic of Computational Voting and still think what I'm talking about is unrealistic then that is fine. I don't think it's fine however to suppress the topic and throw it into the off topic forum. Why shouldn't we at least discuss it philosophically? Btw all my references are in my posts so you can track my line of thought back to the sources.

Reference
http://www.amazon.com/Working-Preferences-Less-Cognitive-Technologies/dp/3642172792
http://crpit.com/confpapers/CRPITV70Truyen.pdf

[Thom]

Shut this thread down and move it to Off-Topic.  Its not happening.  Amazon has thousands of on call employees working ridiculous hours until they burn out and move on with their lives.  Their recommendation algorithm is a recommendation, it doesn't shop for you, and the moment it did you would have thousands of pissed off customers.  Netflix paid a million dollar bounty to someone who could create a better algorithm for better movie recommendations.  What you are suggesting is a multi-million effort in which the solution is fuzzy and not very well defined - a scenario which guarantees a low probability for success.  It will never happen. Ever. Move on.

You're certainly free to stop elsewhere and move along, but don't censor our free speech with your comments. Not very constructive imo.

[Thom]

To YOU luckybit, you're really onto something here!

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but I did read your OP and scanned many others.

I agree with the OP we should be looking at this philosophically. I would LOVE to see BitShares strongly consider this and move in this direction.

It will be difficult to implement and take many man hours to accomplish. Extensive testing will be required.

I would like to see a specialized "BOT" scripting language developed to express the rules of the BOT to act as a proxy. We could start with the D in DPOS, call it "Proxy Proof of Stake" if you like or PPoS. Would like to see BM weigh in on this thread, and comment on how these concepts might be employed with the coming "turing complete" scripting additions.

It would be a challenging effort, and a great amount of thought would have to be given to safeguards so we don't end up with a "SkyNet" that circumvents the fundamental purposes of the BitShares ecosystem.

All BOT rules must abide by some sort of "Prime Directive" which cannot be changed without a very large majority of Non-BOT human votes.

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

All that is needed is Turing complete scripting. Once you have that then the algorithm (smart contract) could have a policy, attributes, and the smart contract itself could be the algorithmic delegate. I explained a way to do it in one of my forum posts so it's not hard to at least do the initial algorithmic voting by simply using smart contracts to hire and fire delegates according to algorithm which would put the algorithms in control.

It would eventually lead to algorithmic democracy as smart contracts become better. A voting language would be necessary if you really want to do it right and then you could express your preferences in a way where all sorts of different branches of conditionals are mapped.

So you could use a voting language to create a voting agenda pattern for example which focuses on preventing climate change. You wouldn't have to analyze all the issues or anything like that because the algorithm would simply analyze data to figure out which decisions would be the most beneficial for achieving the agenda. Based on the reputation and voting records (attributes) of the candidates your voting power would automatically be delegated.

If you look at liquid democracy then you could delegate your voting power to any entity so you could delegate it to a team of climate scientists. You could delegate your vote to a DAC which is run by climate scientists specifically to act as a candidate or to anything else really. I'm not really pushing liquid democracy so much but an algorithm probably would just as easily be able to select the best human leaders or delegates for any issue.

I'm convinced this is all possible today. I don't think it's something which would have to wait for the future but I do admit it might take a considerable amount of developer time.

You may be right, but I think the concept deserves considerably more thought & discussion.

You didn't even address the "SkyNet" issue or seem to be concerned about what the power of BOT voting could do to destroy whole ecosystem.

This is an implementation as well as philosophical consideration. Should an aggregate of BOT rules be allowed to centralize the ecosystem such that we end up with a duplicate of the current financial (i.e. non crypto) structure? That's what I mean by a prime directive.

It could be argued that requiring a large majority of human votes to change the prime directive doesn't prevent the centralization scenario, but it slows down radical change that otherwise would be hyperfast with BOTs.

[sschechter]

Shut this thread down and move it to Off-Topic.  Its not happening.  Amazon has thousands of on call employees working ridiculous hours until they burn out and move on with their lives.  Their recommendation algorithm is a recommendation, it doesn't shop for you, and the moment it did you would have thousands of pissed off customers.  Netflix paid a million dollar bounty to someone who could create a better algorithm for better movie recommendations.  What you are suggesting is a multi-million effort in which the solution is fuzzy and not very well defined - a scenario which guarantees a low probability for success.  It will never happen. Ever. Move on.

[luckybit]

To YOU luckybit, you're really onto something here!

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but I did read your OP and scanned many others.

I agree with the OP we should be looking at this philosophically. I would LOVE to see BitShares strongly consider this and move in this direction.

It will be difficult to implement and take many man hours to accomplish. Extensive testing will be required.

I would like to see a specialized "BOT" scripting language developed to express the rules of the BOT to act as a proxy. We could start with the D in DPOS, call it "Proxy Proof of Stake" if you like or PPoS. Would like to see BM weigh in on this thread, and comment on how these concepts might be employed with the coming "turing complete" scripting additions.

It would be a challenging effort, and a great amount of thought would have to be given to safeguards so we don't end up with a "SkyNet" that circumvents the fundamental purposes of the BitShares ecosystem.

All BOT rules must abide by some sort of "Prime Directive" which cannot be changed without a very large majority of Non-BOT human votes.

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

All that is needed is Turing complete scripting. Once you have that then the algorithm (smart contract) could have a policy, attributes, and the smart contract itself could be the algorithmic delegate. I explained a way to do it in one of my forum posts so it's not hard to at least do the initial algorithmic voting by simply using smart contracts to hire and fire delegates according to algorithm which would put the algorithms in control.

It would eventually lead to algorithmic democracy as smart contracts become better. A voting language would be necessary if you really want to do it right and then you could express your preferences in a way where all sorts of different branches of conditionals are mapped.

So you could use a voting language to create a voting agenda pattern for example which focuses on preventing climate change. You wouldn't have to analyze all the issues or anything like that because the algorithm would simply analyze data to figure out which decisions would be the most beneficial for achieving the agenda. Based on the reputation and voting records (attributes) of the candidates your voting power would automatically be delegated.

If you look at liquid democracy then you could delegate your voting power to any entity so you could delegate it to a team of climate scientists. You could delegate your vote to a DAC which is run by climate scientists specifically to act as a candidate or to anything else really. I'm not really pushing liquid democracy so much but an algorithm probably would just as easily be able to select the best human leaders or delegates for any issue.

I'm convinced this is all possible today. I don't think it's something which would have to wait for the future but I do admit it might take a considerable amount of developer time.

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

Not many of his suggestions gain traction. I find this rather unfortunate, because I like luckybit's ideas, even if I don't always agree. His low percentage rate is partly attributable to the frequency with which he fires these out.  Luckybit, perhaps you need a chief operating officer? A prime minister? Or an algo robot to help implement your vision?

I wouldn't mind having algorithms help me and to a certain extent they already do.

I'm not really concerned with whether my ideas get used by the Bitshares community. Other communities scope out this forum and if Bitshares decides not to implement it then if the idea has merit it will be implemented elsewhere.

I think Delegated Proof of Stake is great but if we took advantage of this opportunity to redefine democracy and move it toward being autonomous it will be better. A lot of the complaints people have with Delegated Proof of Stake is it still has human flaws in the center of it while the ideal situation is to over time push algorithms into the center of it until the humans can slowly step back from having to consciously be at the wheel.

Think of it as the self driving DAC being superior to the human run decentralized application. In order to go to the next level we need bots which do algorithmic trading, and we need algorithmic voting.

[Thom]

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

Not many of his suggestions gain traction. I find this rather unfortunate, because I like luckybit's ideas, even if I don't always agree. His low percentage rate is partly attributable to the frequency with which he fires these out.  Luckybit, perhaps you need a chief operating officer? A prime minister? Or an algo robot to help implement your vision?

Seems like I've had the last word (i.e. stopped all discussion) on every thread I've commented on recently.

I hope this won't be yet another example.

THINK, POST PEOPLE!

[donkeypong]

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

Not many of his suggestions gain traction. I find this rather unfortunate, because I like luckybit's ideas, even if I don't always agree. His low percentage rate is partly attributable to the frequency with which he fires these out.  Luckybit, perhaps you need a chief operating officer? A prime minister? Or an algo robot to help implement your vision?

[Thom]

  To YOU luckybit, you're really onto something here!

I haven't read all the posts in this thread, but I did read your OP and scanned many others.

I agree with the OP we should be looking at this philosophically. I would LOVE to see BitShares strongly consider this and move in this direction.

It will be difficult to implement and take many man hours to accomplish. Extensive testing will be required.

I would like to see a specialized "BOT" scripting language developed to express the rules of the BOT to act as a proxy. We could start with the D in DPOS, call it "Proxy Proof of Stake" if you like or PPoS. Would like to see BM weigh in on this thread, and comment on how these concepts might be employed with the coming "turing complete" scripting additions.

It would be a challenging effort, and a great amount of thought would have to be given to safeguards so we don't end up with a "SkyNet" that circumvents the fundamental purposes of the BitShares ecosystem.

All BOT rules must abide by some sort of "Prime Directive" which cannot be changed without a very large majority of Non-BOT human votes.

Anyway, you really struck a chord with this thread luckybit, hope it can gain some traction.

[donkeypong]

What I don't understand is why an algorithm isn't used to filter out delegates who don't fulfil the basic criteria, price feeds, version updates.  It seems those basic criteria, that delegates were originally for before dilution, could be much more automated.  A delegate with a sufficiently unsuccessful past according to the algorithm could be automatically kicked out after fair warning (incase they were a dilution delegate, in which case having them kicked out would mess things up, so they need a good chance to fix things).

That might be a good initial application. At least pop up a red flag at some point and let people decide whether to keep voting for someone who is ineffective by those measures.

[matt608]

What I don't understand is why an algorithm isn't used to filter out delegates who don't fulfil the basic criteria, price feeds, version updates.  It seems those basic criteria, that delegates were originally for before dilution, could be much more automated.  A delegate with a sufficiently unsuccessful past according to the algorithm could be automatically kicked out after fair warning (incase they were a dilution delegate, in which case having them kicked out would mess things up, so they need a good chance to fix things).

[luckybit]

My PTS example was to help illustrate how hard it is for an algo to reflect the fickle whims of a human being (me).

Look, I'm all for experimenting. Your vision may well be a big part of the future and I do hope it can help solve some of the problems (even if it's incapable of addressing all of them). But it's ridiculous to suggest it is the present. A previous system becomes "obsolete" once something better can replace it. I see nothing in your posts indicating that we have arrived at that point yet, only that there is promise for the future...which I admit there is (even if we disagree about its scope of application).

And telling me how bad the current system is does not make an unproven alternative any better...yet!

Isn't that the point? Aren't we an experimental community? So why not experiment with voting?

The only thing I can say with a degree of certainty is what we currently have is broken. It simply is outdated to the point that it seems pointless to vote at all. When you vote do politicians actually obey your fickle whims?

It may take a lot of effort but if we don't want to end up with the same problems we see in congress duplicated here we must change something.

When I say it's outdated I mean other forms of voting have actually been tried. It's proven outdated by academia which spends time studying these subjects. Liquid democracy also shows that improvements can be made to the current processes while algorithmic voting would be a completely new paradigm.

Reference
Liquid Democracy In Simple Terms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg0_Vhldz-8

[donkeypong]

My PTS example was to help illustrate how hard it is for an algo to reflect the fickle whims of a human being (me).

Look, I'm all for experimenting. Your vision may well be a big part of the future and I do hope it can help solve some of the problems (even if it's incapable of addressing all of them). But it's ridiculous to suggest it is the present. A previous system becomes "obsolete" once something better can replace it. I see nothing in your posts indicating that we have arrived at that point yet, only that there is promise for the future...which I admit there is (even if we disagree about its scope of application).

And telling me how bad the current system is does not make an unproven alternative any better...yet!

[luckybit]

How can you get any algorithmic democracy to get the entire population to do something very hard, like maybe live a very poor life to stop global warming, Can an algorithm determine that global warming isn't a problem for us?  Or maybe get us all to do something like dilute Bitshares a tiny bit for an insanely great marketing ploy...?

Either you trust humans or you trust algorithms. Humans in positions of authority are pretty much all corrupt, coerced, manipulated, etc. That is why congress has such low job approval ratings and it will continue to get lower as most people don't really take the current process as if it is something which works.

Sure it's better than nothing at all but it is clearly not working or job approval ratings would be 90% instead of 8%.

An algorithm can determine if global warming is or isn't a problem. In fact it is algorithms which we use to predict weather patterns in the first place. Algorithms are what really are behind decision making because people are too ignorant to make critical decisions without relying on computers (and algorithms). You can believe the military relies on algorithms to make it's decisions so it's really only the voters who basically play pin the tail on the donkey.

I cannot speak for anyone else but I'm not satisfied with the current political process. I don't see why Bitshares should duplicate a process which clearly is already broken. The low job approval ratings are all the proof you need to see that humans aren't good at representative democracy.

I think humans have representative democracy because until recently no one thought anything else was possible. It's really not all that different from why feudalism lasted for so long.

Reference
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/mood_of_america/congressional_performance

[luckybit]

You want to turn over my hard fought voting right to a robot?

You already turn over your voting power to human beings. Are they doing a better job than Pandora, Genius and Amazon? Did you vote for the country you see here?

I've been using Pandora for months and it still doesn't understand my taste in music. Amazon is pretty good until I order a book on fairies for my five year old daughter. Then the next time I log in it suggests I might be interested in My Little Pony.

So your alternative is to trust human authority to continue looking out for you? How is that working for you btw?

Two months ago, I was a strong supporter of continuing PTS in some form. Now I see how Alphabar is handling that and I think the BitShares community should disallow his project from using the PTS name. 

Not sure what PTS has to do with this.

Algos take a long time to build, test, validate, refine. It will be years before we can trust them to handle the majority of decision-making. And you have to convince asses like me to cede some control. Control we didn't care about until now! 

Algos take a while to get smart but algos are currently analyzing our "Big Data" for profit. You're not even able to benefit from the algorithmic power in any serious way. Sure it learns your music preferences, predicts your search habits, etc, but it is also used to manipulate and exploit you.

So why not use those algorithms to give you new forms of democracy? Americans give congress a job approval rating in the teens. That means 10-20% range on any given day.

We honestly might be better off using the algorithms of Pandora compared to that.


Reference
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/congressional_job_approval-903.html

[Brent.Allsop]

How can you get any algorithmic democracy to get the entire population to do something very hard, like maybe live a very poor life to stop global warming, Can an algorithm determine that global warming isn't a problem for us?  Or maybe get us all to do something like dilute Bitshares a tiny bit for an insanely great marketing ploy...?

Oh, and a 'bit' may be living and lucky, but it is definitely not phenomenal, or has no phenomenal quality, like redness, or the taste of salt. It can only be interpreted (only IF you know how to do it correctly) as representing or simulating such. 

[donkeypong]

You want to turn over my hard fought voting right to a robot? I've been using Pandora for months and it still doesn't understand my taste in music. Amazon is pretty good until I order a book on fairies for my five year old daughter. Then the next time I log in it suggests I might be interested in My Little Pony.

Two months ago, I was a strong supporter of continuing PTS in some form. Now I see how Alphabar is handling that and I think the BitShares community should disallow his project from using the PTS name.

Algos take a long time to build, test, validate, refine. It will be years before we can trust them to handle the majority of decision-making. And you have to convince asses like me to cede some control. Control we didn't care about until now! 

[luckybit]

Instead of a human being running for "public office" the DAC itself could run for public office. It would know more about us than any human candidate ever could. It be a source of trust for us all. It would be the perfect representative for our particular community.

I think it pays to remember that algorithms are always designed by humans, have limited scope, can be subject to design flaws and implementation errors and can potentially be exploited.

Yes, they have scope to automate various mundane functions, like search and aggregation, but more complicated issues will need a lot of time to refine and protect against potential exploitation.

The design of an algorithm or set thereof to act as a delegate with no human intervention would be quite a task in itself. As a developer, I'd estimate the ballpark complexity of such an 'entity' as being roughly equal to that of the original bitsharesX DAC.

Cheers, Paul.

It's actually not as complex as you think. Conditional preference networks can be built into every DAC. Then you would need a decentralized storage capability which could be supplied by SAFE Network, Storj or something like that so that all the preference data about you can be securely stored. From here the algorithms you'd use already exist and are used by companies like Amazon, Google, etc.

If each DAC has a conditional preference network then as you connect the networks the learning algorithm would have more data to work with, would become more precise, etc. For example if your most private financial data, your posts across many forums, the books you read, websites you visit, and whatever other inputs you give to the algorithm is available then you can train the algorithm by using levers such as "like", "dislike" "ratings" and so on. Eventually it will be able to map out what you like, what you want, even be able to predict what you need such as when you'll run out of milk based on your buying and consumption habits.

Having said all that I don't expect you'd get a perfect algorithm instantly. I also don't think algorithms like these would be static. Each one of us would have our own algorithms which would learn about us over time.

Algorithms only know as much about you as you reveal to them.  People who don't use computers very much would have very ignorant algorithms (most of the world at this point).

It might not apply to most of the world at first but does most of the world have democracy at all? Do rights exist in most of the world? Also if we want to for example guarantee that we can never EVER vote against our inalienable or human rights then only an algorithm can guarantee that.

Don't you wonder how is it we have less rights today than we had generations ago? It's because people can be convinced to vote against their self interest and vote their inalienable rights away. People can also be threatened or coerced into voting for the dictatorship even if they don't really want to. Algorithms can improve these situations by making it a sort of math problem instead of a problem which can be solved by violence, intimidation, bribery, terrorism, etc.

So I can understand why you could say it wouldn't apply to for example the Congo but I also think if you are going to build DACs then why not build them to truly free the world? In the future they'll have computers and these tools will be useful to have exist during that time.

Those who do reveal a lot have to have all that precious information stored securely which isn't currently possible I don't think (but maybe soon using Maidsafe? or similar).

SAFE Network, Storj, you're right it might not be easy to store securely but it's already being collected. "Big Data" is already happening as we speak. Google and Amazon already know more about us than we know about ourselves and instead of using this information to amplify democracy it's being used by advertisers to make profits. I'm thinking we could apply these same algorithms to voting to make our preferences shape our future.

I am intrigued by algorithmic voting.  It currently is not possible though.  The information I have revealed about myself on the current Internet is not an accurate picture of me, as I censor my view points one some issues as I know I'm being spied upon.  So the entire Internet needs a major (and infallible) security upgrade for this to work at all. 

You'd be very surprised how much the Internet knows about you. To be honest while you might not be putting everything online it is highly likely that the Internet knows more about you than any human being could ever know. It certainly knows more about me than any human being will ever know and all of that data isn't being used to my political benefit.

Just look at the candidates you see running for elections? Do they run on platforms which make any sense to you? Am I the only one who thinks they run on platforms which don't make sense anymore? I shouldn't have to pick a candidate anymore when we have the technology to feed ads to me based on by subconscious thought patterns.

But in theory integrating algorithmic voting into direct democracy in a hybrid system sounds good to me.

Those who don't use computers much could be 'simple voters' who get fewer options with a more simple layout  And some people would still prefer to vote for people.  You can't force algorithmic voting on people.

I'm not saying we should force it. It's a similar situation where you cannot force DACs on people, or Bitcoin, or the Internet itself. On the other hand Bitcoin was designed to be decentralized for a reason. People who understand what that reason is will understand why algorithmic voting has advantages.

Place A Vote is going with the algorithmic candidate idea. I think we should at least be able to do better than what they are doing. A DAC can be a perfect algorithmic candidate because if elected and if like you mentioned we have a decentralized storage capability then that DAC could know everything about us. It could represent our interests better than any human being because it could know the most private details about us without us having to give up our privacy. It may be a radical idea to go algorithmic but if you want to attract the brightest minds you have to work on the ideas which have the greatest potential.

References
http://www.engadget.com/2014/05/24/replaceing-politicians-with-internet-polls/
http://placeavote.com/app/index.html#!/

[monsterer]

Instead of a human being running for "public office" the DAC itself could run for public office. It would know more about us than any human candidate ever could. It be a source of trust for us all. It would be the perfect representative for our particular community.

I think it pays to remember that algorithms are always designed by humans, have limited scope, can be subject to design flaws and implementation errors and can potentially be exploited.

Yes, they have scope to automate various mundane functions, like search and aggregation, but more complicated issues will need a lot of time to refine and protect against potential exploitation.

The design of an algorithm or set thereof to act as a delegate with no human intervention would be quite a task in itself. As a developer, I'd estimate the ballpark complexity of such an 'entity' as being roughly equal to that of the original bitsharesX DAC.

Cheers, Paul.

[matt608]

Algorithms only know as much about you as you reveal to them.  People who don't use computers very much would have very ignorant algorithms (most of the world at this point).

Those who do reveal a lot have to have all that precious information stored securely which isn't currently possible I don't think (but maybe soon using Maidsafe? or similar).

I am intrigued by algorithmic voting.  It currently is not possible though.  The information I have revealed about myself on the current Internet is not an accurate picture of me, as I censor my view points one some issues as I know I'm being spied upon.  So the entire Internet needs a major (and infallible) security upgrade for this to work at all. 

But in theory integrating algorithmic voting into direct democracy in a hybrid system sounds good to me.

Those who don't use computers much could be 'simple voters' who get fewer options with a more simple layout  And some people would still prefer to vote for people.  You can't force algorithmic voting on people.

[luckybit]

I think the real world is too complex for a single answer to this, and it may be different approaches for different issues.
I would love algorithmic voting where issues are simple and rules are easy to formulate according to my preference. But many issues are just too complex for that.

On more complex issues I think there is a free playing ground that sits between direct democracy and indirect democracy. That is to delegate votes to others, including voting blocs, that are aligned with your own philosophies and interests, and perhaps are given the right to vote on your behalf on some issues within their expertise and not on others. You could use different blocs on different issues. And blocs themselves may delegate to yet larger blocs, with as many layers as is desired on any issue. Or an individual may decide to vote an issue directly themselves. The flow of your vote through the chain and the rationales could all be completely transparent, and alterable at any time by the individual, giving them ultimate control of their vote. Public algorithms or customised algorithms could be options within this mix, integrating your idea into a more open architecture. To me this would represent ultimate voting freedom and efficiency.

Isn't the point of relying on algorithms based on the fact that the world is too complex for the human brain to handle?

You cannot organize and process all the information on the Internet. You rely on Google to do that for you. So when it's time to vote now you're expected to process all the information in the world to make a political decision? What is the difference here?

In either case your brain will never be able to make a truly wise decision because without algorithms you'll never process most of the information required. So why not let algorithms understand your preferences and make your votes according to that?

You wouldn't have a situation where there are ignorant votes. You could have persons with ignorant preferences. The problem with voting is most of our preferences are conditional so voting on an issue which seems static isn't taking into account all the different conditions in which you might alter your vote or change your mind. Conditional preference networks would take into account all of the little details which would change your mind and learning conditional preference networks grow smarter as it learns your preferences.

So far no one has given me a reason why other people should make decisions for them. People say because it's tradition, or because people like to have leaders, or because people are too ignorant to learn about the issues. The problem is the leaders are just as ignorant as everybody else and don't make wise decisions either because they have to keep winning popularity contests which don't have any rational basis.

An algorithm only has to produce results. There is no popularity contest that keeps an algorithm in use. The algorithm either is accurate for predicting your likes/dislikes, adapting to your preferences, etc or it's not. If it's not then it will continue to learn about you until it evolves into the perfect delegate, the perfect representative, so why would you need a human involved except your own brain and the algorithms?

Find one issue where an algorithm wouldn't be more thorough at processing, more rational at decision making, more reliable? An algorithm cannot be bribed, cannot be coerced, cannot be threatened or tricked into becoming an irrational voter, it would simply be a direct extension of your self interest.

The DAC as the political candidate

Imagine a scenario where we take a DAC which learns about all it's members through conditional preference networks, artificial intelligence, voting history, all kinds of analysis of private financial purchase history?

Instead of a human being running for "public office" the DAC itself could run for public office. It would know more about us than any human candidate ever could. It be a source of trust for us all. It would be the perfect representative for our particular community.

[starspirit]

I think the real world is too complex for a single answer to this, and it may be different approaches for different issues.
I would love algorithmic voting where issues are simple and rules are easy to formulate according to my preference. But many issues are just too complex for that.

On more complex issues I think there is a free playing ground that sits between direct democracy and indirect democracy. That is to delegate votes to others, including voting blocs, that are aligned with your own philosophies and interests, and perhaps are given the right to vote on your behalf on some issues within their expertise and not on others. You could use different blocs on different issues. And blocs themselves may delegate to yet larger blocs, with as many layers as is desired on any issue. Or an individual may decide to vote an issue directly themselves. The flow of your vote through the chain and the rationales could all be completely transparent, and alterable at any time by the individual, giving them ultimate control of their vote. Public algorithms or customised algorithms could be options within this mix, integrating your idea into a more open architecture. To me this would represent ultimate voting freedom and efficiency.

[luckybit]

I'm a big fan of opening things up, but direct democracy sucks. Representative democracy is here to stay. Sadly, the fact remains that the 'masses are asses', and I'm one of them. I'll gladly let the masses elect some representatives, but I'm not going 'town hall style' for every single management decision. Can you imagine the apathy?

The time it would take people to get educated, discuss, and even vote on things would be an awful waste of time, and many decisions would lack a clear mandate. Someone needs the power to take decisive actions without submitting everything to a poll. Let me focus on my life, not having to read through a bunch of arguments and vote on ten things every day. At the end of a reasonable period of time, I'll decide if I like the job my representatives are doing.

It's just like baking my own bread, blacksmithing my own tools, or completing my own tax returns. Sure, I can learn the skill and do it at an acceptable level of quality, but if I'm doing all those things all the time, I ain't got time left to live my own life. That's why human civilization decided long ago that it's more efficient to specialize into different occupations: let cobblers be cobblers and farmers be farmers. I live in California, where we have to educate ourselves every two years to vote on these 'direct democracy' ballot propositions. Most of them are shit and bought by special interest groups. But the time it takes to sort through all the pro/con arguments, misleading advertising, etc...trust me, you don't want direct democracy on a regular basis!

Or maybe they just want you to think that the real direct democracy is so hard... so you give up on it.

The problem with direct democracy is ignorant humans. The problem with representative democracy is corrupt humans. The problem with algorithmic democracy is flawed algorithms.

Flawed algorithms can be A/B tested until they become smarter, more efficient, and over time less flawed. The algorithmic democracy can learn our preferences, know us better than we know ourselves, predict our wants and needs, and direct our voting power to that. There would be no need for the beauty pageant crap we deal with in politics. The algorithms will get smarter over time until it is perfectly fit to each individual because learning conditional preference networks allow for that.

We have to reset whatever we thought was possible and look at what is possible with the technology of today or tomorrow. Direct democracy may not have been possible to do 100 years ago but it's trending in a way where not only will it be possible but possibly more efficient than representative democracy.

[luckybit]

I'm a big fan of opening things up, but direct democracy sucks. Representative democracy is here to stay. Sadly, the fact remains that the 'masses are asses', and I'm one of them.

What advantage does indirect democracy have over algorithmic democracy?
If your argument is that people are asses then removing the representatives would mean even less assholes to make bad decisions? Algorithms wouldn't be assholes and couldn't vote against the self interest of the owner. Is it any different from moving away from having banks hold our value to holding it with cryptography ourselves?

 I'll gladly let the masses elect some representatives, but I'm not going 'town hall style' for every single management decision. Can you imagine the apathy?

You didn't read my post did you? Algorithms don't feel apathy. If Amazon suggests books for you to read it's not doing this based on "town hall" processes. It's called conditional preference networks.

The time it would take people to get educated, discuss, and even vote on things would be an awful waste of time, and many decisions would lack a clear mandate.

Please read some of the information I put in my references on conditional preference networks. It's clear you haven't fully researched because you're arguing from a perspective which doesn't take into account AI or algorithms.

When you go to a traditional library you would have to search for books. You would have to take the time to look around to find the book which fit your preferences. Thanks to Amazon and conditional preference networks the algorithm can learn about you and suggest books you'd like based on that. So the same technology applied to voting means that algorithms will learn about you and vote on your behalf instead of a human being trying to learn your preferences and vote on your behalf.

Do you think an algorithm or a human being can know you better? I think algorithms already know us all better than any human can.

Someone needs the power to take decisive actions without submitting everything to a poll. Let me focus on my life, not having to read through a bunch of arguments and vote on ten things every day. At the end of a reasonable period of time, I'll decide if I like the job my representatives are doing. 

Someone? Who says it has to be a person? Why couldn't an algorithm direct your voting power on your behalf? I don't see why humans are required and you haven't made much of a case for why we need human representatives if an algorithm can be the representative.

Let me put it like this, suppose your computer knows everything about you. It knows more about you than you know about yourself. At what point do you take the leap of faith in these algorithms? At what point will you trust these algorithms more than other people?

I'd argue a lot of people already do trust these algorithms more than people. So if that is the case why do we need representative democracy? Algorithmic democracy would mean algorithms would replace human representatives allowing the algorithm to directly collect your preferences then calculate the vote.

There is no reason I see to have human beings voting on your behalf unless you just want to provide a lever for corruption. Think about it as an engineer and consider the difference in signal to noise ratio when dealing with a human being vs dealing with an algorithm? At first the algorithms might not know you very well but after some years they'll have learned you on every level imaginable and will know you so well that they might even be able to predict your wants and needs.

[zerosum]

I'm a big fan of opening things up, but direct democracy sucks. Representative democracy is here to stay. Sadly, the fact remains that the 'masses are asses', and I'm one of them. I'll gladly let the masses elect some representatives, but I'm not going 'town hall style' for every single management decision. Can you imagine the apathy?

The time it would take people to get educated, discuss, and even vote on things would be an awful waste of time, and many decisions would lack a clear mandate. Someone needs the power to take decisive actions without submitting everything to a poll. Let me focus on my life, not having to read through a bunch of arguments and vote on ten things every day. At the end of a reasonable period of time, I'll decide if I like the job my representatives are doing.

It's just like baking my own bread, blacksmithing my own tools, or completing my own tax returns. Sure, I can learn the skill and do it at an acceptable level of quality, but if I'm doing all those things all the time, I ain't got time left to live my own life. That's why human civilization decided long ago that it's more efficient to specialize into different occupations: let cobblers be cobblers and farmers be farmers. I live in California, where we have to educate ourselves every two years to vote on these 'direct democracy' ballot propositions. Most of them are shit and bought by special interest groups. But the time it takes to sort through all the pro/con arguments, misleading advertising, etc...trust me, you don't want direct democracy on a regular basis!

Or maybe they just want you to think that the real direct democracy is so hard... so you give up on it.

[donkeypong]

I'm a big fan of opening things up, but direct democracy sucks. Representative democracy is here to stay. Sadly, the fact remains that the 'masses are asses', and I'm one of them. I'll gladly let the masses elect some representatives, but I'm not going 'town hall style' for every single management decision. Can you imagine the apathy?

The time it would take people to get educated, discuss, and even vote on things would be an awful waste of time, and many decisions would lack a clear mandate. Someone needs the power to take decisive actions without submitting everything to a poll. Let me focus on my life, not having to read through a bunch of arguments and vote on ten things every day. At the end of a reasonable period of time, I'll decide if I like the job my representatives are doing.

It's just like baking my own bread, blacksmithing my own tools, or completing my own tax returns. Sure, I can learn the skill and do it at an acceptable level of quality, but if I'm doing all those things all the time, I ain't got time left to live my own life. That's why human civilization decided long ago that it's more efficient to specialize into different occupations: let cobblers be cobblers and farmers be farmers. I live in California, where we have to educate ourselves every two years to vote on these 'direct democracy' ballot propositions. Most of them are shit and bought by special interest groups. But the time it takes to sort through all the pro/con arguments, misleading advertising, etc...trust me, you don't want direct democracy on a regular basis!

[onceuponatime]

Let's start with how a bit can be lucky?

Couse, if we find happiness ...we will have found the meaning of life!

That is the answer. It's a lucky bit because it lives.

TonyK...I want to find the meaning of life.  Unfortunately my bit was not so lucky

@fuzzy.. You will NEVER find the meaning of life, because I hid it where no one will ever think  to look.

[fuzzy]

Let's start with how a bit can be lucky?

Couse, if we find happiness ...we will have found the meaning of life!

That is the answer. It's a lucky bit because it lives.

TonyK...I want to find the meaning of life.  Unfortunately my bit was not so lucky

[luckybit]

Let's start with how a bit can be lucky?

Couse, if we find happiness ...we will have found the meaning of life!

That is the answer. It's a lucky bit because it lives.

[zerosum]

Let's start with how a bit can be lucky?

Couse, if we find happiness ...we will have found the meaning of life!

[luckybit]

Representative democracy may now be becoming obsolete as you can have direct algorithmic democracy.

Instead of giving your decision making power to another human it will sooner or later be more efficient to give that decision making power to algorithms. In fact Amazon already is using the technology to do this and these algorithms will continue to learn more about us until eventually these algorithms know us better than we know ourselves.

So what should we do? Algorithms are more cost efficient as delegates than people. As the algorithms become more optimized, personalized, then the accuracy and effectiveness in their ability to make decisions on our behalf will increase.

What should we do Bitshares team? If we stick with human beings making decisions directly then you have the problem where most people will not even vote. If you delegate the vote then it makes a lot of sense for the specific purpose that we need some operators for the DAC to be able to function but we don't need the vote to be decided by humans. It is likely that sooner or later the hiring and firing will be decided by algorithmic processes.

In my opinion this needs to be discussed on a philosophical level. It should be discussed deeply now because eventually we are going to reach a crossroad where a choice will have to be made between how we move forward. If we are going for maximum efficiency of operation and automation then algorithms have to play a larger role but if we are going to focus on trusting humans then reputation will play a larger role. The problem is humans tend to fail and also humans can be convinced to vote against their self interest.

These questions and topics go beyond Bitshares. Algorithmic democracy can potentially change the political process. Instead of electing human beings to Congress, Senate, Parliament, we'd instead be electing algorithms to serve as our digital representatives. Discuss?

Algorithmic voting theory
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10804.0
Automatic algorithmically delegated voting, delegates and smart contracts
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10745.msg141289#msg141289
Algorithmic Voting Theory, Venice, and a Talk on Old/New Papers
http://mat.tepper.cmu.edu/blog/?p=920
CP-nets, algorithmic voting theory and Turing complete voting languages
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=10840.0