Author Topic: Representative democracy may now be becoming obsolete  (Read 7261 times)

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Offline luckybit

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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.
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Offline 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.
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Offline luckybit

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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.
« Last Edit: November 12, 2014, 12:58:41 pm by luckybit »
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Offline 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. 
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Offline 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.

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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:

Quote
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".
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Offline matt608

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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.

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Offline fluxer555

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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.

Offline sschechter

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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.
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Offline luckybit

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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
« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 08:29:11 pm by luckybit »
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Offline Brent.Allsop

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+5% +5% +5% +5% 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.

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« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 08:08:20 pm by Brent.Allsop »

Offline luckybit

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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
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Offline 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.
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Offline Thom

+5% +5% +5% +5% 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.
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Offline sschechter

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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.
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Offline luckybit

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+5% +5% +5% +5% 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.


« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 07:45:20 pm by luckybit »
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