Author Topic: Representative democracy may now be becoming obsolete  (Read 7257 times)

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Offline starspirit

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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.

Offline luckybit

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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.

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Offline luckybit

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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.

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zerosum

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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.

Offline donkeypong

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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!

Offline onceuponatime


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Offline 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 :(
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Offline luckybit

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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.
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zerosum

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

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

Offline luckybit

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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
« Last Edit: November 10, 2014, 06:52:58 am by luckybit »
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