Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] [EM] Primary network effects and national dialogue

[Alexander Praetorius <citizen AT serapath.de>]

I have one objection so to say.

It can never be about "eliminating the network effect".
The network effect in itself is one fundamental evolutionary principle.
You cannot circumvent it, you can only try to work WITH it.

People have to orient themselves somehow and it doesnt matter in what way they do this.
It might be through following people, following ideas, following principles, following beliefs, whatever...
Once they do that, and they always do in any given point in time there is some guiding or governing "things", it can be abused.

So if people follow a person, that person can abuse it. If they follow money, whoever controls money could abuse it. If they follow a product (e.g. a software), the developers could abuse it...

All people might realize they are being abused, but how should they alter their behavior? In lack of consensus or the opportunity to sync their behavior, its not an easy task to agree upon THE solution which everyone might use as an alternative.
And beside that, this alternative solution, even if people COULD agree to use the alternative (which might take huge efforts) could then again start to abuse people....

So its a NON TRIVIAL PROBLEM :-)

The only thing people can hope for is to choose an alternative which will not abuse them or might make it more difficult to do so.

So i think, what is needed is to create a very good alternative, which people start to use, because its better than all the other alternatives, thus it creates traction. Now eventually enough people join and the network effect starts to build up, so in order to end the negative effects, meaning the potential for abuse through those people which "created the new solution" is, to make sure, that everyone else can join in and can collaborate and change whats there. Its the open source principle, but with the twist, that "a fork" does not really fork in a sense that the current version and the forked one loose compatibility, but following certain principles, the compatibility is not broken.

I think what it needs is open standards, but not only for data to be interchanged or for protocols to be open, but also open standards (maybe initially created by core developers, but later on agreed upon through all the users) about HOW to set up "vote mirroring", not only for votes but for every imaginable aspect of the system.

Thus, where NO shared underlying standard for stuff exists, there should be at least a good method of how people can MAP their approach to another approach, so that their systems can communicate and eventually a standard will evolve.

This mindset is the principle for which we would in fact really like to have a NETWORK EFFECT :-) ...please everyone join in to the common cause ;-) this mindset is something i personally would very much like to have a very strong network effect in, so that other mindsets, which are exclusive, cannot "survive" so to speak ;-)

On Mon, Apr 15, 2013 at 4:56 PM, Michael Allan <mike AT zelea.com> wrote:

Dennis, Bruce and others, (was [NATL-DIALOGUE] convergence of possible
discussion topics.  CC others)

(For those unaware, please note that the National Dialogue Network is
the winner of the 2012 Catalyst Award for Civic Infrastructure,
http://ncdd.org/10940.)

Dennis said:
> ... You make some good points here.  I'd sure like to see some
> experiments with the approach you suggest.

The Pirate Party of Germany has a working group (AG Meinungsfindungs-
tool) that's roughly equivalent to the National Dialogue Network.  I'm
hopeful they can help us to get started.  They have lots of technical
resources.  The crucial task seems to be eliminating the network
effect in primary voting.  That network effect precludes the success
of open primaries, and probably also the success of the Pirates.
Please see the discussion thread "Helping the Pirate Party to vanish":
https://service.piratenpartei.de/pipermail/ag-meinungsfindungstool/2013-April/thread.html#2187


Bruce Schuman said:
> I'd probably want to embed this kind of flow-of-control in a big
> holistic container like Americans Elect, that takes on everything
> that arises within the motivations of the electorate -- and then
> arrange the output of the entire process as a "guiding influence" on
> the existing governmental system (i.e., it acts as an all-issues
> "citizens lobby")

http://www.americanselect.org/

Americans Elect seems to be roughly equivalent to the Pirate Party;
it's an organization based around a facility of primary voting.
That's also the technical definition of a modern political party.  As
such, it could not succeed except by destroying and replacing one of
the existing dominant parties.  Unfortunately, that means it cannot be
"nonpartisan" as claimed on site.  That's no doubt the hope, but the
network effect that forces the dominance of a primary duopoly also
forces the poles of that duopoly to be partisan.

Another way to view the problem is that a vote cast in an Americans
Elect primary is *also* a vote in favour of Americans Elect.  It is
this organizational "charge" on the vote that belies the promise of an
open primary and dooms it to failure in the stronger "magnetic fields"
of the dominant party organizations.  For the open primary to succeed,
the organizational charge on the vote must somehow be neutralized.

For example, suppose that each primary vote cast at an Americans Elect
site *also* appears at each National Dialogue site (say), and vice
versa.  Ditto for all the other sites where primary votes are cast,
viewed or counted.  This technical trick of mirrors effectively
neutralizes the organizational charge and eliminates the network
effect that favours bigger sites over smaller.  It no longer matters
where a primary vote is cast, viewed or counted.  Such a primary is
truly open.

Continuing with the example: the open executive primary we spoke of
earlier is now possible.  People are able to discuss and vote not only
for the President and Vice-President's offices, but also, and for the
first time, for all the appointments of the administration (as you
Americans call it).  The party primaries are now less interesting and
the parties themselves no longer seem to have much of a future ahead
of them.  Suddenly there is a lot to agree on, a lot to talk about.

Anyway, this is what we've been thinking recently.  I can answer for
the technical side.  We've long known about the trick of mirrors and
even prototyped it in the past.  Much depends, however, on the
feasibility and attractions of the open executive primary, both for
presidential (US) and parliamentary systems (Germany).  So I CC a list
of election experts and ask them to kindly point to possible errors or
oversights.  http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring

Discussions on the same are indexed here:
http://zelea.com/w/Stuff_talk:Votorola/p/power_structuring

--
Michael Allan

Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
http://zelea.com/


> Michael Allan said:
> > Bruce and Dennis, (cc Votorola, Election Methods)
> >
> > About the over-complexity of the issue space in executive elections, I
> > wanted to share something we discovered last month.
> >
> > Bruce Schuman said:
> > > ... dealing with this incredible simultaneity and complexity, that
> > > so totally overloads normal human thinking. ... Somehow, we need to
> > >  parse the issue space    using methods ... that can break down huge
> > > complexity and simultaneity into bite-sized and regionally-focused
> > > chunks people can comprehend .
> >
> > Dennis Boyer said:
> > > ... I'm wondering if [Americans Elect] might have had better results
> > > by utilizing some qualitative and quantitative tools that would mesh
> > > with their issue responses, overlay them with candidate responses,
> > > and produce a candidate or candidates via that type of approach?
> >
> > Last month, we came up with a new design for an open executive
> > primary: http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
> >
> > It enables the electors (i.e. voters) to form a prior consensus on a
> > power structure of appointments.  A power structure is still a complex
> > thing, of course (all the indirect appointments of a president), but
> > it seems to be the essential issue to be decided in the election.  It
> > probably ought to be discussed beforehand.  A primary like this might
> > offer the right supports for that kind of discussion.  Note how the
> > complex leaves of the primary reach out to the equally complex local
> > electorate in an attempt to "engage" with them, as they say.
> >
> > Discussions on normative issues (gun control, say) could be moved to
> > separate primaries.  Those primaries would have a different structure
> > befitting the different form of their issues (texts rather than
> > offices).  Presumeably a competent executive is going to act on any
> > normative consensus that emerges, if it's at all possible.  (That
> > seems a good electoral platform, anyway.)  So norms could probably be
> > discussed separate of the election, even in parallel.
> >
> > Technically this is called rationalization (you may know); breaking a
> > confused whole into separate pieces and bringing those pieces into new
> > and (frankly) more complex relations with each other.  But it might
> > not be so much the complexity that people can't handle, as the
> > confusion of issues that are irrationally glued together.
> >
> > --
> > Michael Allan
> >
> > Toronto, +1 416-699-9528
> > http://zelea.com/


Dennis Boyer said:
> Michael: You make some good points here. I'd sure like to see some experiments with the approach you suggest. Dennis Boyer
>
> Dennis Boyer,JD,MPA
> Fellow of the Interactivity Foundation
> 3302 Bethlehem Rd
> Dodgeville,WI 53533
> cel 608 574 5704
>
> www.interactivityfoundation.org

Bruce Schuman said:
> Really great diagrams on this page, Michael
>
> http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/power_structuring
>
> And this piece is also very interesting: http://lists.electorama.com/pipermail/election-methods-electorama.com/2013-March/031647.html
>
> >From my point of view, this is very much the high-precision down-to-the-pixel kind of engineering we need to be doing.
>
> I'd probably want to embed this kind of flow-of-control in a big holistic container like Americans Elect, that takes on everything that arises within the motivations of the electorate -- and then arrange the output of the entire process as a "guiding influence" on the existing governmental system (i.e., it acts as an all-issues "citizens lobby")
>
> That's a model that could arise spontaneously across the internet without legislation or any changes at all to the existing system -- and it could become influential just as any other political force becomes influential -- because it has big buy-in.
>
> This begins to be a powerful integral model of "cybernetic democracy" -- where cybernetics is defined as Norbert Weiner originally intended the term -- "Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" -- where "control" implies "the self-regulation of society" -- "self-control".  That would be a kind of "homeostasis", where the input of the electorate was compiled to create a balancing effect on every point of controversy -- a balancing effect, I think, that would be fully consistent with the ideals and methods of NCDD.
>
> Bruce Schuman
> (805) 966-9515 Santa Barbara
> http://interspirit.net | http://sharedpurpose.net | http://bridgeacrossconsciousness.net

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[mail] citizen AT serapath.de

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