I'm so sick of being sickened. I hate that this is becoming the norm and we can't do anything about it. I hate to spit cliches, but is this where my tax dollars go?
For me, govt and internet should almost be like church and state. Where is the data around foiled terrorist plots? I just can't stomach the obtuse logic that we need to pay our taxes to employ these virtual minders. This is not what the internet is about. It just seems so incredibly difficult to mobilise and take action against this shit ...
Btw, Ladar ... you've been incredible in all of this (tips Stetson)
The basic problem is an impedance mismatch. Some people see the internet as this noble grand thing (like you, comparing it to the church). The government, like most voters, sees it as just a place to look at cat pictures and buy crap on zappos. The government treats the internet like it treats meat space things. Nobody complains that they can Public Storage to open storage units with a warrant, so why should the internet be treated any differently?
That impedance mismatch will take a long time to reconcile. If the Facebook generation is any indication, it will probably never be reconciled to your taste.
What I'm trying to say is: get used to being an intellectual minority. You're joining the company of lots of people, from those who think the government has no business forcing you to save for retirement to those who think the government has no business forcing you to serve or hire certain people in your private establishment. You probably agree with some of those people and disagree vehemently with others.
> Nobody complains that they can [force?] Public Storage to open storage units with a warrant
If they can get a warrant from a court under fair laws, personally I don't mind the government having equivalent powers in the online world. There are people doing bad things online, and I want there to be mechanisms to minimise that.
I don't know the specifics of the Lavabit case, but from the NSA revelations, it seems like the controls and oversight are much weaker in the online world than in the physical one.
How do you defend yourself against a rogue government? Furthermore, who gets to define when a government becomes rogue? All definitions aside, how do you defend yourself from a large, well-funded organization that's determined to do what ever it wants to you? Fair laws? The fact that someone else decides what's right and wrong means we've already lost.
All of these questions are at least as pressing in the physical world as they are in the online one. So you're asking philosophical questions about the nature of government and the rule of law that I'm not properly qualified to answer.
I think there has to be a socially defined code of what behaviour is allowed and what is not - even without written laws, lynch mobs would enforce some kind of rules. Since people don't all agree on such things, many people will inevitably disagree with parts of that code. The question of how we decide on the code - both the written laws and the social conventions of overlooking some violations of those laws - is difficult. But we can't put society on hold and wait for the philosophers come up with a perfect system.
To take an example which almost everyone here will see from the same perspective: the UK government recently pushed for a form of opt-out web filtering. To HN readers, it was a clear sign of out-of-control government censorship, championed by politicians too out of touch to understand the internet. But plenty of other people were quite happy with the idea of web filtering. You may deride them as 'think of the children' types and media industry lobbyists, but that's how democracy works. You don't get your way just because you say your opponents are stupid. You have to persuade and educate people to get support for your position.
To be clear, I agree that the web filtering plan was a bad idea.
As long as the engineers who design and build the internet care, we can do ok.
If the protocols that run the web are so easily compromised, it raises all kinds of problems with the underlying, somewhat invisible, functions to how the world works. That manifests itself as a liability to for-profit corporations. It also is something that the cat pictures people care about -- how many of them want their webcams capturing video of them walking around their rooms naked or wake up one morning and notice their brokerage account is empty? Very few.
It is quite an irony that governments demand one set of standards for privacy and security while attempting to compromise them for their own benefit (European countries carry just as much blame here.)
> As long as the engineers who design and build the internet care, we can do ok.
If the engineers who designed and built the internet cared about privacy, internet protocols wouldn't completely ignore privacy. They designed a massive routed network that involves packet forwarding between random untrusted nodes and then built a bunch of plain-text protocols on top (SMTP, HTTP, etc).
> how many of them want their webcams capturing video of them walking around their rooms naked or wake up one morning and notice their brokerage account is empty?
Probably none, but the government wouldn't do that. That's not how abuse of power works in liberal democracies. Targeting the majority is a voter-loser. You have to target minorities: hacktivists, terrorists, etc.
> It is quite an irony that governments demand one set of standards for privacy and security while attempting to compromise them for their own benefit
Nothing ironic about it. The whole premise of liberal democracy is that government needs to exist as an entity with powers superior to those of individuals, but as a check on that power must be subject to majoritarian control. You don't have to agree with that premise, but it's consistent with different standards of privacy for individuals and the government.
I often agree with you, but the statement that the Internet founders didn't care about privacy is factually incorrect: Vint Cerf (as mentioned by the sibling comment) is on record as not only being in favor of privacy but wishing the technology had existed for practical cryptographically secure authentication at the protocol level at the time the Internet was designed.
Had the original TCP/IP protocols as they were designed included cryptographic security, the designers of those protocols would themselves have had to be be pioneers of cryptography. This is a little like asking why Henry Ford didn't just start with the electric car. I mean, sure, there was electricity when he started...
> If the engineers who designed and built the internet cared about privacy
I believe Vint Cerf cares an awful lot about privacy. But, as he has stated countless times, this internetwork was supposed to be an experiment. Who would ever design a real network with only billions of addresses?
The reason you are wrong is that you ignore the dragnet aspect. In meat space people would not accept their snail mail being read without probable cause. Recent polls show that people are more concerned about the spying than terrorism.
Getting a warrant to search one person's inbox seems pretty reasonable to me. (Seems pretty analogous to searching one person's rented storage space.)
Forcing Lavabit to hand over everything seems like searching all storage lockers, even for people who are suspected of nothing. That's way over the line for me.
I have mocked-up a system for policy creation. The project is open; please contribute your thoughts. People say "it has flaws" but never explain the flaws, nor how to address them.
Would greatly appreciate constructive criticism. The system serves to educate everyone (openly and transparently) on implications of existing and upcoming policies.
If the idea intrigues you, check out what other people are doing along the same lines:
Rather than getting to the point where citizens have to "mobilize against" the current government, we should be seeking to self-govern in such a way that mobilization is not necessary.
I love the idea, but I don't think people should be allowed to have unlimited up or down votes. That would encourage whimsical opinions, and would make the site reflect the opinions of the most active and opinionated users instead of the average person. I think there needs to be a way to limit the voice of each user so each person has the same amount of influence.
One idea I like is to give each user 100 points to distribute among topics. Once the user has assigned a certain number of points for or against a position, they could then distribute those points amongst the comments that best represent their position. So if a user votes 20 points for gun control, gun control would get 20 points, and the user would have to choose which comments best support their position--5 points to this comment, 7 points for this comment, etc.
I think this would solve two problems: it would encourage thoughtful opinions to rise to the top, and it would give voice to the minority of voters that care passionately about a topic that the majority disagrees with or doesn't care about.
For example, if 50% of voters are "for" gun control, and 50% are "against" gun control, but there are 2 very popular, well-written posts supporting gun control, and only one very popular, well-written post opposing it, then the gun control supporters will "split the vote" and their best comments will only be ranked about half as highly as the opposition.
Which may or may not matter depending on how people interpret comment scores.
Interesting post on reweighted score voting. How would that work in practice for sorting comments? Would you have people rank the top-level comments in the order they agree with?
The strategy I had in mind for comments was to create a column of arguments for and against, and to only allow users to vote on comments in the column where they've placed their opinion. That way the strongest arguments from both sides would be shown.
I agree that there might be some issues with comment limits--you don't want to limit discussion too much.
On a different topic, why do you think this system should be anonymous? You can't limit votes unless you can authenticate someone's identity, and the best way to prove that users are real is to show who each user is.
Corruption is only possible when you know who to bribe. By making the system completely anonymous, bribery becomes extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.
Further, all ideas should receive equal consideration. Attaching names allows for group-think and bribery. (Imagine if Neil deGrasse Tyson posted a policy, or Neil Patrick Harris, or Neil Young.) Ideas must stand on their own merit, not on the reputation or wealth of the person who conceived the idea.
I'm not sure I understand your point about bribery. Are you talking about bribing groups of people to vote a particular way, or about bribing coercing powerful individuals not to express their opinions?
I disagree in practice that all ideas should have equal consideration. If an economist or other professional has a proposal, I think its practical to recognize that that person has extra credibility on a topic, and I don't see why we shouldn't let the public see that person's reputation. Professionals have an incentive not to state false claims--if the do so, especially in an internet forum board, they would be called out and their reputations would suffer.
On the other hand, there needs to be some anonymity to protect people from real life abuse. Do you see any problem with the option of anonymity?
You have some interesting ideas, and it would be rather helpful if you would add them to the wiki.
Your question poses an interesting problem. How do you give accreditation while still retaining anonymity? At some point you have to associate an account with a person.
I think optional anonymity would allow corruption into the system. (Televangelists, for example, would opt-out from anonymity so that their proposals might pass through randomized moderation by votes from their fan base.)
Much of this is putting the cart before the horse, though, as the system is probably best tested, at first, with politicians. See also: http://openparliament.ca/
Part of the reason why some people may say your system has flaws but never address is them is that they may not be able to be addressed.
Your system looks like it strives to be purely democratic, but pure democracies have inherent flaws such as being open to tyranny by the majority or irrational voter behavior. It is clear that some of your solutions try to mitigate these issues, but there are tradeoffs. For example, the reputation bonus for education could be seen as biasing the system against certain classes of people.
For a better framing of the voter irrationality problem (which is a misnomer because its actually rational irrationality,) I would recommend looking into the debate between Bryan Caplan and Donald Wittman. I imagine if you can mitigate the issues of both sides in your system, you'd really be on to something.
The reputation bonuses are just that: bonuses. If you contribute in a positive fashion, your reputation would increase as well. Yet all ideas (including those from anyone receiving a "bonus" boost) must still pass the moderation phase.
Or perhaps bonuses are a bad idea altogether. I thought that someone who graduated from environmental studies would be able to propose environmental policies sooner than someone who has not. Maybe that isn't good.
Thats the correct debate, although you are probably better off just reading their books and deciding for yourself. I think that particular debate session got hung up on a lot of minutiae.
As for the direction of your project, I think as opposed to solving all the problems at once, you may want to construct things piecemeal, while laying out the factual pros and cons of each political "module". For example, using Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, there is no way to create a perfect voting mechanism, so any voting mechanism you put in place will be a traeoff. At one extreme, is unanimous consent, this guarantees everyone is signing off and thus reasonably happy. However, unanimous consent creates a new problem of the holdout position. To balance, voting systems like majority rules limit the holdout problem, but also introduce consent issues like swings in opinion from mob rule and the tyranny of the majority. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you could create an elected dictator that could decide. This would be a trustee style system and while it would limit the above issues, it would introduce principal agent problems. By building these individual modules, you could allow your system to be adapted to many situations and allow for the actors themselves to police the less desirable behaviors (IE they know to watch out for holdouts before the process begins), which would be listed in the cons. A similar decision process could apply to the bonus systems (should education enter into it?), systems for evaluating relevant info in the debate section (types of source material, reputation voting) and so on.
In sum, allow the users to determine how they want to decide and mediate each decision before they enter into the process. A module setup may also help you make more progress on your own and get contributions.
I created a kind of micro discussion/decision making system that didn't generate much interest from people I talked to and perhaps shares a flaw with this concept.
Basically if you look at what people use text for online it usually isn't anything serious, even these discussions don't have all that much gravity and HN is probably the most serious site I've seen.
Text also has less emotion and involvement attached and I think a lot of people won't connect with a text based system like this or won't feel comfortable contributing.
An idea for a way to feed peoples passions would be some kind of automatically generated video conference setup to split people into random think tank groups based on availability for each policy they indicate they want to be part of. Then perhaps one person, presumable someone that indicates they feel comfortable writing could contribute on behalf of their group to the text based policy page.
Initially, I was thinking the system would be more useful not for the general public, but for politicians. It could be used at federal, provincial, and municipal levels, for example.
I like the idea of video conferencing. That's a rather forward-looking application. You could use speech-to-text systems for automatic dictation. An issue with video conferencing is scheduling people for simultaneous discussion.
I agree with what you say about self-governing. By mobilizing, I simply meant forming something more cohesive than clicktivist petitions which most often go nowhere. Your wiki addresses this perfectly. I think you should continue pursuing and refining. The concept is fantastic.
That was one of my frustrations -- tens of thousands of clicktivists sending the same form letter to politicians is pointless. Especially when those same tens of thousands are not fully educated on the benefits and drawbacks about the policies they ardently clicktivise.
The site I have mocked-up does not exist. I want to work on it, but it does not pay, and I need to eat. :-) I am working on a side-project (yes, a start-up) that will provide the income I need to work full-time on the World Politics idea.
I've had similar ideas, mainly focused on holding legislators and their contributors accountable.
It should be really easy to see how legislators voted, and also to see which companies contributed most to those on either side of the vote.
Also, I would include a "I approve/disapprove of this legislation" button. This way, the site could tell something like "You current Senator voted for the bills you support 15% of the time." In which case, you vote for someone else.
I agree with your strategy. The internet is an unprecedented communication mechanism, for the first time in history we have the tools for mass self representation in an organized way. A new kind of society.
Do you know about liquid Feedback, which is used by the pirate Party? Or liquid democracy in general?
I think they might be very interesting for you if you haven't heard of them yet.
I like the idea of self-government and I'd like to extend the concept a bit further. We should be seeking to self-govern in such a way that the government is not necessary.
Opinions vs. Facts
The community should be encouraged to favour facts over opinions.
Er, this is one of the largest problems facing Democracy since it was invented millenia ago. Look at the current American government shutdown, and the way Republicans have managed to frame the debate using empty rhetoric, when in reality both the debt ceiling and government spending are currently not an issue http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2013/10/whiskey-tango-foxtrot-...
You'd be surprised that ignorant deadmen once consider the same issues and felt an adversarial system was the best solution at the time. Today with the aid of the internet we know better. We should simple censure and imprison dissent and not bother with it at all.
What makes me incredibly sad in all this is the reaction of people. Specifically, Americans. I'm used to see this nation as the pinnacle of free spirit and liberty. Bold, fearless, freedom loving culture that will not tolerate any encroachment upon their rights and freedoms.
I can't see any of it. People are either indifferent or compliant. A few protests here and there that amount to nothing on the nation's scale. This is all despite the immense uproar in the press and media worldwide. What's worse, those few brave souls who dare to stand up against the injustice become social outcasts.
I guess these days people would have given up Robin Hood to the sheriff for a few gold coins and a promise of security. Or perhaps they already did.
> I'm so sick of being sickened. I hate that this is becoming the norm and we can't do anything about it.
There's only one thing you can do "about" it: Get the fuck out of the USSA while you can. Yes, this is a radical idea, but you can't deny it's starting to make a lot of sense.
Seriously. You personally can't affect what's happening all around you. Voting doesn't change anything. Writing to "your representatives" (hih!) doesn't change anything.
So what's left? You can't do anything about what's happening to your country and, by extension, you. But what you can do, is remove yourself from harm's way and go somewhere else.
Actually, I'd rather try and help fix the USA. It's a pretty nice place and a lot of really good people live here.
Those people deserve a lot better from their elected government. Maybe the right answer is to have more people that care run for office. I'd love to help get some makers into congress and start fixing the problem.
For me, govt and internet should almost be like church and state. Where is the data around foiled terrorist plots? I just can't stomach the obtuse logic that we need to pay our taxes to employ these virtual minders. This is not what the internet is about. It just seems so incredibly difficult to mobilise and take action against this shit ...
Btw, Ladar ... you've been incredible in all of this (tips Stetson)