OFC Meeting 16

OFC Meetings --> here

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09 Jul 2019:

DEMOCRACY IN THE FUTURE

-- Philip Manders

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Comments from Jess:

It has been suggested that democracy might get some assistance from Artificial Intelligence. Here's an interesting article on one of the methods every AI fan should be aware of: Generative Adversarial Networks or GANs. I can't help but visualize an unintentional GAN being created by hackers' botnet attacks on a system protected by an AI security system... this scenario was used in some of Dan Simmons' SF novels to explain how fully conscious computers first evolved. But that's an old idea now, right?   ;-)

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Philip's Presentation:

Democracy and the Future

Definition of Democracy: a form of government in which the people can have a say, via referenda, elected representatives and/or citizen assembly. There must also be formal or informal recognition of individual human rights such as free speech and the right of people to participate in free markets in most areas (classic liberalism).

Conservative and Progressive views of democratic government:

English political philosopher Michael Oakeshott: "The ship of state should not have any destination." Conservatives believe the problems (other than defence and the justice system) that the market has not solved do not exist, or are the result of the failings of individuals, and any intervention will just make it worse.

The "progressive" view is that there are more areas of concern best addressed by government instead of by business.

Democratic Systems

Representative Systems

Proportional (most common type is Mixed Member Proportional, e.g. Denmark) or Ranked (most common type is Instant Runoff, e.g. Australia) voting provide better reflection of citizen opinion, more cooperation amongst parties, less violent swings between policies, no safe seats or strategic voting. One downside is the risk of too much small party influence, especially radical parties (have threshold of 5% to prevent this in Germany). Wikipedia: studies found that citizens of countries with proportional representation are more content with democracy.

Direct democracy

Is 50% + 1 enough for a referendum? Do legislatures have to respect the result as binding? Is voting again on same topic improper?

Challenges

The idea of religious liberty a good example of the difficulty of interpreting liberalism. Can a religious organization discriminate against gay employees?

It is human nature to sort into tribes and give one’s loyalty to a leader.

Jean-Claude Juncker, past president of the European Commission: "We [politicians] all know what to do, we just don’t know how to get re-elected after we’ve done it."

Good representatives of the people in government focus on policy, not politics and winning the next election. Good representatives are rare. The people often want what they do not need.

Voters and politicians have their thinking sidetracked by slogans, tribal affiliation, logical fallacies and misinformation.

The Overton window are ideas that cannot be discussed in polite company. It may be good that climate denial and racism are not acceptable topics but valid ones such as population growth and immigration also cannot be discussed –- leading to populist frustration with elites.

A populist definition of elites: Those with real or imagined power (scientists, economists, politicians, bureaucrats) who that think they're better than me because I don't espouse their beliefs.

Democratic demagogues deliberately create crisis to provide room to introduce radical change and consolidate power.

We are pushed to consume by social media and advertising. Social media keeps us in silos with its algorithms, giving us what we liked in the past. Also on Twitter orthodoxy is enforced with shaming.

Ways to discover the truth -- media, government reports, universities, scientists. Populists question all of these sources.

Atlantic Magazine article on Orwell on importance of free speech: 'This willing constriction of intellectual freedom will do lasting damage. It corrupts the ability to think clearly, and it undermines both culture and progress. Good art doesn’t come from wokeness, and social problems starved of debate can’t find real solutions. "Nothing is gained by teaching a parrot a new word," Orwell wrote in 1946. "What is needed is the right to print what one believes to be true, without having to fear bullying or blackmail from any side."'

Identity Politics -- reduces the authority of a person to race, gender etc.

Inequality subverts democracy. The rich use their money to affect votes and politicians.

Future

Soon the nations will be forced to address inequality, climate change and other ecological crises, and the nuclear threat.

Yuval Harari on democracy and the future: "What does all that mean in practice? Well, when the next elections come along, and politicians want you to vote for them, ask these politicians four questions:

1. If you are elected, what actions will you take to lessen the risks of nuclear war?
2. What actions will you take to lessen the risks of climate change?
3. What actions will you take to regulate disruptive technologies such as AI and bioengineering?
4. And finally, how do you see the world of 2040? What is your worst-case scenario, and what is your vision for the best-case scenario?"

Can we have both "freedom to buy and sell" and "from each according to their ability, to each according to their need"?

To preserve our civilization we will need to move away from materialism and consumerism and respect science and be kind.

Artificial General Intelligence could make better decisions and give almost perfect predictions of human democratic decisions. Will democracy be seen as unnecessary?

"And while we could spend until the end of days deploring each other’s sins, there will be no peace until we remember we are capable of so much more than that."

There is no way we can have any meaningful connection with everyone in the nation, much less the 7.7 billion people on earth, but the feeling that we have a shared humanity is very important to our future survival.

Large citizen assemblies (hundreds or thousands of participants), selected by lottery, and with the assistance of experts (and eventually AGI), including experts in the manipulation of human thinking, may be the way to go to create policy recommendations. These would provide informed public opinion.

-- Philip

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OTHER TOPICS

It occurs to me that we could use the wiki page for the upcoming meeting to propose additional (hopefully related) topics for said meeting and/or initiate discussion of topics for subsequent meetings. Perhaps each such page should have an "OTHER TOPICS" section at the end, like this:

• NEGATIVE VOTE (Jess): Decades ago I proposed the idea of a Negative Vote option -- in my version, each person still gets one vote in a "first past the post" election, but they can either cast their one vote for the candidate they like best or against the one they despise most. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the practical pros and cons of this idea, and a group in Taiwan has been attempting to implement it for years. It is also under consideration in Berkeley and another team is trying to raise money for a national drive in the USA; however, there is considerable disagreement about the details of implementation: should it be the version I originally described, or should every voter get both a positive vote and a negative one, or should it be combined with a "proportional representation" ballot in some way? I would love to dig into this topic, if anyone else is interested. And it is sort of relevant to the Future of Democracy.

Addendum: in May 2020, Paul Cohen (a retired mathematician and engineer living in Maine) published Why should we adopt balanced voting?, an eloquent advocacy for the Negative Vote.

• Speaking of which, The Metamorphosis by Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt & Daniel Huttenlocher is a pretty vivid insight into how AI is changing everything right now.