Tag Archives: democracy

Mandevillian Intelligence

Mandevillian Intelligence is an idea where the (wise?) people in charge subtly manipulate incentives so that peoples’ individual dumb choices add up to the collective good.

Mandevillian intelligence is a specific form of collective intelligence in which individual cognitive vices (i.e., shortcomings, limitations, constraints and biases) are seen to play a positive functional role in yielding collective forms of cognitive success. The present paper introduces the concept of mandevillian intelligence and reviews a number of strands of empirical research that help to shed light on the phenomenon. The paper also attempts to highlight the value of the concept of mandevillian intelligence from a philosophical, scientific and engineering perspective. Inasmuch as we accept the notion of mandevillian intelligence, then it seems that the cognitive and epistemic value of a specific social or technological intervention will vary according to whether our attention is focused at the individual or collective level of analysis. This has a number of important implications for how we think about the design and evaluation of collective cognitive systems. For example, the notion of mandevillian intelligence forces us to take seriously the idea that the exploitation (or even the accentuation) of individual cognitive shortcomings could, in some situations, provide a productive route to collective forms of cognitive and epistemic success.

Synthese

I don’t have much faith in the wisdom of the average individual. But if there is one thing we should have learned in the last 20-odd years, we can’t have automatic faith in the wisdom of our leaders either. I’m probably naive, but I like to think system thinking education could help address this. It could make the average person much more wise in their conclusions and decisions about the world around them, and it could help them select wise leaders through a democratic process. I won’t go to that worn out Churchill quote, but I can’t think of any other system of identifying and choosing wise leaders that would reliably work better. The one that sometimes seems to work better is when existing wise leaders choose their successors and put rules in place making it hard for outsiders to break in. But the problem, of course, is that the wise rulers are self-proclaimed, and even if they are in fact wise, if unwise people manage to break in at some point they will be able to manipulate and abuse that same set of rules to keep themselves and their unwise cronies in power.

Bernie Sanders makes the case to (UK?) voters

A guy named Bernie Sanders has an article in The Guardian. Who is Bernie Sanders, asks the UK audience. According to the article, “Bernie Sanders is a US senator. He represents the state of Vermont”. According to this Bernie Sanders,

If the Democratic party wants to avoid losing millions of votes in the future it must stand tall and deliver for the working families of our country who, today, are facing more economic desperation than at any time since the Great Depression. Democrats must show, in word and deed, how fraudulent the Republican party is when it claims to be the party of working families.

And, in order to do that, Democrats must have the courage to take on the powerful special interests who have been at war with the working class of this country for decades. I’m talking about Wall Street, the pharmaceutical industry, the health insurance industry, the fossil fuel industry, the military industrial complex, the private prison industrial complex and many profitable corporations who continue to exploit their employees.

If the Democratic party cannot demonstrate that it will stand up to these powerful institutions and aggressively fight for the working families of this country – Black, White, Latino, Asian American and Native American – we will pave the way for another rightwing authoritarian to be elected in 2024. And that president could be even worse than Trump.

The Guardian

It’s ironic that as the excitement of the election begins to fade, and the feeling sets in that we have dodged the bullet of a second Trump term, we now feel comfortable with beginning to feel disappointed with the Biden administration before it even takes power!

Prove us wrong Joe! I think Bernie has it right. The Democratic party’s message is overly focused on putting everything in race and gender terms, and not focused enough on an economic message that appeals to the working people of this country, which is the vast majority of people. Getting the basic benefits in place that people in other functioning modern societies take for granted – child care, education, health care, infrastructure in good repair – would disproportionately help people who need the most help, without the race and gender-based messages that are a turnoff to many voters and are ultimately ineffective at bringing about change.

“Fighting the special interests” means campaign finance reform. It probably means legislation or even a constitutional amendment clarifying that the right to free speech applies to humans and not dollars.

I have friends and family that voted for Trump. None of these people is openly racist, although only the hypocritical or naive among us think we are completely free of bias. Most of them honestly believe that Trump lowered their taxes and that Biden will raise them. Some are small business owners who honestly believe Trump, or any Republican at all, is pro-business and that Democrats are hostile to business. Some believe 1990s-era free trade agreements took away their jobs, the issue that I still believe edged out Hillary Clinton in 2016.

The solutions are pretty clear. The U.S. probably needs to take in more taxes and reinvest the money in smart ways that benefit working people, and that set the stage for long-term sustainable growth and innovation. This means the social programs I mentioned earlier, plus investments in infrastructure, capital goods, skills and training, research and development. These are also pro-business policies!

But how can you get people to support paying taxes when they have been subjected to decades of extreme anti-tax propaganda? This is really tough. That propaganda was created by decades of the rich and powerful buying off politicians to implant their extremist ideology in all our heads. I think Bernie is right that attacking those forces of propaganda is absolutely necessary. This is politically very tough and a very long game, and it is fighting the anti-tax message which is so simple to understand and so brutally effective.

Another idea, also politically very, very difficult, is to make taxes psychologically easier to pay. A value added tax would do this. This is how the rest of the developed world does it. It is the equivalent of a saved credit card in your iTunes app being so much psychologically less painful than writing a check each month to pay the electric bill. You just don’t “feel” that payment as much, and you see and enjoy the benefits that you getting in return every day. When I worked in Singapore, I submitted a tax return not unlike the one I submit here. But then someone reviewed that tax return and sent me a clear bill for the exact amount I had to pay. I was then able to set up an auto-pay from my bank account in twelve equal installments. Anything that gets tax payments into the background of people’s minds, kind of like the stored credit card on your Netflix account, might help.

People need to see and understand the value of the goods and services they are getting from the government in exchange for their taxes. We get enormous value from the government but we tend to take it for granted. Part of the propaganda has been for working people to believe that the taxes they pay provide benefits to other people, people not like them in one way or another, or people far away. I don’t have all the answers here, we could look at how companies create a sense of value for services. Advertising, branding, and marketing are part of the answer, whether we find that unsavory or not. Monthly statements, or the digital equivalent, might help.

There is also the flip side of helping people understand how much they pay for war and weapons, payments that do not bring any direct, measurable benefits to the people paying them. Federal tax revenue also gets sucked out of population centers where most economic value is created and redistributed to rural areas where it is not (out of proportion to the populations served, I am not suggesting rural people deserve nothing.) The brilliant, successful propaganda then convinces those rural voters that the exact opposite is true, that they are subsidizing the lazy people in the cities who do not create value! So we have to fight this too, and it brings us back to campaign finance reform, constitutional reform, and maybe democratic (small-d) reforms that get us closer to one-person, one-vote and lower the barriers to entry of candidates outside the two large parties. All politically very, very difficult! So who in the next generation will take up the Bernie Sanders mantle and make this case to the UK voter?!?

Jack Goldstone

Here’s a long interview with Jack Goldstone in Salon, who wrote the 1991 book Revolution and Rebellion in the Modern World. His basic idea was that when “selfish elites” starve the government of resources, things get hard for ordinary people (from the poor to the upper middle class, I would say), and that is when revolutions can happen. He says when a society mostly consists of older, less educated people in a stagnant income situation (like former Soviet socialist republics), revolutions are more likely to be peaceful and focus on reform. When a society has more young, educated people in an economic freefall, that is when violent revolutions are more likely to happen. His vision of a stable society is one where elites agree to share the wealth somewhat to promote stability, then they educate and develop cohorts of future elite leaders. Too many educated people chasing too few elite roles is dangerously unstable, in his view. A thought that occurs to me (not in the artcle) is you can see a basis for the emphasis on STEM – educated people in a narrow way that allows them to earn a living and contribute to the larger economy, without the likelihood of them becoming politically active.

The solutions he offers are non-partisan problem solving in Congress, blue ribbon panels, and “citizen assemblies”. It’s a long article and my thoughts above barely scratch the surface.

By the way, here is what a “citizens’ assembly” is according to Wikipedia:

A citizens’ assembly (also known as citizens’ jury or citizens’ panel or people’s jury or policy jury) is a body formed from citizens or generally people to deliberate on an issue or issues of local or national or international importance. The membership of a citizens’ assembly is randomly selected, as in other forms of sortition. It is a mechanism of participatory action research (PAR) that draws on the symbolism, and some of the practices, of a legal trial by jury. The purpose is to employ a cross-section of the public to study the options available to the state on certain questions and to propose answers to these questions through rational and reasoned discussion and the use of various methods of inquiry such as directly questioning experts. In many cases, the state will require these proposals to be accepted by the general public through a referendum before becoming law.

November 2020 in Review

Only one month to go in this tumultuous year. In current events, the U.S. election was obviously a major historical event, and Covid-19 continued to spiral horribly. But my loyal readers (all 3-10 of you worldwide…) don’t need me to cover current events.

Most frightening and/or depressing story: It seems likely the Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump U.S. foreign wars may just grind on endlessly under Biden. Prove us wrong, Joe! (I give Trump a few points for trying to bring troops home over the objections of the military-industrial complex. But in terms of war and peace, this is completely negated and then some by slippage on nuclear proliferation and weapons on his watch.)

Most hopeful story: The massive investment in Covid-19 vaccine development may have major spillover effects to cures for other diseases. This could even be the big acceleration in biotechnology that seems to have been on the horizon for awhile. These technologies also have potential negative and frivolous applications, of course.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: States representing 196 electoral votes have agreed to support the National Popular Vote Compact, in which they would always award their state’s electoral votes to the national popular vote winner. Colorado has now voted to do this twice. Unfortunately, the movement has a tough road to get to 270 votes, because of a few big states that would be giving up a lot of power if they agreed to it.

checking in on the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

Here is the status of the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact according to its website. The website doesn’t say when it was last updated, however. (Seriously, that is always a good thing to add to any website covering current events.)

The National Popular Vote bill has been enacted by 16 jurisdictions possessing 196 electoral votes, including 4 small states (DE, HI, RI, VT), 8 medium-sized states (CO, CT, MD, MA, NJ, NM, OR, WA), 3 big states (CA, IL, NY), and the District of Columbia. The bill will take effect when enacted by states with 74 more electoral votes.  The bill has passed at least one chamber in 9 additional states with 88 more electoral votes (AR, AZ, ME, MI, MN, NC, NV, OK, VA).  A total of 3,408 state legislators from all 50 states have endorsed it.

https://www.nationalpopularvote.com/written-explanation

There is a ballot measure in Colorado however to withdraw from the Compact. I am writing this on Saturday, October 31 (aka Halloween), but by the time it is posted that measure may have been voted on.

This is an initiative that favors population-dense urban areas and gets us closer to one-person, one vote. It is a move in the direction of democracy, but it is always going to be opposed by elected officials who represent rural areas and rural states. So, it’s not going to have an easy road.

DEFCON vs. voting machines

A hacker convention sets up voting machines each year and gives people a chance to try to hack them. The results are disturbing, although the article points out that the hackers are given full access to the machines for as long as they want which would never happen in the real world.

This weekend saw the 26th annual DEFCON gathering. It was the second time the convention had featured a Voting Village, where organizers set up decommissioned election equipment and watch hackers find creative and alarming ways to break in. Last year, conference attendees found new vulnerabilities for all five voting machines and a single e-poll book of registered voters over the course of the weekend, catching the attention of both senators introducing legislation and the general public. This year’s Voting Village was bigger in every way, with equipment ranging from voting machines to tabulators to smart card readers, all currently in use in the US.

In a room set aside for kid hackers, an 11-year-old girl hacked a replica of the Florida secretary of state’s website within 10 minutes — and changed the results.

Simultaneous Policy

Simultaneous Policy is an idea where multiple legislatures around the world agree to a single policy on a fairly narrow issue (like climate change or arms reductions). It’s supposed to solve the prisoner’s dilemma problem. The policy doesn’t go into effect until all or a certain number of nations agree to it. I think it’s a good idea, but idealistic because people often perceive problems as zero sum when they are not, and politicians either have the same misconceptions or cynically exploit the misconceptions of voters. And in the U.S. of course, politicians are captive to industrial interests that profit from policies that result in a loss to everyone else, while using cynical propaganda to convince voters of the opposite.

Here’s a blog post with a little more detail on how it is supposed to work:

The Simultaneous Policy (SIMPOL) will consist of a series of multi-issue global problem-solving policy packages, each of which is to be implemented by all or sufficient nations simultaneously, on the same date, so that no nation loses out. Citizens who join the campaign can contribute to the design of those policies and to getting them implemented. But how?

By joining the campaign, citizens agree to ‘give strong voting preference in all future national elections to politicians or parties that have signed a pledge to implement Simpol simultaneously alongside other governments, to the probable exclusion of those who choose not to sign’. This pledge (the ‘Pledge’) commits a politician, party or government to implement SIMPOL’s policies alongside other governments, if and when sufficient other governments have also signed on.

In this simple way, politicians who sign enhance their electoral chances, while those who refuse risk losing our votes to politicians who signed instead. Thus, in tightly contested electoral areas, failing to sign could cost a politician their seat.

 

how to defraud the U.S. Census

From the Department of Pre-crime, a guy the Trump administration might appoint to run the 2020 Census might try to cook the books. It seems a little unfair to accuse someone of a crime they haven’t even had an opportunity to consider committing yet, but I found it interesting to consider how it could be done. This sort of thing definitely happens in some countries, for example to perpetuate minority rule in spite of demographic change.

Each census starts with a simple questionnaire sent to every household. In 1970 and 1980, over 75% of those queried sent back responses. In 2010 that figure dropped to 63.5%, and in 2020, with distrust of government at an all-time high and increasing fears of data breach, the response rate will likely be significantly worse—current estimates range from 55% to 60%. To identify the non-respondents—at least 40% of Americans—the Census Bureau will have to exert considerable energy.

Thomas Brunell will determine how vigorously to track down these unidentified people in diverse locations. In rural areas that commonly vote Republican, he could direct workers to scour the trailer parks, while in urban Democratic strongholds, he could order census takers to visit non-responding households only during working hours. He could spend his advertising budget wisely in some places and less so in others. He could dispatch non-Spanish-speaking personnel into Hispanic neighborhoods. He could feed fears of deportation in immigrant communities. He could use credit rating companies to locate non-respondents, although many of the poor will never appear on such registries.

There is a simpler route Brunell could take. He might choose to do little, a tool almost as effective as the nefarious schemes detailed above. So far, the Census Bureau’s budget has been held to its 2010 level, despite a significant increase in the population and the expected rise in the percentage of those who do not respond to the initial questionnaire. Without greater resources and dedicated will, the Census Bureau could leave tens of millions of Americans uncounted. The GAO has warned that the 2020 Census is at “high risk of failure,” but requests to add funds have not yet been granted by Congress. New coping technologies are being introduced, yet trial runs have been curtailed due to lack of financing. Plans to test a Spanish-language questionnaire have also lapsed. Such constraints raise the stakes. When resources are limited, how to allocate those resources becomes paramount.

 

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

What’s interesting about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is that it is not a constitutional amendment. As I understand it, because the Constitution gives the states a fair amount of leeway to decide how they want to cast their electoral votes, the “winner take all” electoral college system as it has existed in recent years could be circumvented without legislative or judicial action at the federal level, and each vote would be equal. One person one vote, what a concept for the world’s self-proclaimed greatest democracy!

The organization’s website tallies which states have agreed to this so far:

The National Popular Vote bill has now passed a total of 35 state legislative chambers in 23 states.  The National Popular Vote bill will take effect when enacted into law by states possessing 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes).  It has been enacted into law in 11 states possessing 165 electoral votes (CA, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA).  The bill will take effect when enacted by states possessing an additional 105 electoral votes.

So we’re more than halfway there, which sounds pretty good. However, the states represented above are ones that have very good reason to feel that their citizen’s votes have been marginalized. Big “swing” states like my home state of Pennsylvania end up having much more power in picking the President than is really warranted by our populations. Even though a majority of citizens supports implementing the popular vote (which is just logical and obvious), our cynical state politicians are not likely to support it. States like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin may eventually lose some electoral votes over time if our populations keep shrinking. Populous and growing states with a lot of electoral votes like Florida and Texas are where this fight would have to be won.

I think the world would be a better place if Al Gore and Hillary Clinton had both been elected, per the clearly stated preference of the citizens of our country. But this really shouldn’t be a partisan issue because sooner or later it will sting both parties. I recognize that sooner or later, an election will come in which a candidate I support might lose the popular vote and win the electoral vote. I still support abolishing the electoral college system anyway, because it is just the obviously right thing to do.