2019 - The end of Trumpism
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Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
 
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That too but that's Trump the person. ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Wed, Dec 26, 2018, 4:18 PM Gillian Densmore <[hidden email] wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-5
A really nice observation: "Trump supporters are not individualists, they are just people trying to recover privilege they
didn’t earn and now see slipping away" The same phenomenon can be observed in racism, sexism and nationalism everywhere, not just in America. It happens for instance in racism where white people lose their privileges (gained by colonialism in the past) because they no longer belong to white people only. This kind of backwards directed racism must be as old as George Washington himself. Or in sexism where men fear that they lose their privileges because they no longer belong to men only. Or in nationalism where the native people fear they lose their privileges of citizenship, social benefits and election rights because immigrants get the same rights. It is a fear driven version of racism, sexism or nationalism which can be used by any skilled demagogue to win elections. - Jochen -------- Original message -------- From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> Date: 12/26/18 23:43 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism David writes: “And it would serve "the opposition" to get a clue about the fact that the vast majority of Trump supporters do not suffer from racism, sexism, 'genderism', "me-first-ism,"
etc. Instead recognize that their primary affliction is individualism - and even libertarian-ism (despite some obvious contradictions from the religious among them) - along with corollaries of "anti-government control-ism," "personal-responsibility-ism," and
"my-values-are-just-as-valid-as-yours-ism." The racism and sexism arise from the false supposition that personal responsibility is all that is required to thrive. They fail to acknowledge that public policy can level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance to develop
their own values and priorities for their life – to become individuals. They are worse than conventional conservatives because they lack any moral center. They want to see regressive norms because those are the only norms they can get their head around. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Jochen Fromm-5
Thanks for reminding me! When I read Marcus' original claim, I balked. But then forgot it because I wanted to respond to the other thread. The principle of leveling the playing field so that any given player has the chance to become an individual is flawed, I think ... somehow, though I don't know how.
What *if* (as Steve put it in his "muffled cries"), there are peaks in the landscape that *require* many non-individuals to form a scaffold for some (as yet unbound) non-individual to become an individual? I'm thinking, here, of the (false) Great Man Theory ... the idea that Einstein was just a better thinker than everyone else ... or I've heard it called the Comprehensive Designer by this guy: https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM Do we need these archetypes? Do we *need* the many rabble in order for the elite few to become "individuals"? On 12/27/18 1:45 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > A really nice observation: > "Trump supporters are not individualists, they are just people trying to recover privilege they > didn’t earn and now see slipping away" > The same phenomenon can be observed in racism, sexism and nationalism everywhere, not just in America. It happens for instance in racism where white people lose their privileges (gained by colonialism in the past) because they no longer belong to white people only. This kind of backwards directed racism must be as old as George Washington himself. Or in sexism where men fear that they lose their privileges because they no longer belong to men only. Or in nationalism where the native people fear they lose their privileges of citizenship, social benefits and election rights because immigrants get the same rights. It is a fear driven version of racism, sexism or nationalism which can be used by any skilled demagogue to win elections. > - Jochen > > -------- Original message --------From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> Date: 12/26/18 23:43 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism > > > David writes: > > “And it would serve "the opposition" to get a clue about the fact that the vast majority of Trump supporters do not suffer from racism, sexism, 'genderism', "me-first-ism," > etc. Instead recognize that their primary affliction is individualism - and even libertarian-ism (despite some obvious contradictions from the religious among them) - along with corollaries of "anti-government control-ism," "personal-responsibility-ism," and > "my-values-are-just-as-valid-as-yours-ism." > > The racism and sexism arise from the false supposition that personal responsibility is all that is required to thrive. They fail to acknowledge that public policy can level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance to develop > their own values and priorities for their life – to become individuals. They are worse than conventional conservatives because they lack any moral center. They want to see regressive norms because those are the only norms they can get their head around. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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I don't know, it could be even simpler. The demagogue promises to make the country great again. The racist hears his "race" (whatever that is) will become great again. The sexist hears his "sex" will become great again. The nationalist hears his "nation" will become great again. Of course nothing good will happen, and as the country begins to fall back, the mischief and harm increases... -Jochen -------- Original message -------- From: uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]> Date: 12/27/18 23:06 (GMT+01:00) To: FriAM <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism What *if* (as Steve put it in his "muffled cries"), there are peaks in the landscape that *require* many non-individuals to form a scaffold for some (as yet unbound) non-individual to become an individual? I'm thinking, here, of the (false) Great Man Theory ... the idea that Einstein was just a better thinker than everyone else ... or I've heard it called the Comprehensive Designer by this guy: https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM Do we need these archetypes? Do we *need* the many rabble in order for the elite few to become "individuals"? On 12/27/18 1:45 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > A really nice observation: > "Trump supporters are not individualists, they are just people trying to recover privilege they > didn’t earn and now see slipping away" > The same phenomenon can be observed in racism, sexism and nationalism everywhere, not just in America. It happens for instance in racism where white people lose their privileges (gained by colonialism in the past) because they no longer belong to white people only. This kind of backwards directed racism must be as old as George Washington himself. Or in sexism where men fear that they lose their privileges because they no longer belong to men only. Or in nationalism where the native people fear they lose their privileges of citizenship, social benefits and election rights because immigrants get the same rights. It is a fear driven version of racism, sexism or nationalism which can be used by any skilled demagogue to win elections. > - Jochen > > -------- Original message --------From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> Date: 12/26/18 23:43 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism > > > David writes: > > “And it would serve "the opposition" to get a clue about the fact that the vast majority of Trump supporters do not suffer from racism, sexism, 'genderism', "me-first-ism," > etc. Instead recognize that their primary affliction is individualism - and even libertarian-ism (despite some obvious contradictions from the religious among them) - along with corollaries of "anti-government control-ism," "personal-responsibility-ism," and > "my-values-are-just-as-valid-as-yours-ism." > > The racism and sexism arise from the false supposition that personal responsibility is all that is required to thrive. They fail to acknowledge that public policy can level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance to develop > their own values and priorities for their life – to become individuals. They are worse than conventional conservatives because they lack any moral center. They want to see regressive norms because those are the only norms they can get their head around. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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In reply to this post by gepr
Glen writes:
< What *if* (as Steve put it in his "muffled cries"), there are peaks in the landscape that *require* many non-individuals to form a scaffold for some (as yet unbound) non-individual to become an individual? >
Let's say there is a great woman, and through my heavy-handed intervention I prevent her from becoming great. If you buy the idea that she was worthy of that title, and you buy the idea that she came to greatness through
Personal Responsibility, then the perturbation I impose on her will not stop her, will it? I've simply given her another opportunity to prove herself worthy of forcing others to serve as her scaffolding.
Anyway, this is all assuming there is even a game worth playing and that concepts of merit or greatness even mean anything at all.
Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 3:06:06 PM To: FriAM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism Thanks for reminding me! When I read Marcus' original claim, I balked. But then forgot it because I wanted to respond to the other thread. The principle of leveling the playing field so that any given player has the chance to become
an individual is flawed, I think ... somehow, though I don't know how.
What *if* (as Steve put it in his "muffled cries"), there are peaks in the landscape that *require* many non-individuals to form a scaffold for some (as yet unbound) non-individual to become an individual? I'm thinking, here, of the (false) Great Man Theory ... the idea that Einstein was just a better thinker than everyone else ... or I've heard it called the Comprehensive Designer by this guy: https://youtu.be/5gnlhmaM-dM Do we need these archetypes? Do we *need* the many rabble in order for the elite few to become "individuals"? On 12/27/18 1:45 PM, Jochen Fromm wrote: > A really nice observation: > "Trump supporters are not individualists, they are just people trying to recover privilege they > didn’t earn and now see slipping away" > The same phenomenon can be observed in racism, sexism and nationalism everywhere, not just in America. It happens for instance in racism where white people lose their privileges (gained by colonialism in the past) because they no longer belong to white people only. This kind of backwards directed racism must be as old as George Washington himself. Or in sexism where men fear that they lose their privileges because they no longer belong to men only. Or in nationalism where the native people fear they lose their privileges of citizenship, social benefits and election rights because immigrants get the same rights. It is a fear driven version of racism, sexism or nationalism which can be used by any skilled demagogue to win elections. > - Jochen > > -------- Original message --------From: Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> Date: 12/26/18 23:43 (GMT+01:00) To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism > > > David writes: > > “And it would serve "the opposition" to get a clue about the fact that the vast majority of Trump supporters do not suffer from racism, sexism, 'genderism', "me-first-ism," > etc. Instead recognize that their primary affliction is individualism - and even libertarian-ism (despite some obvious contradictions from the religious among them) - along with corollaries of "anti-government control-ism," "personal-responsibility-ism," and > "my-values-are-just-as-valid-as-yours-ism." > > The racism and sexism arise from the false supposition that personal responsibility is all that is required to thrive. They fail to acknowledge that public policy can level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance to develop > their own values and priorities for their life – to become individuals. They are worse than conventional conservatives because they lack any moral center. They want to see regressive norms because those are the only norms they can get their head around. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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OK. But let's assume we could at least agree on LaVey's complaint: "It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." The idea being to select against some (special) formulation of innovative/crazy/creative/lucky behavior for which we have an accounting and that accounting shows "bad" (leads to costs we don't want in spite of the rewards).
And what if there are regions of the landscape that can only be reached by such bad behavior. Ideally, rather than eliminate the people who engage in the bad behavior, we'd *corral* them and deploy them intentionally. These useful idiots, one of which will become the Great Man, could help us make the whole system better, merely at the risk of a delusional belief in "merit", mostly believed only by the other (corralled) idiots. On 12/27/18 2:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Let's say there is a great woman, and through my heavy-handed intervention I prevent her from becoming great. If you buy the idea that she was worthy of that title, and you buy the idea that she came to greatness through Personal Responsibility, then the perturbation I impose on her will not stop her, will it? I've simply given her another opportunity to prove herself worthy of forcing others to serve as her scaffolding. > > Anyway, this is all assuming there is even a game worth playing and that concepts of merit or greatness even mean anything at all. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
uǝʃƃ ⊥ glen
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Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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There will always be some system-level objectives where individuality is compromised for the sake of the population. I'm just pointing out that if creating many unique individuals is a goal some ideology (like supposedly
that the Trump supporters advocate), then it has to be enforced by the governance of the population, and to change governance will require some persuasion or at least advocacy. I don't see why I should give a damn about advocacy without persuasion. But
it just comes down to power, of course, and so the next step is to take power back.
Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of uǝlƃ ☣ <[hidden email]>
Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 3:38:53 PM To: FriAM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism OK. But let's assume we could at least agree on LaVey's complaint: "It's too bad stupidity isn't painful." The idea being to select against some (special) formulation of innovative/crazy/creative/lucky behavior for which we have an accounting
and that accounting shows "bad" (leads to costs we don't want in spite of the rewards).
And what if there are regions of the landscape that can only be reached by such bad behavior. Ideally, rather than eliminate the people who engage in the bad behavior, we'd *corral* them and deploy them intentionally. These useful idiots, one of which will become the Great Man, could help us make the whole system better, merely at the risk of a delusional belief in "merit", mostly believed only by the other (corralled) idiots. On 12/27/18 2:25 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: > Let's say there is a great woman, and through my heavy-handed intervention I prevent her from becoming great. If you buy the idea that she was worthy of that title, and you buy the idea that she came to greatness through Personal Responsibility, then the perturbation I impose on her will not stop her, will it? I've simply given her another opportunity to prove herself worthy of forcing others to serve as her scaffolding. > > Anyway, this is all assuming there is even a game worth playing and that concepts of merit or greatness even mean anything at all. -- ☣ uǝlƃ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
oops... originally sent only to Marcus by mistake...
On 12/28/18 6:59 PM, Marcus Daniels
wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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Steve,
I wonder if there is a game theory problem to be worked on here. Referring to your statement: >> Arrow's Impossibility is real but no more significant IMO than the real-world ambiguities and paradoxes introduced by practical realities such as voter suppression and fraud, system hacking and mechanical errors (e.g. hanging chads)… The Impossibility Theorem has the character of a case-existence proof: for any algorithm, there is a case of voter preferences for which that algorithm produces an unwanted outcome. In the sense of only counting cases, it reminds me of no-free-lunch theorems: for any algorithm that is fast to solve one problem of combinatorial search, there is some other problem for which it is slow. However, the NFL _threorem_ — that no algorithm is any better than any other — depends on an appropriately symmetric search space and a suitable associated uniform measure over problems on that space. If search and optimization are embedded in a larger dynamic where correlation between algorithms is allowed, there can be global better or worse approaches. I don’t (as in every other area) have details and references ready in memory, but David Wolpert wrote some of his later papers on NFL addressing the ways it ceases to apply under changed assumptions. I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of Arrow Impossibility in a context of a kind of ecosystem of adversaries. To game any algorithm, crucially with the outcome that not only _some_ voter is handled poorly, but that _a sufficiently large pool_ of voters is handled poorly that the algorithm is not best, requires arranging the preference case that violates the algorithm for suitably many voters. Is this coordination problem harder for some preference-orders than for others? Is there something akin to “canalization” in evolutionary biology, where some algorithms live further from the boundary of being collectively tipped into producing the wrong outcome than others? Thus, are there measures of robustness for statistical violation of algorithms based on what happens in most cases rather than what happens in the worst case, as there are for spin-glass phase transition problems? Another thing it seems unlikely I will ever put time into being serious about. Or maybe there is already a large standing literature that claims to have addressed this. Eric > On Dec 28, 2018, at 7:04 PM, Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote: > > oops... originally sent only to Marcus by mistake... > > On 12/28/18 6:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/28/politics/maine-governor-certifies-congressional-election/index.html >> From: Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> >> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 9:50:02 AM >> To: Marcus Daniels >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism >> >> Marcus writes: >>> Steve writes: >>> >>> "Democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority" >>> >>> The majority elected Hillary Clinton. >>> >>> Marcus >> The Electoral College is archaic and ambiguous: >> https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#changes. >> Perhaps our current orange-tinted clusterf*ck will continue to degenerate to the point of motivating the necessary will to mount the necessary constitutional amendment. >> Republicans are acutely good at gaming vulnerable systems to their benefit (gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) but the DNC and Hillary proved to be their equal during the primary with Superdelegates. >> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democrat-primary-elections-need-reform >> Ranked Choice voting seems ultimately yet more promising to *improve* the selection of our representatives. I believe that Maine is running that experiment for us now at the State level. Arrow's Impossibility is real but no more significant IMO than the real-world ambiguities and paradoxes introduced by practical realities such as voter suppression and fraud, system hacking and mechanical errors (e.g. hanging chads)... Technology (can a direct democracy be facilitated by something like block-chain technology?) might resolve some of these questions, but very likely it will miss the more fundamental philosophical questions. >> We are a Federal Republic with a Representative Democracy for good reasons... some of the context of those "good reasons" surely has evolved over the 250ish years it has been in place while the mechanisms maybe have not evolved as quickly. Individual and small groups of Opportunistic, Brash, Narcissists can usually outmanouvre such a slow moving leviathan. I'm not sure what to do about that. >> How does Direct Democracy distinguish itself from Populism and Mob Rule? What constitutes (guarantees/assures?) an engaged and informed electorate? >> But the question remains: Is there a better way to meet the goals of governance than the democracies we have tried and/or imagined? How do we balance (or align?) the needs of the group and of the individual? Is "Democracy the worst form of government except for all of the others we have tried" (Churchill paraphrase)? >> - Steve >> >> >> > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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Eric -
> I wonder if there is a game theory problem to be worked on here. Naturally there would be, the question of course would be about the relevance and interest in such a problem (or suite o >>> Arrow's Impossibility is real but no more significant IMO than the real-world ambiguities and paradoxes introduced by practical realities such as voter suppression and fraud, system hacking and mechanical errors (e.g. hanging chads)… > The Impossibility Theorem has the character of a case-existence proof: for any algorithm, there is a case of voter preferences for which that algorithm produces an unwanted outcome. > In the sense of only counting cases, it reminds me of no-free-lunch theorems: for any algorithm that is fast to solve one problem of combinatorial search, there is some other problem for which it is slow. However, the NFL _threorem_ — that no algorithm is any better than any other — depends on an appropriately symmetric search space and a suitable associated uniform measure over problems on that space. If search and optimization are embedded in a larger dynamic where correlation between algorithms is allowed, there can be global better or worse approaches. > I don’t (as in every other area) have details and references ready in memory, but David Wolpert wrote some of his later papers on NFL addressing the ways it ceases to apply under changed assumptions. > > I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of Arrow Impossibility in a context of a kind of ecosystem of adversaries. Yes, I think this is the crux of the implications of my questions and observations on the topic. It would seem that the ecosystem or landscape associated with the very idea of democracy (representative or direct) allows (and deserves) more exploration. The acute point I was making is that I don't believe that one can dismiss ranked choice methods because it can be proven that there are point solutions which are pathological to the original goal (discovering collective preference?). > To game any algorithm, crucially with the outcome that not only _some_ voter is handled poorly, but that _a sufficiently large pool_ of voters is handled poorly that the algorithm is not best, requires arranging the preference case that violates the algorithm for suitably many voters. Is this coordination problem harder for some preference-orders than for others? This is a good question... I have a little experience around related topics, but have not really explored it in relationship to "preference" in this sense. It also seems that "preference" is not really crisp, and is subject to abrupt revisions (how many would-be Hillary Voters chose not to vote when Comey's e-mail exposure came out, and how many would-be Trump Voters withdrew from him when the Billy Bush tapes were aired?). > Is there something akin to “canalization” in evolutionary biology, where some algorithms live further from the boundary of being collectively tipped into producing the wrong outcome than others? Thus, are there measures of robustness for statistical violation of algorithms based on what happens in most cases rather than what happens in the worst case, as there are for spin-glass phase transition problems? This is where I find this list to be at it's best, when the deep and broad thinkers here recognize a real-world problem and how it maps into the abstractions we are already capable enough with to study it much more thoughtfully than pop culture/media is even capable of, much less inclined. Of course, any result we might discover in such analysis still needs to be rendered back into recognizeable language and metaphor for the general public to understand well enough to respond to with more than knee-jerk support/rejection. I don't mean this to sound (be?) techno-elitist, it is one of the things that those of us with enough background have a chance of contributing, just as (ideally) each person has a vote to cast and a day-job. Those folks whose job is to continue to pull coal out of the ground until the demand curve crosses the cost (including socially-defined regulatory) curve, do us a favor by (mostly) keeping their heads down and doing their job. Meanwhile, it behooves the rest of us to make sure that when the only demand for coal is the boutique one to fill the stockings of bad boys and girl that those who kept on doing that (apparently necessary) work to the end have something else suitable to move on to (could be early retirement, with or without a battle with black-lung). > Another thing it seems unlikely I will ever put time into being serious about. Or maybe there is already a large standing literature that claims to have addressed this. This is a key point to another thread I haven't found the time/focus to do more than allude to, the "Commons". Dave (and others including myself sometimes) can be very big on the idea of self-reliance, individualism, personal responsibility.... but without factoring in the true role of the "Constructed Commons" and the "Exploitable Natural Commons", those arguments seem very self-indulgent, entitled privilege, and me-firsty. The fact that there is almost surely a "standing literature" which might or might not claim to have addressed this instantiation in particular, is a key part of said "Constructed Commons". The potential value of this seems well (if not best) addressed by a loose collective of people with diverse backgrounds, interests, abilities and resources, even as simply as in a rambling series of tangential posts on the topic by a tiny subset of the O(1k) mail-list here. I think this is what Nick returns to often (the value of these discussions and his personal desire to see them condensed into something more formal/accessible). Your own contribution here is (at least) that of powerful catalyst for this kind of discussion. While you claim to have only shallow and sometimes narrow knowledge of these topics, the *relative* breadth and depth of your offerings stimulates others here to speak up, dig deeper, throw down. Maybe *I* will find some time to dig around for said Region of the Constructed Commons... and perhaps others already are familiar with rich territory to look in. > > Eric > > > > >> On Dec 28, 2018, at 7:04 PM, Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> wrote: >> >> oops... originally sent only to Marcus by mistake... >> >> On 12/28/18 6:59 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >>> https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/28/politics/maine-governor-certifies-congressional-election/index.html >>> From: Steven A Smith <[hidden email]> >>> Sent: Thursday, December 27, 2018 9:50:02 AM >>> To: Marcus Daniels >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism >>> >>> Marcus writes: >>>> Steve writes: >>>> >>>> "Democracy is the tyranny of the majority over the minority" >>>> >>>> The majority elected Hillary Clinton. >>>> >>>> Marcus >>> The Electoral College is archaic and ambiguous: >>> https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/faq.html#changes. >>> Perhaps our current orange-tinted clusterf*ck will continue to degenerate to the point of motivating the necessary will to mount the necessary constitutional amendment. >>> Republicans are acutely good at gaming vulnerable systems to their benefit (gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc.) but the DNC and Hillary proved to be their equal during the primary with Superdelegates. >>> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/11/democrat-primary-elections-need-reform >>> Ranked Choice voting seems ultimately yet more promising to *improve* the selection of our representatives. I believe that Maine is running that experiment for us now at the State level. Arrow's Impossibility is real but no more significant IMO than the real-world ambiguities and paradoxes introduced by practical realities such as voter suppression and fraud, system hacking and mechanical errors (e.g. hanging chads)... Technology (can a direct democracy be facilitated by something like block-chain technology?) might resolve some of these questions, but very likely it will miss the more fundamental philosophical questions. >>> We are a Federal Republic with a Representative Democracy for good reasons... some of the context of those "good reasons" surely has evolved over the 250ish years it has been in place while the mechanisms maybe have not evolved as quickly. Individual and small groups of Opportunistic, Brash, Narcissists can usually outmanouvre such a slow moving leviathan. I'm not sure what to do about that. >>> How does Direct Democracy distinguish itself from Populism and Mob Rule? What constitutes (guarantees/assures?) an engaged and informed electorate? >>> But the question remains: Is there a better way to meet the goals of governance than the democracies we have tried and/or imagined? How do we balance (or align?) the needs of the group and of the individual? Is "Democracy the worst form of government except for all of the others we have tried" (Churchill paraphrase)? >>> - Steve >>> >>> >>> >> ============================================================ >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College >> to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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In reply to this post by David Eric Smith
This reminded me of a seriously ancient post on Arrow's theorem, see forward below. I particularly liked the examples in showing the surprises that can pop up. The first showed the example where the majority favorite was the most disliked! That led me, when I first arrived here in 2002 after the 2000 SFI Complexity summer school, to work my way through: How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics Zbigniew Michalewicz & David B. Fogel "Stochastic Processes" certainly seemed a bit magic. The NFL paper certainly gave me some doubts but it seemed amazing how effective GA's, Ant Algorithms, and so on were .. at least in their own domain. Here are two: (The TSP stops after 500 steps w/o improvement. Open console for info.) -- Owen ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Date: Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 6:06 PM Subject: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem To: Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]>, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]>, Jim Gattiker <[hidden email]>, Chip Garner <[hidden email]>, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> Cc: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Here's a very old post (Dec 03) from the FRIAM list that discusses Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. It proves the impossibly of uniquely resolving social preferences from individual preferences given more than two things to choose among. -- Owen During the last Friam, we got talking about voting and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem came up. It basically discusses anomalies in voting when there are more than two choices being voted upon. The result depends strongly on how the votes are tallied. So for example, in our last election, due to having three candidates, we entered the Arrow regime. But "spoilers" like Ralph are not the only weirdness. The html references below have interesting examples, and the pdf reference is a paper by SFI's John Geanakoplos who gave a public lecture last year. "Fair voting" schemes are getting some air-time now a-days. There are several forms, but the most popular I think is that you basically rank your candidates in order of preference, the "top-most" being your current vote. There are several run-offs which eliminate the poorest performer and let you vote again, now with the highest of your ranks still available. This insures you always have a vote if you want one. This would have won the election here for Gore, for example, presuming the Nader votes would favor Gore. Various web pages with examples: http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/frec444/444voting.html http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/arrow.htm http://www.math.upenn.edu/~kazdan/210/voting/notes_on_arrow.html Three proofs by John Geanakoplos http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d11a/d1123-r.pdf Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 [hidden email] Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 6:31 AM Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote: Steve, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: 2019 - The end of Trumpism
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Owen writes:
"The NFL paper certainly gave me some doubts but it seemed amazing how effective GA's, Ant Algorithms, and so on were .. at least in their own domain."
GA's are not an effective way to solve NP-hard, high-dimensional constrained optimization problems (> 1000 variables). Problems like distribution of shared resources. For that you need algorithms designed to do
it and a lot of brute force (see SCIP, CPLEX, etc). In public and private organizations we see dimensional reduction by introduction of hierarchy. Individualists (sic) pretend the shared resources aren't finite or think by taking as much ground as they
can they can better control the shared resource -- that their hierarchy is the best one.
Marcus From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Owen Densmore <[hidden email]>
Sent: Saturday, December 29, 2018 11:05:58 AM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 2019 - The end of Trumpism
This reminded me of a seriously ancient post on Arrow's theorem, see forward below.
I particularly liked the examples in
showing the surprises that can pop up. The first showed the example where the majority favorite was the most disliked!
That led me, when I first arrived here in 2002 after the 2000 SFI Complexity summer school, to work my way through:
How to Solve It: Modern Heuristics
Zbigniew Michalewicz & David B. Fogel
"Stochastic Processes" certainly seemed a bit magic.
The NFL paper certainly gave me some doubts but it seemed amazing how effective GA's, Ant Algorithms, and so on were .. at least in their own domain. Here are two:
(The TSP stops after 500 steps w/o improvement. Open console for info.)
-- Owen
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Date: Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 6:06 PM Subject: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem To: Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]>, Nicholas Thompson <[hidden email]>, Jim Gattiker <[hidden email]>, Chip Garner <[hidden email]>, Frank Wimberly <[hidden email]> Cc: Owen Densmore <[hidden email]> Here's a very old post (Dec 03) from the FRIAM list that discusses Arrow's Impossibility Theorem. It proves the impossibly of uniquely resolving social preferences from individual preferences given more than two things to choose among. -- Owen During the last Friam, we got talking about voting and Arrow's Impossibility Theorem came up. It basically discusses anomalies in voting when there are more than two choices being voted upon. The result depends strongly on how the votes are tallied. So for example, in our last election, due to having three candidates, we entered the Arrow regime. But "spoilers" like Ralph are not the only weirdness. The html references below have interesting examples, and the pdf reference is a paper by SFI's John Geanakoplos who gave a public lecture last year. "Fair voting" schemes are getting some air-time now a-days. There are several forms, but the most popular I think is that you basically rank your candidates in order of preference, the "top-most" being your current vote. There are several run-offs which eliminate the poorest performer and let you vote again, now with the highest of your ranks still available. This insures you always have a vote if you want one. This would have won the election here for Gore, for example, presuming the Nader votes would favor Gore. Various web pages with examples: http://www.udel.edu/johnmack/frec444/444voting.html http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/arrow.htm http://www.math.upenn.edu/~kazdan/210/voting/notes_on_arrow.html Three proofs by John Geanakoplos http://cowles.econ.yale.edu/P/cd/d11a/d1123-r.pdf Owen Densmore 908 Camino Santander Santa Fe, NM 87505 [hidden email] Cell: 505-570-0168 Home: 505-988-3787 On Sat, Dec 29, 2018 at 6:31 AM Eric Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Steve, ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Stepping back to 40,000 ft. for a second... '[Morality] is an evolutionary process in which societies constantly perform experiments, and whether or not those experiments succeed determines which cultural ideas and moral precepts propagate into the future.' If so, he says, then a theory that rigorously explains how coevolutionary systems are driven to the edge of chaos might tell us a lot about cultural dynamics, and how societies reach that elusive, ever-changing balance between freedom and control. 'Witness the collapse of communism in the former Soviet Union...the whole situation seems all too reminiscent of the power-law distribution of stability and upheaval at the edge of chaos. 'When you think of it', he says, 'the Cold War was one of these long periods where mot much changed...But now that period of stability is ending...in the models, once you get out of one of these metastable periods, you get into one of these chaotic periods where a lot of change happens..It's much more sensitive now to initial conditions.' 'So what's the right course of action?' he asks. 'I don't know, except that this is like punctuated equilibrium in evolutionary history. It doesn't happen without a great deal of extinction. And it's not necessarily a step for the better. There are models where the species that dominate in the stable period after the upheaval may be less fit than the species that dominated beforehand.' 'And now suppose it's really true that coevolving, complex systems get themselves to the edge of chaos...if we imagine that this really carries over into economic systems, then it's a state where technologies come into existence and replace others, et cetera. But if this is true, it means that the edge of chaos is, on average, the best that we can do...You can go extinct, or broke. But here we are on the edge of chaos because that's where, on average, we all do the best.' - Doyne Farmer, Chris Langton, and Stuart Kauffman, in that order, quoted in "Complexity", M. Mitchell Waldrop, p. 319-322. I wrote a layman's blog post on a similar idea, "On the Importance of Idiots", speculating that societal chaos might be moving the solution space out of local minima into novel areas in the solution space, and that the process might be solving for long-term resiliency of the system as a whole, in opposition to short-term sanity. I did filter it through Norm Johnson at SFI to remove egregious errors, but make no claim for completeness or rigor: ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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Maybe an experiment that leads to a horrible results makes society (voters) decide, "We don't want to do that again". ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:48 PM Ron Newman <[hidden email] wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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p.s. I have wondered if the polarization we see goes back to the razor-thin Kennedy victory in 1960. Republicans were very unhappy and resented the Johnson administration. Eventually Nixon was president but Watergate was a disaster. They wanted revenge. To make a long story short, now Democrats investigate Republicans and vice versa leading to a cycles of retaliation. Is history professor John Dobson on the List? ----------------------------------- Frank Wimberly My memoir: https://www.amazon.com/author/frankwimberly My scientific publications: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Frank_Wimberly2 Phone (505) 670-9918 On Sun, Dec 30, 2018, 4:53 PM Frank Wimberly <[hidden email] wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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In reply to this post by Ron Newman
Ron wrote: < I wrote a layman's blog post on a similar idea, "On the Importance of Idiots", speculating that societal chaos might be moving the solution space out of local minima into novel areas in the
solution space, and that the process might be solving for long-term resiliency of the system as a whole, in opposition to short-term sanity. > My take is that the idiocy will cause some different or unusual group of people to recognize the need for stronger intervention, and to optimize for something other than collective stability. As the Bill Maher segment goes, “New rules”.. Marcus ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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In reply to this post by Ron Newman
The political doctrine of liberalism aims to increase the freedom of the individual. The institutions and rules that optimize for this freedom must be evaluated in aggregate and so for every increase of one group must be understood for
a decrease in freedom of another group. It is a very hard optimization problem involving high order interactions and horizons that can be difficult to agree upon. Is success reflected by an increase in per-capita income or by some definition of happiness
or engagement? Is it for people entering the workforce or leaving it? Why measure at the median and not the 1st or 99th percentile? A liberal wouldn’t necessarily have an opinion on how to measure freedom other than to do say that
the more diverse the cacophony of opinions, the better. But let’s not confuse diversity with amplitude. Reactionary idiocy isn’t about diversity, it is about loudness. A giant tumor isn’t contributing the health of an animal, it is just a tumor. If there are a hundred million people
just chanting the same angry slogans to themselves, indifferent to the facts of the matter, what we have is the socio-political equivalent of a tumor.
Imagine you have two computer programs, both that have the task of zeroing out some memory. The first one looks like this: int A[1000000]; A[0] = 0 A[1] = 0 A[2] = 0 … A[999999] = 0 The other one looks like this: int A[1000000]; A = 0 If there are any resource limitations (let’s say instruction cache), it is insane to favor the former program. It functionality achieves the same thing, but taken literally will result in memory exhaustion. [1] (Suppose that an instance
of the program is an individual, and there are millions of individuals.) Why should a society encourage individuals like the first program? For that matter, does A even
need to be zeroed out? Given resource limitations, I would argue it is reasonable to recombine programs like the latter sort, and unreasonable to recombine programs like the first sort. The latter has discovered the concept of shape (or tail recursion) and
the latter has not. Marcus [1] Actually it wouldn’t on a modern operating system. The text section would be generated read-only and just remapped. Thank you, urban planner.
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/the-philosopher-redefining-equality was a good read this morning, -- rec -- On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 9:36 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
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Re: Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism
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Great article. Here are a couple more. These seem to me like the bleeding-heart variety of liberal taking their eye off the ball. No, I say
win the culture war. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/30/opinion/tech-rural-america.html From: Friam <[hidden email]> on behalf of Roger Critchlow <[hidden email]> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/01/07/the-philosopher-redefining-equality was a good read this morning, -- rec -- On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 9:36 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives back to 2003: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove |
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