[FRIAM] Preference Order Ecosystems: was Trumpism

[Steven A Smith]

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 <sasmyth at swcp.com> 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 <sasmyth at swcp.com>
>>> 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
>>>
>>>
>>>
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> ============================================================
> 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
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