<!DOCTYPE html><html><head><title></title><style type="text/css">p.MsoNormal,p.MsoNoSpacing{margin:0}</style></head><body><div style="font-family:Arial;">Nick,<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><b>THE</b> technical solution would be to create an AI that would have access to all your voting records, everything you ever wrote or said about politics and policies, all your FRIAM correspondence, any social media you may have been tricked into using, your amazon purchasing records, all the professional societies you have belonged to, etc. etc. — a<u>nd have it simply vote for you</u>.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">davew<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;"><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">On Thu, Aug 20, 2020, at 10:03 AM, <a href="mailto:thompnickson2@gmail.com">thompnickson2@gmail.com</a> wrote:<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Jon, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> In my balmy way, I took you entirely seriously. During the whole ACA <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> debacle, when it looked like programming ineptitude was going to bring <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> the whole health system down, You Wizards (and I use the word loosely <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> ... the word "You", that is) declared that you could have designed a <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> better system to allocate people to health insurers in a weekend. So, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> I thought, the Wizards are getting the jump on it, this time. They are <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> going to get together for a weekend and design a national voting system <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> for 2024. What a wonderful thing! They will make a s-load of a lot of <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> money and the country will be the better for it. Perfect! I did have <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> one worry, of course. My worry was that a voting system should not be <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> mysterious. And since what Wizards do is always mysterious to the rest <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> of us (we "citizens", as Owen used to say), that was definitely going <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> to be a "roll-out" problem. <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Nick <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Nicholas Thompson<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Clark University<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="mailto:ThompNickSon2@gmail.com">ThompNickSon2@gmail.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/">https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> -----Original Message-----<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> From: Friam <<a href="mailto:friam-bounces@redfish.com">friam-bounces@redfish.com</a>> On Behalf Of jon zingale<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Sent: Thursday, August 20, 2020 8:54 AM<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> To: <a href="mailto:friam@redfish.com">friam@redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Sure my tongue-was-in-cheek wrt redirecting 1/9 of the U.S military <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> budget to fund solving this problem, maybe it does detract from my main <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> point. Fixing the problem of wasteful decadence is also not on the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> docket for me this pass through. I feel a lot can be said about what a <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> culture burns its resources on. Hell, if we must, à la Ghostbusters, <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> choose the form of the destroyer I choose the societal engine described <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> in Borges' "The Lottery in Babylon"[£].<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> To be clear, the challenge set before me was to sketch out an <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> alternative voting technology option. While liberating elections from a <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> winner-takes-all modality is also something I want, it relates to a <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> mostly orthogonal problem. Ranked-choice voting can be implemented for <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> polling stations, phone apps, and snail-mail alike. Sooner or later the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> technology I am advocating for will be here, what it will be when it <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> arrives is what I wish to direct concern toward. Witnessing an endless <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> procession of squandered opportunity is what I find so abhorrent. If <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> the first actionable steps are being taken, great, we now have the <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> opportunity to take others.<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> [£] <a href="https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf">https://web.itu.edu.tr/~inceogl4/modernism/lotteryofbabylon.pdf</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> --<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Sent from: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a> un/subscribe <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. .<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv<br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 <a href="http://bit.ly/virtualfriam">bit.ly/virtualfriam</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> un/subscribe <a href="http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com">http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> archives: <a href="http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/">http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/</a><br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">> FRIAM-COMIC <a href="http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/">http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/</a> <br></div><div style="font-family:Arial;">><br></div></body></html>