[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I know you tried to be explicit about what the core problems are, and I
am aligned with what you have gestured at and I don't expect you to have
been complete or detailed in this type of forum on such a huge subject. 
Huge in depth, breadth, and perhaps more critical, import.  I am glad
you are carrying that torch to keep the playing/working field
illuminated well.

On the other hand, I *do* think the mechanisms involved in maintaining
coherence, etc.  must be considered and acted upon as possible/necessary
as well.  In the idiom of the moment, it isn't enough to declare that
the Postal Service is sacred and must be allowed/supported to be robust,
etc... but the staffing policies, the maintenance of physical mailboxes
and delivery trucks and sorting machines must also be attended to to
achieve the former.  To the extent that the latter is where the former
are encoded, I am sympathetic with those who are eager to "get to work"
on the specific mechanisms which *can* be worked on while the
abstractions of the moment feel hard/impossible to address.

I think this is an example of one of our ongoing threads of conversation
here... not just about the *spectrum* of concrete<->abstract, but the
need to keep the distinction in our awareness and to evaluate the
tensions between them and work them against (or more to the point, with)
one another.  

My experience with systems analysis, engineering, development seem
relevant and mirrors what I suspect many here also use as their lens. 
Networked Digital Computing is our hammer, so the aspects of our
Democracy which has purchase for a hammer becomes our nail. 

I suspect that your own steeping in working on modeling biological
systems and using bio-inspired idioms for modeling non biological
systems gives you a better perspective on this tension than some of us
might have.   My own limited understanding of such things suggests that
this tension between mechanism/goal and intrinsic/extrinsic is key, and
I am hoping that the tension between Jon's focus (at this moment) on
mechanism/intrinsic (to the voting system) and your more big-picture
awareness of the constraints/goals of human endeavor is precisely the
kind of tension that allows our whole system to pivot from something
that might have worked (barely, sortof, for many/some of us) in the past
to something which can continue to meet the whole level of needs in some
as-yet-unspecified new-Maslowian hierarchy or complex.

- Steve

> There are other trials beside absentee voting. It's largely
> irrelevant, though, as is the patent. My point was that this focus on
> "digital" voting will do more harm than good. Of course, everyone is
> free to do harm, accidentally or on purpose. My only objective was to
> point out why these efforts will be harmful if the core problems
> aren't addressed first.
>
> On 8/21/20 7:46 AM, jon zingale wrote:
>> Absentee voting is a technology ushered in during (for military) and
>> after
>> the civil war (for civilians). I would not say that this *Tool
>> doesn't solve
>> problems*. If I were to substitute *absentee voting* in for tools and
>> technology in your post, I am not sure how you distinguish absentee
>> voting
>> generally from a digital application option. If I side-stepped your
>> post, it
>> is mostly so that I could stay with the fire I had started.
>
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