Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

The National Delegation

[mitigatedchaos]

In case you haven’t noticed recently, democracy has major issues.  Every major developed state is strewn with dysfunction and programs that are actively at odds with their intended purposes.  Our politicians are either incompetent idiots or shrewd operators working against our interests.

Policies routinely have reasonable stated values, but terrible efficacy.

Organizations such as the RAND Corporation knew the Iraq War would be a lot tougher than the Bush administration said it would be.  Policy plans coming out of think tanks seem to be better than the actual policies we get.

If we didn’t know they’d immediately get subverted, we’d almost be better off with think tanks running the country.

Better results are necessarily different results, and systems produce the outcomes they incentivize, so to change the results it is necessary to change the system.

The truth is, it may be possible to get something like think tanks in charge of the government, a hybrid between them and political parties, but we will have to add selection pressure to ensure they work towards correctness.

I propose a new legislature, composed of a new kind of corporate entity, the Delegate Candidate Organization (DCO).  

Every three years, at election time, each voter delegates their vote to a DCO.  The top 50 Delegate Candidate Organizations then form the legislature, becoming that term’s Delegate Organizations.  This legislature is known as the National Delegation.

In a second election, those DCOs that did not make the cut delegate their votes to members of the top 50.

(In an optional alternative, the vote could be split between DCOs by categories by voters, allowing a truly innovative level of representation.  Bills would have to pass on all categories to pass, and the tax category would determine how funding is obtained, but not total expenditures.  Sadly, this is probably too complex for typical voters.)

A Delegate Candidate Organization receives its funding exclusively from the State.  For each delegated vote it receives, the DCO receives $5 in annual funding, and an additional $5 times its percentile standing in a legislative outcome prediction market.

(That might sound like a lot.  America has around 300 million people, so you could potentially be looking at three billion dollars.  I would answer that the 2016 Presidential election cost $2.6 billion by itself, and that money had to come from somewhere and is already influencing our political process.  The size of the US economy is $18,570 billion dollars.  The real question is whether better policy by the DCOs could improve that by 0.016% or more, which would make the National Delegation pay for itself.  I believe that it would.)

The key factor that makes DCOs behave more like think tanks is that a significant chunk of their funding depends on correctly estimating the outcomes of legislation.  What keeps them honest?  First, competition with other DCOs that will pressure them against spoiling the metrics.  Second, voters.

When a piece of legislation is to be passed, DCOs make predictions on outcomes and bet on them in a virtual currency called Credibility Score (or just “Cred”).  Each outcome must be represented by a basket of multiple metrics, to prevent min-maxing.

This structure allows us to build a differentiation between a policy’s values and its efficacy.  Previous discourse has often viewed policy as solely a matter of efficacy, but of course in practice people have different preferences and are not a unified mass just waiting for enlightenment into [your political ideology].  Preserving the values component (in part through voting) also allows bits of efficacy that have slipped through to be represented on the other side of the equation.

The bets serve two purposes.  The first is to reward policymakers that are actively effective at achieving their stated objectives, and punish policymakers that are too unaligned with reality.  The second is to effectively tell voters what the plans will actually do, not just wishy washy language pols want people to hear.

“This bill will reduce gun crime.”
“By how much?”
“Uh… a, uh, lot.”

Not only can the DCO specify what its % estimate for a decrease in gun crime is, but it can also communicate its level of certainty - by how much it bets on the outcome as a percentage of its current Cred reserves, data that can be mined by political scientists and journalists.

DCOs must be able to amend predictions when new legislation is passed.  A court will also be required to punish those who tamper with metrics, and resolve other disputes.  The details of that are a challenge in themselves, but should be feasible to work out.

Each DO has as many votes in the legislature as have been delegated to it.  A majority is required to pass legislation.

The accumulated Credibility Score/Cred across all bets is used to determine the percentile standing of all DCOs, used to determine funding (as above).  Percentile standing is listed on the ballot next to the DCO’s name, but to simplify things for voters, DCOs are listed in the order of votes received in the previous election.

---

Practical experiments will be necessary to assess the viability of this model, but I have high hopes for it.  If we want to advance as a civilization, then we must develop new organizational technologies.

[mitigatedchaos]

Think you need to take a closer look at Robin Hanson, something I thought I’d never say

Specifically, the problem is that predicting the results isn’t the issue, it’s predicting the change in results given some policy change

I think Hanson has people bet on outcome both with and without policy

I may have to look into that, but it doesn’t sound unreasonable. Betting for outcomes based on whether the bill passes or fails to pass certainly provides more information for our voters/etc.

One big problem is that people are going to use this not to predict, but to hedge

It will be financialized

If you believe Hanson that markets are perfect, that’s not a problem it will all work out

if you haven’t had your skull smashed with a brick every day for the past 20 years or worked in the econ dept at GMU, you should be skeptical.

Sorry, I guess I should have been more clear in my intentions earlier.

While the probability estimates produced by the prediction market are interesting, the real purposes are more like: 

1. Punish politicians that are actively at odds with the truth/reward those who have some idea what they’re doing, so that eventually the system is dominated by more clueful politicals who spend less time huffing ideology.  Hopefully, this will result in more effective policy which is more aligned with reality.

(I’m of the opinion that there are many policies that it’s said you can’t do, because markets etc, but which you could do if you were smart about it.  So I want those to come up, actually testing some of these policies before they come up, etc.)

2. Make politicians be more specific and truthful about the outcomes of policies in measurable ways, making it more difficult to do one thing and say another.

3. Track the effectiveness of policies over time so that better policy can be created in the future (through the metrics gathered to feed the market, not the market itself).

Would hedging interfere with those?  I’m not so sure.  It is, itself, information.  It may also depend on the market’s design itself.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

The National Delegation

In case you haven’t noticed recently, democracy has major issues.  Every major developed state is strewn with dysfunction and programs that are actively at odds with their intended purposes.  Our politicians are either incompetent idiots or shrewd operators working against our interests.

Policies routinely have reasonable stated values, but terrible efficacy.

Organizations such as the RAND Corporation knew the Iraq War would be a lot tougher than the Bush administration said it would be.  Policy plans coming out of think tanks seem to be better than the actual policies we get.

If we didn’t know they’d immediately get subverted, we’d almost be better off with think tanks running the country.

Better results are necessarily different results, and systems produce the outcomes they incentivize, so to change the results it is necessary to change the system.

The truth is, it may be possible to get something like think tanks in charge of the government, a hybrid between them and political parties, but we will have to add selection pressure to ensure they work towards correctness.

I propose a new legislature, composed of a new kind of corporate entity, the Delegate Candidate Organization (DCO).  

Every three years, at election time, each voter delegates their vote to a DCO.  The top 50 Delegate Candidate Organizations then form the legislature, becoming that term’s Delegate Organizations.  This legislature is known as the National Delegation.

In a second election, those DCOs that did not make the cut delegate their votes to members of the top 50.

(In an optional alternative, the vote could be split between DCOs by categories by voters, allowing a truly innovative level of representation.  Bills would have to pass on all categories to pass, and the tax category would determine how funding is obtained, but not total expenditures.  Sadly, this is probably too complex for typical voters.)

A Delegate Candidate Organization receives its funding exclusively from the State.  For each delegated vote it receives, the DCO receives $5 in annual funding, and an additional $5 times its percentile standing in a legislative outcome prediction market.

(That might sound like a lot.  America has around 300 million people, so you could potentially be looking at three billion dollars.  I would answer that the 2016 Presidential election cost $2.6 billion by itself, and that money had to come from somewhere and is already influencing our political process.  The size of the US economy is $18,570 billion dollars.  The real question is whether better policy by the DCOs could improve that by 0.016% or more, which would make the National Delegation pay for itself.  I believe that it would.)

The key factor that makes DCOs behave more like think tanks is that a significant chunk of their funding depends on correctly estimating the outcomes of legislation.  What keeps them honest?  First, competition with other DCOs that will pressure them against spoiling the metrics.  Second, voters.

When a piece of legislation is to be passed, DCOs make predictions on outcomes and bet on them in a virtual currency called Credibility Score (or just “Cred”).  Each outcome must be represented by a basket of multiple metrics, to prevent min-maxing.

This structure allows us to build a differentiation between a policy’s values and its efficacy.  Previous discourse has often viewed policy as solely a matter of efficacy, but of course in practice people have different preferences and are not a unified mass just waiting for enlightenment into [your political ideology].  Preserving the values component (in part through voting) also allows bits of efficacy that have slipped through to be represented on the other side of the equation.

The bets serve two purposes.  The first is to reward policymakers that are actively effective at achieving their stated objectives, and punish policymakers that are too unaligned with reality.  The second is to effectively tell voters what the plans will actually do, not just wishy washy language pols want people to hear.

“This bill will reduce gun crime.”
“By how much?”
“Uh… a, uh, lot.”

Not only can the DCO specify what its % estimate for a decrease in gun crime is, but it can also communicate its level of certainty - by how much it bets on the outcome as a percentage of its current Cred reserves, data that can be mined by political scientists and journalists.

DCOs must be able to amend predictions when new legislation is passed.  A court will also be required to punish those who tamper with metrics, and resolve other disputes.  The details of that are a challenge in themselves, but should be feasible to work out.

Each DO has as many votes in the legislature as have been delegated to it.  A majority is required to pass legislation.

The accumulated Credibility Score/Cred across all bets is used to determine the percentile standing of all DCOs, used to determine funding (as above).  Percentile standing is listed on the ballot next to the DCO’s name, but to simplify things for voters, DCOs are listed in the order of votes received in the previous election.

---

Practical experiments will be necessary to assess the viability of this model, but I have high hopes for it.  If we want to advance as a civilization, then we must develop new organizational technologies.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[land-of-maps]

The Greater Latin Empire; if the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Roman empires to the maximum extents, as well as the Latin language-speaking peoples were all united into country/empire today. [1350 x 625] [Fixed]

[rtrixie]

Forget anglosphere, we need to go bigger

[mitigatedchaos]

> conquering one third of the Earth
> giving it to the filthy Spaniards

There is only one Empire that has the right to rule the world…

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[forgetfuljust]

Ideas emerge naturally from interactions with the environment.  Creativity involves creating new links between existing concepts.  Plus, people just think about stuff.  This is the source of ideas mutating and new ideas entering.

Ideas, then, will traffic on a combination of their appeal and their linkage with reality, with appeal higher in pressure when the effects are far more distant.  This forms the basis for the selective pressure.

Yes, that was my argument. Ideas form “randomly” (let’s say) then go through a form of natural selection. The ones that produce a stable society come out on top. My claim is that those ideas come out on top because the universe was coded with God’s Law in mind (divine decree), so whatever bullshit can get people to work halfway within it is sufficient for an ancient society to not collapse.

The obvious alternative is that my religion came from the same source as all the other religions, as you say. Dealing with that is much like dealing with any other doubt.

---

It’s worth noting that in @argumate‘s recent chain of posts, one user brought up that the Catholic church had stricter standards for heresy, because the common people were more eager to accuse others of witchcraft and the like.  These impulses and status warring, then, can explain some of the other effects, including those of the Left eating itself.

I think if you observe the actual cases of how more radical Leftists deal with the slightly less radical Left, it’s much more about total revulsion to the beliefs of their “right-wing” opponents than personal status. After all, Ted Cruz is very similar to Bernie Sanders in the broad scale of history: he doesn’t want to kill gays, doesn’t want to directly police sex, doesn’t seem to want coverture or slavery, etc. But he’s an utterly, completely repulsive bigot. If you were to actually look at and measure a radical leftist’s response to Ted Cruz’s visceral awfulness, it’s a lot more like being triggered by a repulsive piece of fiction or the death of Mike Brown than fierce virtue-signaling.

And it’s all relative. They react to Not Left Enough Leftists in similar ways. Dave Rubin is a conservative from their perspective, as is Bill Clinton, as is Thomas Jefferson, etc. There is a considerable amount of ladder-climbing and status-seeking in the victim cult complex created by these core radicals, in their friends who want to remain friends and the people who [one would think] signal out of fear or status hunger. But the actual center of this Tootsie Pop is a lot closer to a misguided, militant Varys than Littlefinger.

[mitigatedchaos]

That implies that people cannot meme themselves into these beliefs.  Social belief isn’t purely surface level.  Sometimes people even succeed at memeing themselves into religion.

And as for the very far end, much like those who go out and murder women for “fornication” out of deep hatred for them, can that not be of biological origin?  The disgust reactions run deep, and because of the prevalence of risk in the past, this was for good reason.  Something on the far end of the bell curve should exist if there is natural variation in these traits, even if the rest of the progressive movement is a wave of “try to be more progressive than the other guys”.

[forgetfuljust]

A deep and unsettling revulsion to patriarchy, private property, the nuclear family, parenthood, submission to authorities, the Rule of Law, killing violent criminals, distrust of statistically dangerous outsiders, sexual norms, the requirement of work to live… mostly things that would have saved their lives, rather than harmed them, in a human’s natural habitat.

But sure. It could be biological, on its face. Could be something else, too. The question is ultimately of premises, and whether there’s a Word of God that reveals certain truths. These are all isolated examples of a model that clearly governs nature, but they are isolated. Whether or not you connect the dots is up to you, and has much more to do with your reaction to the supernatural than logical analysis.

No righteous God would frame the world so you live if you’re good at thinking and die if you’re not. That’s not the test here.

What does “memeing yourself” mean?

[mitigatedchaos]

But sure. It could be biological, on its face.

It sounds absurd - if you assume it really is that detailed.  But it doesn’t need to be that detailed.

Take laziness or boredom.  Surely this isn’t a useful trait, right?  Why should it exist?  Wouldn’t it be more effective if people worked hard all the time?  Fatigue protects muscles, surely, but what advantage is there in true laziness?

Well, energy is scarce, especially in pre-industrial environments.  It isn’t always clear what task will actually yield food.  So at some point, you must give up working on the current task if it does not yield a reward, or you will literally starve to death continuing to perform a task that is useless.

And humans are complex, so it probably does not involve only one gene.

But what happens if all the genes for this shutoff end up in one individual?  Then it can become pathological, as the shutoff point becomes too aggressively biased towards giving up early.

The Golden Mean is actually pretty legit for lots of behaviors.

You can posit that evil hates the light, but the more likely explanation is that dislike of authority is useful on some level as long as it isn’t extreme (because IRL sometimes authority is wrong, or you can become the new authority and get more resources, etc), and that there is more than one path to get there.  A bit of sleeping around can be a successful reproductive strategy, too.  Plus openness to experience is valuable at the group level for finding out what is safe to eat, since all traditions were once new.

So there are these genes out there.  They don’t get bred out because they’re useful as long as you don’t have too many of them - which is also why the core people you describe are rare, since it’s statistically improbable for them to have all these genes in one person.

And these aren’t formalized genetic political beliefs.  They’re… intuitions or emotions or something along those lines.  Deeper.  The ideology, which gives you your specific manifestations, is rooted in or goes on top of that.

What does “memeing yourself” mean?

I may have been too informal.  I meant that sometimes by trying to get yourself to believe something, you can believe that thing, for some people.  I’m terrible at it, personally.  My intuition searches through ideas and ideologies (like yours) to find things that look like active subversion mechanisms, and then rejects them on that basis.  (Part of why I reject SJWism.)  Others, however, seem to have more luck with it sometimes.

I intuitively read your ideology/religion as having mechanisms intended to bypass all mental defenses and overwrite my mind, and thus feel the need to resist it.

(Bad SJ has “Shut up and listen, because you’re a [MEMBER of ETHNIC GROUP]!” which is similar.)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[forgetfuljust]

Ideas emerge naturally from interactions with the environment.  Creativity involves creating new links between existing concepts.  Plus, people just think about stuff.  This is the source of ideas mutating and new ideas entering.

Ideas, then, will traffic on a combination of their appeal and their linkage with reality, with appeal higher in pressure when the effects are far more distant.  This forms the basis for the selective pressure.

Yes, that was my argument. Ideas form “randomly” (let’s say) then go through a form of natural selection. The ones that produce a stable society come out on top. My claim is that those ideas come out on top because the universe was coded with God’s Law in mind (divine decree), so whatever bullshit can get people to work halfway within it is sufficient for an ancient society to not collapse.

The obvious alternative is that my religion came from the same source as all the other religions, as you say. Dealing with that is much like dealing with any other doubt.

---

It’s worth noting that in @argumate‘s recent chain of posts, one user brought up that the Catholic church had stricter standards for heresy, because the common people were more eager to accuse others of witchcraft and the like.  These impulses and status warring, then, can explain some of the other effects, including those of the Left eating itself.

I think if you observe the actual cases of how more radical Leftists deal with the slightly less radical Left, it’s much more about total revulsion to the beliefs of their “right-wing” opponents than personal status. After all, Ted Cruz is very similar to Bernie Sanders in the broad scale of history: he doesn’t want to kill gays, doesn’t want to directly police sex, doesn’t seem to want coverture or slavery, etc. But he’s an utterly, completely repulsive bigot. If you were to actually look at and measure a radical leftist’s response to Ted Cruz’s visceral awfulness, it’s a lot more like being triggered by a repulsive piece of fiction or the death of Mike Brown than fierce virtue-signaling.

And it’s all relative. They react to Not Left Enough Leftists in similar ways. Dave Rubin is a conservative from their perspective, as is Bill Clinton, as is Thomas Jefferson, etc. There is a considerable amount of ladder-climbing and status-seeking in the victim cult complex created by these core radicals, in their friends who want to remain friends and the people who [one would think] signal out of fear or status hunger. But the actual center of this Tootsie Pop is a lot closer to a misguided, militant Varys than Littlefinger.

[mitigatedchaos]

That implies that people cannot meme themselves into these beliefs.  Social belief isn’t purely surface level.  Sometimes people even succeed at memeing themselves into religion.

And as for the very far end, much like those who go out and murder women for “fornication” out of deep hatred for them, can that not be of biological origin?  The disgust reactions run deep, and because of the prevalence of risk in the past, this was for good reason.  Something on the far end of the bell curve should exist if there is natural variation in these traits, even if the rest of the progressive movement is a wave of “try to be more progressive than the other guys”.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[thivus]

all you have to do to make literally everyone mad at the same time across all political spectrums is say “cops are neither inherently evil nor incapable of sin and must be judged on a case by case basis, greater accountability for cops is a good thing”

[mitigatedchaos]

uh, i mean that’s partly the position of this very blog

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

White Professor Fired From historically Black, publicly funded College Gets $4.9 Million in racial discrimination suit

——————-

ST. LOUIS (CN) — A Missouri appeals court upheld a $4.85 million racial discrimination award to a white teacher who was fired from Harris-Stowe State University, an historically black college.

A trial jury awarded Elizabeth Wilkins $1.35 million in compensatory damages and $3.5 million in punitive damages on her claim that she was fired in favor of less senior black teachers. She also claimed Dr. Latisha Smith, the temporary co-chair for Harris-Stowe’s Teacher Education Department, repeatedly proclaimed her belief in “black power” in emails.

Harris-Stowe’s defense was crippled by the fact that it deleted emails in Smith’s account, in violation of a court order.

“During discovery, the trial court ordered the Board [of Regents] to preserve Dr. Smith’s email account,” Judge Kurt Odenwald wrote for the three-judge panel.

“In violation of the order, the Board deleted Dr. Smith’s email account. Because of this violation, the trial court ruled, as a sanction, that the following allegations were deemed admitted: Dr. Smith’s email account contained statements expressing her desire to make the Teacher Education Department ‘blacker’ and that she recommended terminating Wilkins’s employment.”

Harris-Stowe claimed it fired Wilkins for her “inappropriate activities.”

The college made five points in its appeal to the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Eastern District:

• that the trial court erred in instructing the jury on future damages;
• that the trial court erroneously permitted Wilkins to cite an irrelevant state law to the jury;
• that the trial court erred in failing to remit the jury’s award of compensatory damages because the verdict was grossly excessive and not supported by the evidence;
• and that the trial court erred in submitting the issue of punitive damages to the jury;
• and that the trial court erred in failing to remit the jury’s award of punitive damages.

But on Tuesday, the appeals court affirmed the trial court ruling on all five points, plus Wilkins’s request $35,603 in for attorneys’ fees and costs.

“We have not yet had an opportunity to review the ruling with counsel,” a Harris-Stowe State University spokesperson said in an email. “After review, we will evaluate the steps the University will need to take in light of the ruling.”

Writing for the unanimous panel, Odenwald noted that Wilkins earned around $67,622 a year when she was fired. She planned to teach into her 70s and had received nothing but positive performance reviews.

“The record is absolutely void of any evidence to suggest that Wilkins was unsuited for her position or that she was at risk of being lawfully terminated,” Odenwald wrote. “Yet, after her termination for ‘inappropriate activities,’ Wilkins testified that her academic reputation was ruined, that HSSU placed a letter alleging misconduct into her employment file, and that she believed she could not receive the necessary recommendations for subsequent employment. Unexpectedly thrust into the job market, the record reflects that Wilkins was interested in, and searched for, similar teaching positions at colleges or universities in the area. However, Wilkins was unable to find such a job within commuting distance of St. Louis.”

Presiding Judge James M. Dowd and Judge Gary M. Gaertner concurred.

Harris-Stowe, in St. Louis, has an enrollment of about 1,400. Annual tuition for an in-state residential student is about $16,984, according to the college website, which estimates tuition for an in-state nonresidential student as $7,484. Part-time students pay $199 per credit hour.

[mitigatedchaos]

Edit: Huh, forgot I had this in my queue.  

Anyhow, above is a point of calibration for how racial discrimination laws are enforced in America.  

We can see that they are not unidirectional.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

I can understand the concern, but were there every that many trans people in the military to begin with?

mutant-aesthetic answered:

that’s the other question, yeah, like how many trans people were really looking forward to military service?

[mitigatedchaos]

@isaacsapphire

Yeah, that’s the kind of numbers I was thinking of, with being trans and being in the military correlated.

I would wonder why this is hardly ever mentioned irt trans interests, but the link between transgender activism and Leftism, and the hate of the Left for anybody in the military has been a basic feature of the Left for my entire lifespan.

Your mistake is presuming there can be such a thing as a smart or consistent political movement.

Maybe Singapore’s PAP counts as a smart movement, but it appears to have a pragmatic grab bag of policies that aren’t united by some underlying unified ideology.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

@the-grey-tribe

Totally not eugenics, then. Just compassion with the poor. Nothing to see here, move along!

CRISPR means we’re going to start getting designer babies soon enough.

Suppose you are from a family with a severe heritable peanut allergy.  You contract with Genetic Enhancements, Inc. to create an embryo, modify it to remove the genes for the peanut allergy, and then implant it.

This is technically eugenics.

But, on the other hand, there is no benefit whatsoever to a severe peanut allergy.  Not on an individual level.  Not on a family level.  Not on a societal level.  We are much better off if such an allergy doesn’t exist.

But there is a difference between people that are already created and people that don’t yet exist and may never exist, and there is a difference between mandatory, quasi-optional, and payment-based practices.

But I don’t think “is this eugenics or not?” is a good question for untangling the morality of this, because “I refuse to have children because I have a heritable genetic heart problem that will kill me at 50″ is also eugenics.

So to me, the suitable grounds to oppose it on is that they’re in prison, under the state’s care, or something along those lines.

And of course, in the original issue that was brought up, genes may not even be relevant.  Fetal Alcohol Syndrome can be extremely expensive, and how much do you want to bet that other kinds of drugs can cause similarly expensive medical disorders?