From: Delvieron@aol.com
Date: Sat Mar 20 1999 - 09:18:27 MST
Mike,
Some interesting ideas you've brought up here....
Balkanization - I agree that some level of having people be able to opt for
competing service providers and societies could exist in the same geographical
region. This shifts the majority of functions of big government to small
and/or distributed government, which I think might be quite useful. However,
there would still be a need to have some overall social
system/organization/government to deal with interactions between these quasi-
governments and between those who subscribe to different systems. It would
not have to be a huge government, but it would have to be effective, otherwise
you would likely end up with the usual situation in a Balkanized area, The
Balkans Wars.
Ballot option for neither? Okay, but what then do you do if neither wins?
Not that this is an unsurmountable problem, I'm just interested as to which
solution/solutions you would suggest.
Uploads with unique encryption keys? This would provide an artificial
difference where one may not (initially) exist. And while I agree that they
are separate individuals at the first aware movement, they are still likely to
think a heck of a lot alike on broad issues for a long time to come. In fact,
the one big political difference that I see might develop between copies and
originals in using this system could be voting rights for copies. And what do
you do with destructive uploading? If only one upload is made, with all the
same memories, experiences, and opinions as the original, does this person
lose voting rights until they have established their residency post-upload?
If you do say they get to keep pre-upload voting rights, then how is this
equitable to uploads from non destructive techniques. And what of creation of
multiple uploads at the same instant from a destructive upload? I'm not
saying that you're wrong in your approach....honestly I don't know what the
best way to answer these questions are yet, and I'm trying to work my way
through it. In that respect, your comments on the issue are really helpful,
and I thank you for them.
I agree that division into multiple copies solely for the purpose of voting
amounts to voter fraud, but the sticky part is figuring out if the division
occurred for that purpose. This is where the residency requirement will be
most useful, since the longer you have to have existed in that area, the less
likely someone did it just to influence a vote. I suppose my main concern is
that people do not lose their vote simply because for unrelated reasons it is
best for them to divide (or just upload) near the time of a vote. Maybe the
best way to deal with this would be to combine the residency restriction with
the following rule: Anyone multiplying their mind after the residency deadline
still gets one vote, but who gets to vote in that election must be determined
before the actual multiplication (If only a single mind will exist as in a
destructive upload, then that entity gets the vote by default). For example,
let's say that I won a free non-destructive upload in a promotional campaign,
but it is only good for a month and there is an important vote coming up in a
month and a half. I am still trying to make up my mind on some of the issues.
What I might decide to do is cede my vote to my upload for this election,
since he'll be able to process this stuff a lot faster than me, and I trust
his inherited judgement. Or I could decide to keep it myself if I feel that
my upload might develop an opinion that I would not support, given the
difference in perspective. But there would only be one vote, and the
premultiplication person (who definitely would have qualified to vote) can
basically decide what to do with their proxy.
Borganisms with one vote....I suppose it depends on how closely integrated the
Borganism is. I can envision a whole spectrum of Borganization. What if the
Borganism is capable of having more than one opinion? It might have sixty
percent of itself that leans toward one approach, and forty percent that lean
toward another. Do those members of the Borganism lose their voices?
Of course, you could also make the argument that we are all, in a sense,
Borganisms with the various sections of our brain working both independently
(subconsciously) and interlinked (consciously), and even consciously I can be
of two minds on a subject. Often I would like to be able to instead of making
an all or nothing choice on various candidates, be able to rank them as to
their various desirability. That way if part of me likes one candidate, but
most of me likes another, I can throw proportionate support to both, and then
it will depend on how many other people's parts agree with my various parts.
Of course, I can envision doing this right now since we can roughly quantify
every single voter as making up 100% of a Borganism, and each voter having
aproximately the same amount of processors in their Borganism, therefore we
can simply have each voter weigh the various choices with a percentage, with
all percentages equally 100% for that voter. Actually, I believe that this
suggestion is akin to your suggestion that people be able to weigh their votes
depending how passionately they feel on the subject if we throw in those other
choices of either or neither. Example: Well, I think this position is right,
but I'm don't feel strongly about it, so I'll give position 1 50%, position 2
0%, the either choice 50%, the neither choice 0%, and 0% for my write-in
choice as I really don't have any alternatives to suggest at this time. This
way I throw some support to position 1, but I help ensure that the issue is
settled on this ballot, no matter what the outcome. Not sure that I would
vote this way, but some people might on an issue. Also, we could say that
people get a certain amount of weighing that they can attach to their votes
each year, but that it is finite. For example, say you get an extra 100
percentage point pool that can be added to any vote in any percentage, but
once used up it is gone until you get more the next year. These points could
disappear if they are not used year by year, or they could be accumulated
(although I can see this accumulation leading to an advantage for one issue
special interests as they could save up points to use only on the issue they
care about). I guess the real question should be, how do you calculate how
many points a Borganism should have?
Also, since a Borganism could conceivably make up a large proportion of your
society's cognitive resources, if we go on the theory that voting is the best
way to make decisions because it brings a large amount of parallel processing
to the problem being voted on, then wouldn't you be weighing the contribution
of the Borganism (which would likely be massively parallel, just better
interconnected) way too little? And as far as effect goes, if a Borganism in
your voting district comprises most of the population (for example, those
twelve thousand people who merged into our Borganism are still semi-
autonomous, and distinct physically), then wouldn't the Borganism be
disproportionately effected by any ballot initiative? Say that ninety percent
of the population are linked in the Borganism, but it only has one vote. The
Borganism votes for one candidate, but fifty-one percent of the remaining ten
percent of the population votes for the other candidate. Now this Borganism
is (or should I say, members of the Borganism are) being represented by
someone that only about five percent of the bodies in the district supported.
The problem with Borganisms having more than one vote is that since they have
a certain unity of experience and outlook, errors in the Borganism's
assumptions and approach would tend to propagate throughout the Borganism. So
in the end, though it would have more parallel processing power, it would be
processing in the end fairly homogenized information, which might dilute the
utility of its processing. Again, a LOT of what a Borganism is going to
depend on how it is structured, and at what level perception and processing
are integrated and to what degree.
Funding mandates, I like this concept....in fact, go check out my post on Flat
Taxes and check out the section on Philanthropic expenditures. I suppose we
could extend the concept to include Infrastructure expenditures as well. I
guess my question on the idea of a lottery would be why have a random element.
Why not simply say we have the following options which take equivelent funds,
you can vote with your funds for which one you want, with a direct
contribution to vote ratio. As soon as the vote reaches the amount needed to
fund one of these options, the one which received the most money gets it all.
You could set this up as a cascade, so that the losing propositions could then
be paired against each other and have the process continue until either no one
is willing to pay for any of them or they all get paid. Of course, this in no
way guarantees that smart decisions will be made, only ones that people are
willing to pay for. But ain't that always the case?
Glen Finney
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