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A UK college student explaining congressional procedure to Washington
- pootpucker 3y ago[dead]
- zoom6628 3y agoNothing ironic at all that a uni student immigrant from a former communist country now living in a monarchy should be an expert on parliamentary procedure of the supposed world champion of democracy.
- dakial1 3y agoAwesome to see this kind of use for the internet. People who are really passionate of a subject and can help educate other people on it. And if you think about it, this is what the internet, reddit, Twitter etc were at the beginning and this is what HN is today (hoping the barbarians don't reach us)
- tetris11 3y agoIt's not barbarians, its just sheer quantity. We are all snot-nosed loud and unexperienced brats in at least one topic, don't forget that.
- dylan604 3y agoIf you want to just stop at one, or the minimum, well, I guess that's fine. But some prefer to express themselves with more than the minimum. Do you want to just do the minimum?
- tetris11 3y agoTeenagers will frequent this site, and will say stupidly naive things about topics they know nothing of, and they will grow from it. It happened to me, it happened to you. It's not about people consistently bringing their A-game to HN because it's higher tier - most of its users are not far from their teenage counterparts. A very small minority of experts will weigh in on one topic, and because their audience is a few hundred people instead of a few tens of thousands, a discussion can actually form. Experts exist on every public forum in the world. Whether they are heard or not makes the difference. It's quantity that's the detrimental factor.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- klyrs 3y agoYou're taking this quite seriously, it makes me think you missed a cultural reference: GP is sarcastically quoting a movie.
- Xelbair 3y ago>Teenagers will frequent this site, and will say stupidly naive things about topics they know nothing of, and they will grow from it. To be honest the worst takes in here I've seen have been from long standing industry professionals.
- tetris11 3y agoI think I know what you mean, but even if I disagree with the professionals, I can't help but respect that their opinion is likely more informed than my own, at least in the high circles they revolve in.
- dylan604 3y ago> And if you think about it, this is what the internet, reddit, Twitter etc were at the beginning I would agree with you if you stopped at internet. By the time reddit and twitter came around, we'd already seen the trend of where things were going. they just took the knob and turned them to 11
- ysofunny 3y agokindof... not exactly back in the day, reddit was really like that, then digg collapsed after getting redesigned and then reddit started to dilute. that's when r/truereddit and later r/truetruereddit happened. but this is history by this point! truly there's something about "internet scale" that is still boggling our collective mind/culture to this day
- dylan604 3y ago> truly there's something about "internet scale" that is still boggling our collective mind/culture to this day to me, this is precisely why the echo chamber style places are the most popular. people just don't want to go some place to have their views challenged. the internet echo chambers are just internet scale versions of everyday life though. people hang out with like minded people. they prefer to live, shop, assemble with like minded people. it is the rare person that ventures of to areas that differ. the internet is just trying to homogenize itself, or the users are making it that way whether intentionally or not
- dakial1 3y agoWell, I think here in HN we have a healthy (and educated) level of challenge no? And it seems to have a broad audience in terms of knowledge (not only techies now) and also lots of countries and cultures. There is a point of critical mass that turns the community very toxic, I can pinpoint when exactly, but my guess is when you can't properly moderate everything anymore. The bigger the community the heavier the moderation.
- Amarok 3y agoIn the beginning there was Usenet. It was a wonderful microcosmos of technical expertise and niche hobbies. Then 1993 came and the constant flood of new users overwhelmed the culture and ability to enforce norms [1]. Truthfully, it didn't begin with Usenet. It's the old dilemma of universal access and freedom versus mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon. Even before that, Aristotle wrote "That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common." Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
- bmer 3y agoIt may also not be wrong to say: "those who know history, are destined to repeat it". "That which is the common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care..." is not a universal law, and it is easy to think of counterexamples. Without listing these, here are some axes that can govern which side of well-cared-for resources in the commons may end up: - the extent to which people hold cooperation to be an important ingredient, versus dispensable - the extent to which people are able to trust others, versus not - the extent to which a commonly held resource is considered as much a personal resource, as a common one, versus purely common and otherwise inconsequential - the extent to which people are able to value the importance (and impact) of small, consistent actions versus grand(iose) ones - the extent to which people are willing to learn from mistakes and change, versus the extent to which people feel entrenched and defensive Most of these come down to education, culture, and type of previous interactions with other humans.
- squiffsquiff 3y ago[flagged]
- anotherhue 3y agoPlease remove this cruel comment.
- mistermann 3y agoCruel? If anything, these abilities should be sought out and weaponized. The article did use the word "Savant" though, including in the caption for a photo...seems highly fitting to me.
- squiffsquiff 3y agoNot understanding why this is cruel. Let's just say I have more than a passing familiarity with autism, of which special interests are a common feature.
- anotherhue 3y agoThere are many other possible explanations for this person's abilities, and regardless of whether you are correct or not, it is their business. A drive by comment to label them as 'different' is unneeded, unwarranted and in poor taste.
- bowsamic 3y agoThe fact that you so innately equate autistic with “different” that you put it in quotes falsely implying it is in the comment you replied to is far more offensive than anything the person you’re replying to said
- anotherhue 3y agoThank you for your reply but I will not be continuing this interaction.
- anotherhue 3y agoWhat an incredible skill, I hope he can find a way to put it to use, versus getting lost in the mire of early career corporate climbing.
- reader_x 3y agoThe nonpartisan Congressional Research Service could use his skills immediately and his peers there would appreciate and enjoy his skills.
- jvanderbot 3y agoIn 5 years this will be an LLM bot. But since it's been going a while we can't claim that.
- darth_avocado 3y agoI am willing to bet that this already is an AI model. A recall of less than a min with proof is not humanely possible.
- MarkusQ 3y agoTwo words for you: Jon Skeet. https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/01/15/thanks-million-jon-skeet/ https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/01/15/thanks-million-jon-ske...
- dylan604 3y agoI find it kind of sad for you that you have not yet met a savant. Spending time with someone that has more than encyclopedic knowledge is very interesting, and even sometimes creepy. But that can be said about any super human ability regardless of the form it takes.
- wizzwizz4 3y agoI manage that maybe 20% of the time. It's definitely possible. I could get that much higher if I had a good way to index resources: as-is, I have to resort to exhaustive search when I can't remember an exact phrase, and that can take upwards of half an hour. I'm definitely not on @ringwiss's level.
- sublinear 3y agoWe finally found a category of use cases for LLMs that have strong user acceptance: wading through endless bureaucracy. Even the impact of hallucination is minimal because the humans do that all the time!
- dmd 3y agoWhat does this have to do with LLMs?
- azemetre 3y agoIME LLMs are decent at summarizing text, I can see how it can help summarize various processes that must be done. I am unsure how it summarizes truly novel things tho, I would assume it might hallucinate more but haven't experimented much.
- dylan604 3y agoI wouldn't be surprised to see an account that used an LLM to do this very thing for any concept
- the8472 3y agoTheir bureaucracy-navigators will be no match for our bureaucracy-generators.
- IIAOPSW 3y agoIs this a generator-adversary network?
- rqtwteye 3y agoThat's my prediction. I have fed some extremely tedious enterprise contracts into ChatGPT and got a nice summary and answers for my questions. It wasn't perfect but with some tuning I think this will work really well.
- snowwrestler 3y agoThis Twitter account, and the DC scene reaction to it, is actually a condemnation of our current state of American national politics and government. People are acting like this guy is some sort of savant. But we're talking about knowledge that a 20 year old UK college student picked up in his spare time by watching TV and reading a few books. It's not rocket science! Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex as what you need to know to build an average office building, something that is being done all over the U.S. every day to a very high level of competence. The commentary on this Twitter account (including this article) says way more about the people commenting on it. Specifically it reveals how few national politicians, consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some history. All of which is freely available to anyone.
- namdnay 3y agoNo one ever got elected to higher office for putting their head down and doing a good job It’s kind of similar to office politics in a way, you have to spend most of your effort on visibility
- boznz 3y ago..and for every person who does put their head down and do a good job, there is a politician behind them taking the credit.
- slyall 3y agoSome politicians will know a lot more about procedure. Especially if they want to go for a leadership position. People like Lyndon Johnson knew Senate rules backward. If you could win or lose a critical vote based on some obscure rule last used 30 years ago it was worth learning them.
- astrea 3y agoI agree, it’s quite the scathing indictment. This is nothing to be proud or excited about. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing politicians lack, it’s shame. Also, what does that say about Georgetown’s program?
- FactKnower69 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- throw__away7391 3y agoI think everyone is entitled to choose what they do with their own life/time.
- waltbosz 3y agoI had this idea to create some sort of gamified RPG battle log format for government procedure. Members of government would be characters in the battle, actions like amendments/comments/votes would be attacks/spells/defensive moves (not respectively). Monsters would be the bills/resolutions/etc. Then you could playback a session of congress/etc as a battle. The purpose would be to mystify the procedure and analogize it to something people are more familiar with.
- NoToP 3y agoI've had a similar idea for a card game like yugioh but all the cards represent court instruments like affidavits and subpoenas and instead of mana points actions in game are measured in money.
- HPsquared 3y agoThere are some games that attempt to simulate the political process. "Democracy 4" for instance. PC game, not tabletop, but might be a source of inspiration.
- bdw5204 3y agoI don't think any game has really done full justice to the political process yet. The Democracy series is very limited in terms of its model and obviously the games about elections (like President Infinity) only cover the elections. They bore me really quickly because it is really easy to break the model and end up unable to lose elections and with nothing to do. It'd also be very hard to create a truly great political simulator because few people who'd be interested in doing that are going to be detached enough[0] to create a truly balanced and realistic game that stays compelling decades or even centuries into the game like Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball does. Basically, I'm thinking of something much more complicated than Victoria that would be set in the present and be able to generate a different plausible future on every playthrough. [0]: Most people seem to see policy outcomes and even the range of possibilities through the lens of their own worldview. The Democracy series, in particular, breaks because it assumes constant linear changes in the number of people in certain interest groups based on your policies. But in reality, you are never going to get 100% of society to be religious no matter how much the governments subsidizes religion, passes theocratic laws and promotes it in the schools. That's why the Spanish Inquisition was so infamously paranoid about the possibility of a few people secretly not being Catholic.
- jl6 3y agoAlways great to see someone who’s found their passion. This guy proves that it can be truly anything.
- animal_spirits 3y agoThis makes me think of the fun people get with sports, tons of information over a long history with lots of stories. Imagine how many people we can get into politics with a fantasy congress! It would be like fantasy sports but you choose your representatives.
- ekglimmer 3y agoFor a second I missed the irony here, genuinely thought to myself 'wow that would be awesome'. Just joined my first fantasy league so I am gung-ho on fantasy now, apologies.
- IIAOPSW 3y agoI'm still missing the irony here.
- throwaway0665 3y agoYou "supposedly" already choose your representatives.
- ekglimmer 3y agoI wonder how many layers of irony we can get here.
- ryukoposting 3y ago> It would be like fantasy sports but you choose your representatives. Cheeky. I think there's something here, though. High school civics classes have Model UN, why not gamify congressional proceedings in a similar way? You'd have to simplify the rules a bit, I guess.
- breakingrules 3y ago[dead]
- jbjbjbjb 3y agoMaybe the bar is just set super low? The guy started following US politics in 2020 and now he’s a savant. And isn’t this just normal twitter use? I know I’ve woken up and entered a debate on Twitter and then misspent a morning researching and going back and forth on Twitter.
- vidarh 3y agoIt's "normal" Twitter use, but the identity of the average Twitter user does not end up being the speculation of Washington insiders because of their insight.
- romwell 3y ago>Maybe the bar is just set super low? Or maybe it isn't, and this person is a rare savant? The article presents a very clear case that it's the latter, but I guess it's much easier for some to dismiss an entire field as inept than to accept that there's a 20-year-old savant somewhere in the UK. >And isn’t this just normal twitter use? From the article: no.
- account-5 3y agoI might be wrong but I think the OP was critising US politics rather than the UK student.
- romwell 3y agoThe critique is based upon an implicit, unstated assumption that the UK student is not extraordinary. The conclusion that "the bar is set very low" follows from that. Note that utltmately, knowing the intricacies of procedures and protocols to find loopholes to abuse in the letter of the law has not been a component of politics until very recently.
- account-5 3y agoThat's the thing about implicit things though. You read it as an implicit critique of a UK student, I read it as an implicit critique of US politics being so dumb that a UK student can become an expert in a few short years. Until the OP comments about the actual intention behind their statement we'll never know. This is a whole different discussion though, especially now-a-days when you can get in trouble for "implicit" this and that irrespective of intention. I personally don't think it's a recent thing for politicians to be looking for loopholes, pretty sure that's one of the main jobs of any politician.
- ilamont 3y agoSurdy first began following American politics during the 2020 election, which he said many of his friends and peers in the UK paid close attention to as well. An outgrowth of a globally connected information source is the transfer of political interest and influence (beyond pop culture) to other countries in ways that wouldn't have happened in the past. From the Economist in 2022: British politics is obsessed with America. mps, wonks and journalists gorge on American history and follow its politics in fine detail. They also ape its language. Local elections, when council voters decide who has the privilege of collecting bins and cutting services to pay for social care, are sometimes called “mid-terms”. Parts of Britain are occasionally labelled “flyover country”, even if 90% of the population lives within a four-hour drive of Northampton." https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/19/uksa-an-obsession-with-america-pollutes-british-politics https://www.economist.com/britain/2022/05/19/uksa-an-obsessi... Then there was the Canadian trucker protests, in which some cited their "First Amendment rights": Tamara Lich, the Alberta woman whose GoFundMe campaign raised over $10 million for the convoy, and her husband had their day in court—and Dwayne Lich said he was innocent, because: “Honestly? I thought it was a peaceful protest and based on my First Amendment, I thought that was part of our rights.” The judge then asked, “What do you mean, First Amendment? What’s that?” Because, of course, the First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution, not the Canadian Charter. https://www.thebulwark.com/no-the-canadian-trucker-protests-are-not-really-comparable-to-jan-6th/ https://www.thebulwark.com/no-the-canadian-trucker-protests-... (Apparently, there is a first amendment in the Canadian Constitution, but it is the right to recognize Manitoba as a province.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba_Act,_1870 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manitoba_Act,_1870
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ViktorRay 3y agoThe British fascination with America is indeed quite fascinating. I think Britain recently even decided to get a Supreme Court. You have British politicians now talking about the independence of the judiciary* and other philosophical ideas that are present frequently in American discourse but I guess is new for Britain now that they recently got an independent Supreme Court. *This, by the way, happened in a Prime Minister's Questions thing a few years ago. Jeremy Corbyn asked PM Theresa May if she would respect the "independence of the judiciary" regarding some UK Supreme Court ruling and PM May said she would.
- CSMastermind 3y agoFor all the downsides to anonymity online the ability to establish aliases and build trust using them is a powerful tool for online community building. This and the case of Beff Jezos really make a strong argument for not mandating everyone's online id be tied to their real world one.
- lfnoise 3y ago"stepped foot" -> "set foot" please. http://www.stephenhprovost.com/on-writing/set-foot http://www.stephenhprovost.com/on-writing/set-foot
- dschuma 3y agoI'm one of the people quoted in the article and most of the others quoted are my peers. A bunch of us have worked on Capitol Hill as staff; several of us worked for Congress's think tank; others have written books on Congress. I say this only to emphasize my point that what Ringwiss has done is truly remarkable. He has an apparent deep understanding of the rules of procedure that govern the House and the Senate, which are very different from one another, and he can keep them straight. I wouldn't have the patience to watch the floor for hours on end, and while I'm sure I could read through the precedents, it's doubtful that I could retain in active memory more than a fraction. I have read the House and Senate rules cover to cover, more than once -- but that's not the same as being able to operationalize them and recall it at an instant, and it's also not the same as digging through the precedents and understanding what they mean. That comes from a lot of practice. Besides having a particular interest in the topic, my suspicion is Ringwiss has an eidetic memory. He is a remarkable person and I'm glad that he's doing what he does. In my opinion, the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them. The procedures are used to gather power in the hands of a few, which undermines their original purpose: to facilitate orderly debate and empower all the members equally. I compare them to Roberts Rules of Order, Revised, which are straightforward enough that most people can grasp them with a reading or two. As I said, what he's doing is remarkable, but it's also remarkable that few can do what he's doing.
- snowwrestler 3y ago> In my opinion, the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them. The procedures are used to gather power in the hands of a few, which undermines their original purpose: to facilitate orderly debate and empower all the members equally. I disagree, and so does Surdy, as noted extensively in the latter part of this article. Congressional power is gathered and perpetuated primarily through means outside Congressional procedure like fundraising, PAC distributions, control of party apparatus, committee assignments, endorsements, PR, etc. Members of Congress have quite a lot of procedural power but choose not to exercise it in the face of these other incentives. This is not a view specific to Surdy; other parliamentary experts like James Wallner sound the same tune. Those incentives also therefore dominate the attention of most staff, lobbyists, journalists, etc who make a living supporting, influencing, and covering members of Congress. This is the primary reason so few bother to put in the work to do what Surdy does. I don’t mean to minimize the intelligence and hard work of Surdy, which is impressive. He may have a significant advantage by being so far from the Beltway bubble that he can ignore all that politics stuff above and just sink into the pure procedure. He’s also free to tweet. There are other people in DC with at least the same level of parliamentary command, but generally they make a living by providing that expertise privately to those willing to pay for it.
- lupire 3y agoIt's so sad that this amazing resource is locked up on Twitter.
- irrational 3y agoThat was my thought. I’d love to read his stuff, but I’m not willing to use twitter/x to do so.
- JackFr 3y agoPedantic nitpick: > Matt Glassman — a congressional scholar at Georgetown who has spent most of his adult life studying the Hill — wanted to know the answer to an obscure procedural question. “When was the last time a ruling of the chair was overturned on appeal in the House?” he asked on X, tagging an anonymous user named @ringwiss. > Less than a minute later, the mysterious account responded with an answer — 1938 — and a decades-old edition of the Congressional Record to prove it. No, a copy of the 1938 Congressional record does not prove that. The question was “When was the last time…?” I don’t doubt that he’s correct, and the error is on the part of the writer, but what he’s proven is that the answer can’t be earlier than 1938. And yes, very much a pedantic nitpick in an otherwise interesting article.
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- simonbarker87 3y agoI’m going to be pedantic but he’s not a college student in the UK, he’s a university student in the UK. College is where UK students study from 16 to 18. He’s 20 studying at Durham University.
- vidarh 3y agoMost UK universities consists of colleges [1], and you study at one of them. Durham is one of the ones that has colleges [2]. He is this both studying at Durham University and in a college. While you're right the terms are usually used the way you point out in British English, and it would have been unusual for a British article to describe him as a college student because it'd be misleading, if being pedantic the language used is technically correct even when used in the UK. Certainly when writing American English in a US publication about the UK. [1] Not all, as far as I know. E.g. I don't think LSE or Kings or any of the other former University of London colleges that are now full universities in their own right have their own colleges (they're still part of University of London, but gained the right to apply for university status in 2018) but I might be wrong about that. [2] https://www.studentgoodguide.com/apply-to-university/best-durham-colleges/ https://www.studentgoodguide.com/apply-to-university/best-du...
- Symbiote 3y agoNo, very few universities in Britain are structured in this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_within_universities_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colleges_within_universities_i...
- vidarh 3y agoIn any case the fact remains that the person in question goes to one of the ones with colleges. It's in any case largely moot to how a US publication describes him, and that was a tongue in cheek way of making the point that if you're going to pick and choose which part of the context you care about, that goes both ways.
- zeristor 3y ago
- kthejoker2 3y agoThe thing I hate the most about politics is how id-driven it can be (give me soulless technocrats any day) so seeing this warmed my heart.