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Systems shape behavior yea. This is why I'm always arguing for changing constitutions instead of being angry at politicians. If the system sucks, it produces su
by boxed 3y ago
Systems shape behavior yea. This is why I'm always arguing for changing constitutions instead of being angry at politicians. If the system sucks, it produces sucky policy. Being angry at the politicians is like being angry at water for flowing down hill.
- euroderf 3y agoAlternative voting systems (like STV) will help a LOT.
- Aerroon 3y agoI don't think they would make any real difference. The main problem is the voters. Apathy, misplaced interests, buying into lies etc are all things that negatively affect the outcome regardless of the system.
- patcon 3y agoQuadratic voting is even more interesting! It's like voting power + consilience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consilience A voting system that aspires to boost uncorrelated signals, and attenuate highly correlated signals. Said another way, ideas with more support from a diversity of otherwise non-agreeing parties gets it's voting power boosted. So plurality wins. Convergence of knowledge from different sources of truth, that wins too. And a group that's very similar to itself, voting one way, that gets de-voiced. Which is appropriate, because it's not interesting and not a dynamic agreement, and says nothing about deeper underlying unity and truth. Agreement across difference means there's something powerful going on, so we want that signal elevated
- Rygian 3y agoA project to change constitutions needs to be pushed by politicians. But politicians suck, which implies they will not be inclined to push for constitution changes. So the system converges to a suck-state.
- Rygian 3y agoI wrote this comment as a sort of factual observation of cause and effect. However, I see it is downvoted without replies. What have I missed?
- xedrac 3y agoChange constitutions to what? I think people are far too quick to throw away things they don't fully understand the value of.
- boxed 3y agoWell.. it doesn't HAVE to be. But the alternative is revolution, which is often (always?) much worse than the sucky system in the first place. That's why we are stuck here. But I do think it's possible to have change. I am an optimist. But first we need to try different things on a smaller scale. Municipalities is a good level.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nindalf 3y ago> People on the side of The People always ended up disappointed, in any case. They found that The People tended not to be grateful or appreciative or forward-thinking or obedient. The People tended to be small-minded and conservative and not very clever and were even distrustful of cleverness. And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. Terry Pratchett.
- a_c 3y agoIn my past experience building internal tools, the customer (colleagues) is one major source of feature requests. It rarely ends well. From their perspective, feature requests never get addressed. What was built is rarely what they perceived most helpful. What seemed most helpful was a forever moving target, there are always next most important thing to have. Without internal tool building, people bend their workflow to suit the tools, have second tier support if any, the tool has no empathy on your particular business context, close to or no involvement on roadmap. But hey, at least less complaint from the people, I mean the colleague
- boxed 3y agoI build internal tools and I regularly build things that, while not what they asked for, the users are glad to get in the end since it was a car and not a faster horse. My biggest problem has always been that users are used to software being "Stone Tablets from the Mountain" and so instinctively work around the tool instead of just asking me to fix it. Which is reasonable mostly since almost all the software they (and me!) have ever used is very much like this. This isn't only a discussion about software though, but about government. The citizens don't even report problems because they assume they will be ignored. So the government stops listening because there is nothing to listen to. Round and round it goes.
- graemep 3y agoTrue to an extent, but that does not always mean they are wrong. Being conservative in a Chesterton's fence way is a good thing. Being opposed to rapid change is more often (not always, but more often) right than wrong. Not being clever is offset by their knowledge of their own everyday problems and priorities.
- BjoernKW 3y agoThe thing is - other than by revolution - it's those exact politicians, who have the power to change constitutions.
- boxed 3y agoYea. That's a fundamental flaw built into modern constitutions.
- graemep 3y agoHowever, they can be pushed into doing so. Brexit is a good example. It is not always framed in those terms, but it is a significant constitutional change (it removed a legislative body, removed a layer of judiciary, and a lot more) that happened despite the vast majority of politicians opposing it. Of course it is controversial and those opposed to it often argue that we should not allow "the people" that much power because they are too foolish to have it - but then that power shifts to politicians and bureaucrats.
- carlosjobim 3y agoDisagree. It is a huge mistake that intelligent people make and especially hackers make, to think that human behaviour can be fixed or controlled through some kind of abstract system. You can have the most wonderful constitution and laws in the world, but they mean nothing if the people and the culture aren't up for it. People can not be controlled the same way you control your docker images in Linux root. Rotten politicians and leaders are not because of any lacking in some "system", it is because you have a rotten people. And getting people to a higher level is very difficult, but not impossible.
- glitchc 3y agoThis. Politicians reflect the people they serve. Every time.
- boxed 3y agoAnd the voting system that put them there. A plus+minus vote system would create different patterns.
- boxed 3y agoWell.. partly yes of course. But it's also partially about systems. For example modern democracies all accept "one person, one vote" but that rule of engagement is part of the reason we have polarizing political systems. If we had "one person, one minus and one plus vote" the situation would be very different. It's of course true that if the people don't support the system they can overthrow it, like Maost China, Tsarist Russia, Revolutionary USA, and closer to home here in Sweden we have had several total rewrites of the constitution. So at the very bottom the people have to accept the system to some degree. But all this doesn't mean the system doesn't influence behavior. It does. A LOT. Just go into Reddit with the up/down vote system with publicly viewable vote counts on each comment and see what that does to the debate climate. It's bad!