7 ms·
Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation
- eikenberry 8mo agoMore at https://compdemocracy.org/ https://compdemocracy.org/ and source code at https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis https://github.com/compdemocracy/polis.
- tamimio 8mo agoWhat I am more interested in seeing, hopefully, in the future is the ability to cast citizens' votes directly on any matter, act, bill, etc., and get rid of the representatives in parliament/congress/etc. It is more transparent that way, and end lobbying with all the corruption it has. No more traditional voting for a "person" anymore and relying on trust; rather, you trust no one and vote directly. We have the proper digital infrastructure and technology to make it happen. We are far more connected than we were back when these ancient processes were created. That way, it's truly the power of the people compared to the power of whoever can get the wealthy to support their campaign. If this won't work "because a lot of people are ignorant!" then you put effort into educating them. Otherwise, it also means our current democracies are nothing but a charade to fool the public with a false illusion of choices.
- saulpw 8mo agoRegardless of ignorance, people don't vote even every year or two, because it's inconvenient, they're busy, and they become cynical after months of negative campaigning on both sides. We need "assigned voting" where you can assign your vote to another person, who then can assign their votes to another person, etc, creating a chain of voting hierarchy such that a few people control large numbers of aggregate votes, and in most cases that's enough to decide things and get things done. People can always un-assign/re-assign their votes (shifting the political landscape), or even override their assigned vote on a particular bill, if they disagree with their "elected" representative.
- johnecheck 8mo agoYou're describing Liquid Democracy[1]. Seems challenging to implement but definitely an interesting idea. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_democracy
- saulpw 8mo agoI didn't know this had a name, thank you so much!
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- pixl97 8mo ago> and get rid of the representatives >and end lobbying with all the corruption it has. You never get rid of these people, you just move who they are. Now Mr Beast and whoever is slipping him cash is your political representative because of the power of their parasocial relationships. >"because a lot of people are ignorant!" then you put effort into educating them. This won't work, not because people are ignorant, but because of entropy. As a human you can only learn so much so fast and you don't have time to learn everything that a government knows or does. You're going to remain ignorant on most complicated things because that's the default state of the universe. People with money/power still have more time and effort available to push the vote their way, and they will target the education first (much like right now).
- econ 8mo agoYou can do diplomas for different parts of government and assign ranks to voters based on their familiarity with the topic. Then you can share the voting results by how informed people are. If I don't know much about the topic buy those who do say we should go to war with the martians it might change my opinion. You can also use it as a trigger to create media attempting to objectively inform the oblivious if they drift to far away. These should be large expensive efforts with not-propaganda at the top of the agenda. Show the giant weapon the martians are building in earth orbit. You can also keep the representatives as the default vote. That way, if their financial backers or those blackmailing them try to sneak in their usual bullshit you can log in and change the vote. If the representatives picks their own representative anyone can be your representative. You can at any time change your vote to your mum and ignore politics I also envision each law requiring a minimum number of yes votes to be activated and a minimum number of no to deactivate. If there are few enough yes votes and enough no's the law is deleted. You can change your vote at any time. Have some algorithm to implement the changes over time so that Mr beast has to make many months of effort. Government employees are to work on new law proposals to replace the least popular ones. If they fail to read the room hard enough first their salary is reduced and eventually they get fired algorithmically. If they get it right often enough we increase their salary endlessly but they still get fired if they get it wrong repeatedly. If they don't know anymore new courses and new diplomas are created. I also want to give the voter a monthly payment for each diploma they got. Asking people to do important work for free makes no sense. How much is up to the voters.
- Defletter 8mo agoIt's pretty frustrating when something advertises itself as open source and yet there's no link to its source to be found. There's even a footer that says "Polis is powered by support from people like you. Contribute here." But it's just a financial donation link.
- davidw 8mo agoInteresting, but how's it work out when people believe in "alternative facts"? That seems to be a pretty big problem in many places. I think I can find some common ground with people who have different views on corporate taxation if we both go over some data and economics and think about it and consider various tradeoffs. Especially if we chat face to face to avoid any 'keyboard warrior' effects. I probably can't find much common ground with people that believe that condensed water vapor formed by the passage of airplanes is actually a mind control device from the planet Zargon.
- Taikonerd 8mo agoIIUC, this was a finding when they ran the Polis experiments in Taiwan: when you map the arguments of the different sides, there are actually large areas of agreement. In other words, the median person who disagrees with you is a "potential common ground" guy, not a "planet Zargon" guy.
- protocolture 8mo agoI find that the median person who disagrees with me, actually agrees with me, but I accidentally triggered their social media PTSD and they flagged me as an enemy because I didnt slavishly polish their preferred set of boots.
- Nathanba 8mo agoThat too is a major problem, in theory you could be posing fine questions but they are already politically or socially tainted so it's game over before it even started, you will get zero actual new thought from the person you asked.
- Nathanba 8mo agoWhat I don't understand about Polis though is who is creating these less biased polls full of unbiased positions that people can vote on? It takes a lot of intelligence and wisdom to even formulate a question that isn't tainted by layers and layers of political innuendo. You can't just put something like "Do you believe in the rights of the unborn child?" into a system like this and expect quality outcomes. I guess the theory is that you put the entire spectrum of positions on the line which allows fully biased positions on each end to exist. Then biased people on both ends will vote on slightly less and less biased positions that they still agree with and you'll see the true shared positions. But I still think that if you don't have a perfectly equal number of positions to vote on for each side you'll end up with the same problem we already have in society, people are being given biased questions not necessarily by strength but by amount. Therefore they will subconsciously and consciously conclude that the world wants them to be more towards the position that had more questions presented.
- amarant 8mo agoMan the name really threw me for a minute. Polis is the correct spelling for police in my native Swedish and I got through the first 2 paragraphs wondering what any of this has to do with law enforcement. Then it dawned on me. Edit to add: I think the white and blue theme helps. Those are police colours in Sweden...
- afandian 8mo agoDitto Scotland.
- kej 8mo ago(Jared) Polis is the current governor of Colorado, so I was also confused but in a different direction.
- WCSTombs 8mo agoThe name must be taken from Greek. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polis
- croisillon 8mo agounsurprisingly, the word police comes from polis
- mentalgear 8mo agoThese are the genre of consensus tools I would like to see used in SM. Just imagine: a system that actually helps people exchange atomic, clear arguments and come to an informed consensus. The internet could have really been a great tool to bring humanity together, if it was structured in that way for the common good. Instead we get SM where mud-battles and the resulting polarization are part of the perverse business model: engagement drives revenue, and there's no better way to keep people engaged than with a loop of extreme emotions and comments shouting the same shallow arguments at each other all over again without any meaningful progress. Only imagine how quiet those platforms would become if discussions were actually structured for consensus instead of dissensus. I mean, yeah, a huge win for society - but a big loss of money, distraction and control for Elon, Zuckerberg and their BS billionaire friends.
- chrisweekly 8mo agoSM?
- kaveh_h 8mo ago“Social media”
- mmooss 8mo ago> atomic ... arguments Why is that especially valuable, according to your vision?
- nozzlegear 8mo agoDamn you governor polish! /s Jokes aside, this looks interesting. I have my doubts about the grandiosity of the claims re: helping entire "cities, states, or even countries find common ground on complex issues," but I'm somewhat captivated by the idea of using it for local issues in cities or small towns like mine.
- laurex 8mo agoThe Taiwan experiments were pretty interesting! for example https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/27/taiwan-civic-hackers-polis-consensus-social-media-platform https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/27/taiwan-civic-h...
- totetsu 8mo agoAnd the people trying to set up digital elections in Hong Kong until they got squashed by the security law
- sapphicsnail 8mo agoI don't understand the utility of this. Maybe it works for things like noise ordinances, but I can't imagine finding common ground with people who want me dead or imprisoned simply for existing.
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- movedx 8mo agoEvery Body Corporate Strata in Australia basically goes through something like this at least once a year (by law.) Questions are posed about what to vote on and you either vote for, against, or abstain. Something like Polis would be good for putting forward ideas throughout the year leading up to the vote, as it would find a consensus of ideas and help shape what you eventually vote on (you decide as a body corporate.) Some Strata are hundreds of people in size.
- anigbrowl 8mo agoHundreds of people is a village. I don't feel this is responsive to GP's point.
- lazyasciiart 8mo agoAre you referencing a body corporate vote on trans rights or something?
- gpm 8mo agoThose people came to those views somehow. I'd hope that a less radicalizing social media platform might move them away from those views. Finding common ground isn't just about figuring out where people currently agree, it's also an act of persuasion convincing people to change views to then-mutually shared views. Wanting people dead or imprisoned simply for existing is the sort of inconsistent view that is likely easiest to change by moving people out of radicalized spaces...
- lazyasciiart 8mo ago
- cpill 8mo ago> Building on a foundation of simple but solid statistical algorithms from a decade ago I wonder what algorithms they are talking about? Can't find any papers referenced :( Looking at the clustering code it looks like they are using kd-trees with knn. Old skool!
- goda90 8mo agoWhat are some strategies a platform like this can take against spam or influence bots? Tying real life identities to users would certainly limit that(though identity theft and account selling could still happen), but that adds friction to joining, poses security risks, and many people might feel less comfortable putting their opinions openly online where backlash could impact real life.
- acgourley 8mo agoWe really need proof of soul systems to exist, extended to also have a proof of citizenship. While the proof of soul systems can plausible be done in a decentralized manner, proof of citizenship is much harder, and in my opinion this is one of (the few) things the government should really do.
- Lerc 8mo agoEither I'm not sure what you mean by soul, or you are all-in on dualism.
- acgourley 8mo agoSorry the term of art is really soulbound identity right now, I use POS but it's less common. Definitions vary but I say a useful system must allow people to endorse statements with evidence they are a) alive b) not able to be represented by more than one identity (id is linked to your entire soul, not a persona or facet of your being) c) a kind of socially recognized person (human in the expected case) and then layer on citizenship on top if you want to use this for polling, voting, etc.
- Lerc 8mo agoDo you believe you are capable of doing that yourself?
- throwup238 8mo ago
- jph00 8mo agoThe x.com/twitter "Community Notes" feature is based on this algorithm, BTW. (Disclaimer: I'm on the board of the org that runs Polis.)
- IhateAI 8mo ago[dead]
- jackbravo 8mo agoI don't see anything but an inactive account on that link.
- kwk1 8mo agoIt's not meant to be a link, rather "X (formerly Twitter)"
- ryanmcbride 8mo agoyou thought they had the username twitter?
- jamesbelchamber 8mo agoThis is incredibly cool tech built on an idea of participatory, consensus-building democracy that I want to believe is possible and sustainable.
- Bloating 8mo agoCool. Deploying ClawBot(s)... 3.. ?... 1
- dsr_ 8mo agoHow does it defend against corruption by the folks operating it? I'm especially thinking of biased seed statements, source bias, and burial of important items in irrelevant gublish.
- Lerc 8mo agoAre there any details on how they managed organised bad actors? The moderation stuff seems targeted mostly on keeping a lid on trolls and tempers.
- ninjagoo 8mo agoSociety is not ready for an AI world: any platform that does not guarantee anonymity will be of limited utility for social discourse in a world lurching towards authoritarianism, and any platform that does guarantee anonymity can no longer reliably distinguish human from ai; not that that should matter when it's ideas that are being debated. But the bigger issue is the control of money: hierarchical institutions disintermediate workers from the way the fruits of their labor are put to use. Money spent or paid in taxes is aggregated and misused by third parties against the wishes and against the providers of that money. Essentially, your labor is used against you. This is true regardless of where someone is on the political spectrum. A platform for debate or voting isn't going to resolve this fundamental problem.
- worldsayshi 8mo agoI believe we can solve both anonymity + proof-of-humanity using zero-knowledge proofs that act as intermediary between a trusted identity provider and the service provider. I.e. you get a digital id but you use it to generate proofs rather than handing out your identity. Right?
- Zaskoda 8mo agoRelated: https://www.proofofpersonhood.how/ https://www.proofofpersonhood.how/
- worldsayshi 8mo ago> PoP makes it possible to prove "I am unique" without giving up privacy. Ah, very nice! I have been trying to figure out if this was possible!
- judahmeek 8mo agoThe algorithm used here is ring verifiable random functions, which only provides plausible deniability, nothing more. Proof of personhood would require proof that every entity in the ring was an actual person.
- 8mo ago
- tamimio 8mo agoAssuming this platform ever get popular, it will succumb to the same problems that we see everyday on social media, botting, shilling, manipulation, fear tactics, celebrity following, you name it, and I am not sure we can get rid of these on a technical level, rather, on culture and education levels. Also, the graph feature, it seems a bit suspicious, it feels like it will be used to see where the majority of opinions about something then used by candidates to manipulate the public about the XYZ popular opinion, which is affirming our current politics right now, instead of actual leadership that changes the public opinion. It’s similar to those YouTubers who usually start with decent contents only later to change it to title clickbait cringy ones because they are following the audience.
- tracker1 8mo agoIt will be overrun by those who have no job, family or responsibilities... it would be a free for all mess.
- ddtaylor 8mo agoI tried to see a demo after signing up, but that's probably for the other side of things. I was curious how this compares to what I submitted today as others said it's similar to some government stuff https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46993774
- burnt-resistor 8mo agoPopularity contests rarely lead to efficient or ethical outcomes. Just as Socrates.
- thomasfl 8mo agoWhat are the use cases for Polis? Can it be used for city planning? It is a complex task with a lot of compronises to design towns.
- chapz 8mo agoBasically a glorified online survey tool.
- JanisErdmanis 8mo agoThis is the best way to look on this. Furthermore these surveys are susceptible to bias introduced by the varying degrees of participant engagement. One application I could see for such tools is distill some of participant generated proposals that could be rectified in a further surveys or referenda.
- tummler 8mo agoLove the idea, discussed doing something similar with a friend around the late 2000s but never did. Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> Hate to say it, but the concept needs to be gamified and turned into an app. This is the only way you’re gonna get the average citizen today to engage. Need to implement viral loops and gamification to even get peoples’ attention on something like this, much less hold it. No, I don't think that's true. First I'm not sure I even agree that all "average citizens" should need to engage, it has to engage the ones that cares, not absolutely everyone. And I don't think success should be measured in "engagement" here, but I'm also not a laissez-faire capitalist, so maybe that's where the difference comes in. There are similar platforms in relatively wide usage already, https://decidim.org/ https://decidim.org/ being one of them, and as far as I know has zero gamification, because again, "engagement" as in "users spend time on the website" isn't and shouldn't be the goal here.
- patcon 8mo agoHaha oof, the one day I wasn't checking hackernews, my obsession project comes up :) I'm working on a Google Maps for human perspectives, that extends polislike vote data: https://patcon.github.io/polislike-human-cartography-prototype-v2/#perspective-explorer https://patcon.github.io/polislike-human-cartography-prototy... A presentation on my old prototype, describing my philosophy behind extending the tool: (the first 15 min gives the gist) https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSqo_m4cL2Q&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoFrVNXlpbEgSDtaJ7q_fx0l&index=7&t=2708s&pp=iAQBsAgC https://youtube.com/watch?v=sSqo_m4cL2Q&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoFrV... And a shorter video talking about plotting routes through "perspective space": every route is a chain of people with the most continuous chain of values (for e.g., from progressive left to alt right)... what might it be to host an event or conversation with the members of such a trajectory through perspective space? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-SMbs1reE&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoFrVNXlpbEgSDtaJ7q_fx0l&index=12&pp=iAQBsAgC https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3v-SMbs1reE&list=PLMgSnvCsIgoF...
- patcon 8mo agoAnd I'm also building a research tool for more easily mining such data for democratic insight: https://patcon.github.io/valency-anndata/ https://patcon.github.io/valency-anndata/ I believe we can make maps of reactions [to information] on topics of societal impact, and we can literally make a new "National Weather Service" for helping as many people as possible understand the storms we live within, in a near instantaneous and fully enfranchised way.
- aroheir 8mo agoSoul weight diet plan where P(∆) determines the Kama strength in loss between parameters at distance ∆. Thus ∆=2log|t_2-t_1|+0(1) means system is correlated in hyperbolic metric.
- clcaev 8mo agoThirty years ago I was enthusiastic about what we now call liquid democracy. Elders, to whom I spoke that lived through WWII, saw dynamic+direct democracy as extremely dangerous. I now share their opinion. To have a healthy world, we need to start with democratic engagement on every block, of every district in every city, in all counties of every province, in all nations across every continent of our shared planet. Critically, it must be completely human mediated, even if it is daily effort for most people everywhere. This is how we must spend our "great AI productivity boost". I am responding to nested comments; this is not meant to diminish the importance of the linked effort.
- tracker1 8mo agoI'm of a similar mindset... pure/liquid democracy is literally rule by mob. It can only amplify choices made by feeling over substance. As an ideal, I've always favored a libertarian mindset... my freedom should extend so far as it doesn't impede on another's rights. Which is a really broad interpretation... I think the further we allow govt to get away from that, the worse things get over time. Freedom is important.
- keybored 8mo ago> I'm of a similar mindset... pure/liquid democracy is literally rule by mob. Rule by people is literally rule by derogatory term for people? The “literally” seems to suggest that this is supposed to communicate more than a personal feeling towards a subject. And yet.
- tracker1 8mo agoIf the majority of people think it's okay to kill off a specific subset of society, does that actually make it okay/good? Worked up mobs make horrible decisions.
- keybored 8mo agoIf some moneyed elites as well as associates that are high up in culture, science and similar decide to make a network based on enslavement, child molestation, human trafficking, rape, and torture, does that make it okay/good? Oh wait, that already actually happened.
- bijant 8mo agoWhile I'd hesitate to call the people behind the project out for fraud, they certainly are great at obtaining funding while delivering negative value and then presenting these experiences in a positive light. The linked site promotes their use in Germany's "aufstehen party" which wasn't actually a party but whatever if it sounds better and as I was intimately involved with that experience (being brought in to consult on recovery) it was a disaster that ended that NGO before it really begun. The Pol.is platform was supposed to be the central decision making interface of that distributed movement supported by figures from different leftwing, social democrat and ecological parties, it wasn't just that they failed to scale but they were completely unwilling to deploy on our infra or even open source critical components while maintaining publicly that their system was completely open source. The question of whether to replace it (remember its use was the key innovation of this movement) and if so with what ended up not only splitting the NGO but making one sub-group create a new party that is "neither left nor right wing" and voting with the right-wing AfD in (state) parliaments helping them secure anti-migration majorities.
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- martin-t 8mo ago> real-time LLM-generated summaries Please no, LLMs have been shown to introduce biases from training data into the generated "summaries". LLMs should go nowhere public policy.