On Mar 5, 2004, at 11:03 PM, Philippe Errembault wrote:
My point is that if you want to rank multi-dimensional information, you will have to project your space to a one-dimensional space. This will be done using a function that, especially for human beings, will depends on your mood, on context, on... I do not know what else... the fact is that this will not be stable data.
That's partly true, but I would argue that's a fundamental part of being human: the tension between our rationality and our emotionality. In fact, I think that's one of the ways we mature, by learning to align our transient moods with our integral convictions and principles. To try to avoid that seems to me like an abdication of responsibility.
Even more: the space of this information could even be non Euclidian, because it's probably easy to determine preferences between two things, but if you try to establish the graph of all your
preferences, I'm not sure you will easily obtain an acyclic graph. Just try to rank all your friends on the basis: which you prefer most... not quite easy, isn't it !?
That's where I think I disagree with your model. Elections are not an abstract ranking. They are a specific question. For example, if the question is "Which friend would I want to stand by me in a dark alley?" or "Who do I think should organize our next party," its pretty easy to come up with a non-cyclic ranking. I think elections are more like those questions, than an arbitrary ranking of friends.
So, what I suggest, is to have people chose one, let's say: "level one" representative, which will eventually be themselves, the obligation they have is to give this representative, proxy to vote for them. "Level one" representatives and only them will have to vote (and be obliged to) when there is something to vote for. Let us put restrictions on this: 1/It is strictly forbidden to chose as representative, someone that could have a power on you. 2/ a representative can only represent, let us say, at most (e.g.) 19 persons. To be a representative, you at least need to represent yourself.
One of the most important advantages of such a process, is that having more intermediate levels, gives more hindsight (not sure about the use of this word...) to the decision process, which could make it smarter. We could also compare this principle to a multi layer neural network.
So, I think there's an interesting aspect of the value of hindsight. But, this idea of indirect democracy seems pretty close to what we in the U.S. used to have for an electoral college; its not much different from having state legislators elect federal representatives. In practice, the actual effect seemed to be actually to *decouple* the interests of representatives from the low-level electorate.
In the U.S., I would argue the purpose of democracy is not so much to choose the best leader (since that's not well-defined), but to hold leaders accountable for their actions. Direct elections at least have the advantage of motivating leaders to at least appear to be serving the needs of their constituency (the whole population). It may be a small advantage, but I suspect it is a crucial one.
Direct elections further require the electorate to be the ultimate arbiters of whether leaders are acting in the population's best interest. One of the tenets of American democracy is that this is a fundamental right -- and a fundamental obligation -- that nobody should or can delegate. Even if people choose to follow someone else (e.g., a party leader) I believe democracy is healthiest when such delegation is *not* managed or enforced by the state. I think things like rank-order voting are a better solution to the split-vote/runoff problems like what you describe in France.
Of course, maybe that's just my American perspective, but I think it is at least a significant philosophical bias, not just ethno-centrism.
-- Ernie P.
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