On replacing the voting system (for a quiz)

[Popcorn Sutton]

I think that the voting system is flawed, and that a lot of us will agree. So, I want to propose the idea of replacing it with a quiz system instead. My goal is to get this idea nationalized. Instead of voting (especially for the same redundant right or left who a lot of us know nothing about) why not replace it with a quiz system? It would be a much more efficient method of elections imo for getting what we, as a public whole, desire most. An example of the quiz would be a simple "Do you want to legalize x? Yes, No. Do you want the money to go towards y? Yes, No." I hope that we can change our system as soon as possible to this new proposed system for the greater good.

 

At the end of the quiz, it will be determined that your vote is automatically going towards the candidate who agrees most with your position. (And I would hope that this system should be demonstrably not biased)

Edited June 14, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[D H]

And I would hope that this system would be demonstrably not biased.

Sorry, but that's not possible by Arrows Impossibility Theorem.

 

Your quiz scheme appears to me far, far worse than what we currently have (flawed as it is).

[Popcorn Sutton]

Sorry I made a typo, I meant should*. But why do you feel that way?

Are you by any chance involved in politics as a career? That would make your statement biased.

Wow D H, it makes much more sense to me now as to why we have the system we have. Maybe we can save my quiz idea though by saying that the quiz does not automatically determine a candidate, but it can determine a decision? My point is that we need something like a quiz system to get what we desire, otherwise it just seems that we don't have a say in the most part.

But then again, from a scientific perspective, I don't believe in desire.

[D H]

But why do you feel that way?

 

For one thing, it's easily gamed. "Do you think everyone deserves a fair chance? Yes No" versus "Do you think we should give money to freeloaders? Yes No". Who decides what the quiz questions are, how they are phrased?

 

For another, this runs smack dab into the problems raised by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, but now there's a problem even with only two candidates. Suppose that in the campaign of Smith versus Jones, the quiz results weakly favor Jones. That doesn't mean that Jones is the preferable candidate. If the people had had the choice of voting for the candidates, a sizable majority might well have voted for Smith. It might be that Smith is by far the stronger candidate, the one more likely to get things done. Or it might be that most of the voters only care deeply about a subset the quiz questions, and Smith is the winner on those. Jones just happened to be a better match on things the voters don't care about.

 

Add Taylor and Brown to the list of candidates and we have a complete mess.

 

 

Are you by any chance involved in politics as a career? That would make your statement biased.

 

The answer is no, but your assertion of bias is not necessarily true. It's akin to the proponent of a new theory of everything who posts his theory on this site and rejects physicists' critiques on the grounds that they are biased.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Ok so how about this, everyone who wants to be a candidate can be a candidate. All candidates take a test that addresses the topics of interest (and they can choose to elaborate to increase the odds of being selected due to key words/phrases being used). A computer will generate the topics of the quiz by asking that the people participate in an essay about the current status of their country where we can easily pick out common sequences. We start the quiz and the candidates test with the most common sequences (grammaticized of course) and continue the test until the generated sequences are not statistically significant. The quiz takers can answer as many questions on the quiz as they want and stop at any point knowing that the following questions are less significant than the previous ones by the consensus of the majority. Now that we have such a large base of candidates in the election, we will have many candidates that share the same beliefs, and I assume that we will have plenty of candidates that just barely differ from the next. This way, we can pick out of the crowd the exact candidate that is most likely to be in favor of the public, and hence, have favor of the other politicians who have also been elected in the same way. Problem solved.

As for your other remark, I'm sorry for who I am and especially if I have had any negative impact on your life.

If I have a say in the naming of this type of system, I would call it popcornism as an ideal, or scientocracy as the implementation.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[D H]

Problem solved? You barely made a half-hearted attempt at hand-waving the problems away, let alone solving them.

 

The first thing to realize is that there is no perfect system for selecting our elected officials. A perfect system cannot exist. Anyone who wishes to change the electoral system had better fully understand the nastiness of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem.

 

The next thing to realize is that any new system has to pass muster with those already in power. They control the gates. The only way to change that is to vote the bastards out, which does happen on occasion. Of course, if that does happen, you have a brand new set of bastards to deal with.

 

Your proposed system doesn't improve one thing that is currently wrong. It only makes matters worse. Far, far worse. I've seen lots of proposed election systems. I haven't seen a single one that is anywhere near as bad as is this one. We elect people, not ideas (your quiz). Your quiz is fine as the basis for questions for a candidate debate or a "meet the candidates" forum. It is horrendous as the basis for an election.

 

Time to go back to the drawing board.

[Popcorn Sutton]

There is no evidence to support your claim though. The system hasn't even been tested on a small scale. I read the wikipedia of arrows impossibility theorem and I don't believe that anything is impossible (you also used the word 'cannot' which implies impossibility). I think we have a great country, but I also believe that things do need to change in time. This system is outdated, it's not at its last whim, but it's not sufficient to keep up with the rate at which things are changing and I think that corruption and laziness is avoidable. We know practically nothing about our candidates and they commit the slippery slope fallacy often! The popular candidates often will not discuss or even take a clear stance on the key issues we face. They don't want to risk losing the vote. I don't even know what it means to be a democrat or a republican. I've got all this schooling and it still makes no sense to me. I'm no exception either. I think that if we try it out, even on a small scale, we will see that careful measurement is the way to go rather than arbitrary selection. In my experience, measurement works much more efficiently. Try it in one township, then move up to one county, if it works, try a state, if we like it, then why not do it in a country or even the entire world. Just try it somehow.

 

I could write the program to analyze the essays in one afternoon and make it spam proof if you guys decide to try this system out. Even if it is just student body elections, or just an experimental election, I'd be happy to write the code for you guys.

For one thing, it's easily gamed. "Do you think everyone deserves a fair chance? Yes No" versus "Do you think we should give money to freeloaders? Yes No". Who decides what the quiz questions are, how they are phrased?

 

For another, this runs smack dab into the problems raised by Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, but now there's a problem even with only two candidates. Suppose that in the campaign of Smith versus Jones, the quiz results weakly favor Jones. That doesn't mean that Jones is the preferable candidate. If the people had had the choice of voting for the candidates, a sizable majority might well have voted for Smith. It might be that Smith is by far the stronger candidate, the one more likely to get things done. Or it might be that most of the voters only care deeply about a subset the quiz questions, and Smith is the winner on those. Jones just happened to be a better match on things the voters don't care about.

 

Add Taylor and Brown to the list of candidates and we have a complete mess.

There is a way to get the best candidate even if the voters only end up completing the 5 first questions. Say that we consider the best candidate to be the one that is most informed on the current consensus. This means that that person would have taken a good portion of time and spent a lot of energy on filling out the questions given to them in their candidates test, possibly also elaborating on every one in a short essay. This would make the 5 questions that the quiz taker answered automatically get cast towards the candidate that answered all 5,000(arbitrary number, the test could in reality consist of 100,000 or more questions) questions of the quiz, agreed with the quiz taker completely, and even elaborated on the key issues causing him/her to gain more favor from the key sequences. That way, we have the most intellectual people in positions of power, which has in the past showed the greatest promise for economic growth. We could be sustaining a GDP well above 8% on an annual rate just by making this simple transition to an essay, test, quiz ordered system of elections. It would base public policy on evidence, which I think is much more desirable for the people who live in the area being governed.

 

It is worth noting that if we don't make an immediate and universal transition from the current political system to scientocracy we will be faced with dilemmas between those who are less informed and those who have been chosen through this system that may cause setbacks. (Though, the setbacks will only be temporary and may not be any more significant than our current dilemmas, in fact, they would probably still be progressive).

 

I'm probably going to write the code anyway and post it here (with the permission of the moderators) when I get the chance just for the sake of easy experimentation in case someone does choose to test out the system.

Edited June 15, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[D H]

I can see that you are very enamored of your idea. That doesn't make it a good one. It is a just the opposite.

 

First and foremost, who writes the questions? Did you understand my example of "Do you think everyone deserves a fair chance? Yes No" versus "Do you think we should give money to freeloaders? Yes No"? These are the same question, just written with different intentional biases to swing people one way or the other. Whoever gets to write the questions has incredible power over the outcome of the election.

 

We vote for people rather than ideas for a huge number of reasons. If candidate A has incredibly weak leadership skills it doesn't matter if he and I agree on everything. Those weak leadership skills means nothing I care about will be accomplished. The same goes for a candidate with no morals. The potential for abuse of power, siphoning public monies into private bank accounts, and other shenanigans means that I as a voter have to watch out for more than just which candidate best matches by views.

 

Arrow's Impossibility Theorem is a huge issue. You rejected it by "I don't believe that anything is impossible." It's impossible to simultaneously measure position and momentum to an arbitrary degree of precision. It's impossible to go faster than the speed of light. It's impossible to use an axiomatic system to prove that that system is consistent and complete. And yes, it is impossible to have a perfect election system.

 

A related problem is how the questions are ranked. All questions are not of equal value. Only a tiny fraction of the 100,000 questions (yikes!) on your test will be of vital interest to any one voter. For sake of argument, assume a voter cares strongly about 20 of those questions, somewhat strongly about another 80. The remaining 99,900 questions are pretty much irrelevant to that voter. Nonetheless the voter answers all 100,000 questions. Suppose candidate A matches all 100 of the voters key questions, disagrees on the 99,900 irrelevant ones. Suppose it's exactly the opposite with candidate B. Rank all questions as equal and this voter apparently prefers candidate B by an incredibly wide margin. Ask the voter which candidate she prefers and she'll almost certainly say candidate A.

 

100,000 questions is far too many. The above showed just one problem with a huge number of questions. What if the voter only answers those questions they care about? Those 99,900 remaining questions are still a huge problem. The more questions there are, the more likely the selected person is the person who almost any voter would deem to be unworthy of the job.

 

There is no right number of questions. Arrow's Impossibility Theorem rears its ugly head once more. For each question that I think is of utmost importance, you can find someone else who thinks it is completely irrelevant. There's no way to keep bias out of the system, there's no way to make the questions fair.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I don't have the battery power to address your entire post at the moment, but I will elaborate when I get the chance. The point I do want to make is that a completely unbiased computer program will analyze the essays written by the people and the questions will emerge. No one decides how to word the questions, the popular questions will emerge statistically. We could make the system so you have to answer the significant questions first in order to answer the less significant questions. There may be equality in the popularity of questions, but it will be statistically based and completely unbiased.

[D H]

The point I do want to make is that a completely unbiased computer program will analyze the essays written by the people and the questions will emerge. No one decides how to word the questions, the popular questions will emerge statistically.

 

Nonsense.

 

Sans hard AI (which doesn't exist yet), that means that people wrote the program to analyze the essays (what essays?) and formulate the questions. The biases of the designers and implementers of the program are inevitably going to be present in the program. Congratulations, you've just turned the election over to a bunch of computer programmers!

 

Even with hard AI, that claim of "completely unbiased" would still most likely be nonsense.

[Popcorn Sutton]

I said that I can write the program which you can look at. It will have no bias, I promise. It will take the essays, run a simple algorithm, accumulate knowledge, and present us with the most statistically significant sequences to be placed on the test, which we can use for both the voters and the candidates

 

Part of the code is used in my program for ai and can also be used to skim through websites like this. It's not hard at all.

Edited June 16, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[D H]

Nonsense. You wrote it, it has your biases impregnated throughout. Keep posting all you want. I'm done with this.

[Popcorn Sutton]

All I did was put the alphabet in math, how is that biased?

[Popcorn Sutton]

I think that people would like a scientocracy much more. We don't have control right now and it's very clear. On top of that, I don't think we can get control unless we make some big decisions about taking freedom away which is probably not an option. I don't think we have much of a war on religion anymore, it seems like we're kind of beating a dead horse on that front, but I just saw a disturbing video that I do intend on posting that would seem to favor this method of electing a leader (one essay, one test, one quiz, we can decide at which point we need a new leader).

 

That is, if we decide to have a leader, which I personally would want, but not to the extent of tyranny.

 

Maybe we can make it so anyone can write the essay anytime and whenever the results are statistically significant, then changes take place.

[Popcorn Sutton]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqJfFrkzf8I

[padren]

I think that people would like a scientocracy much more.

 

We don't have control right now and it's very clear. On top of that, I don't think we can get control unless we make some big decisions about taking freedom away which is probably not an option. I don't think we have much of a war on religion anymore, it seems like we're kind of beating a dead horse on that front, but I just saw a disturbing video that I do intend on posting that would seem to favor this method of electing a leader (one essay, one test, one quiz, we can decide at which point we need a new leader).

 

That is, if we decide to have a leader, which I personally would want, but not to the extent of tyranny.

 

Maybe we can make it so anyone can write the essay anytime and whenever the results are statistically significant, then changes take place.

 

First, we are barely literate enough as a nation to have a "literocracy" as many people have trouble reading, and vote based on recognizable names of politicians they've heard converse in debates and speeches.

 

We are no where near the level of scientific literacy that a "scientocracy" would require to be a representative democracy. Maybe the result would marginalize the votes of people you feel don't "help" democracy (the voters you feel responsible for taking our "control" away) but this is still just another form of gerrymandering, not an improvement of political discourse.

 

 

I don't know the relevance of any "war on religion" and whether you think that helps or hurts political discourse, but I assume it has waned for the same reason the "war on low riding pants" waned - it's not a useful metric to wage any kind of war, and is obscenely dehumanizing while not addressing the individual problems of conduct that occur due to the behavior of said individuals.

 

Any "aggregation of thought" is a lossy process, and when it's applied to people it we loose sight of people's real concerns.

 

 

 

What you've really described (software wise) could be a useful open-source tool for community organizers and think tank groups to better reduce a coherent consensus from a body of concerned, participating citizens, but not only would it have to be limited to "raising relevant data and awareness" but it the results would have to be peer reviewed by friendly, competing, and even antagonistic criticism to ensure it doesn't turn into just another lobby-esque opinion piece.

 

 

 

Regarding your software specifically:

 

"All I did was put the alphabet in math, how is that biased?"

 

If that's all you did, then you only created a system to generate coherent noise from mathematical data - which while capable of showing "coherent variances" does not actually make it not noise.

 

Any attempt to reduce signal from such an algorithm requires weighting not just the alphabet, but entire words. Additionally, any attempt to measure word value is pure noise unless you can separate context. Words like "clean" and "air" are great, but they have entirely different meanings when put together and even when combined, they have different meanings to different people. For one person "clean air" means no high-risk carcinogens, and to others it means no soot. To another, it means no unscrubbed carbon emissions at all. To another, it means reasonable carbon control measures balanced against reasonable industrial interests.

 

To yet another person, it simply means "just stop using diesel for school buses" but it cannot be reduced mathematically without looking for the nuance in question, and that requires awareness of the nuance in the first place. This creates an inherent bias dependency - hence, useful for crowd-consensus munging, but only within limits and not at all suitable as a political autocratic flow-control component within a democratic society.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Hmm, I'm going to have to reread that post a few times. I'm not accustomed to the way you speak so forgive me. I did, however, catch sight of a point you made, and, with my bias towards this system, I will have to point this out. The words "clean" and "air" will score low of significance by themselves with only a rating of 3^3 for "air", and 5^5 for "clean", however, if it is put to the system as one unit, "clean air", the significance rating is much higher, meaning that the candidate who matches this sequence will score 9^9 significance points for matching this input. So if a candidate says something along the lines of "I think we should focus mainly on clean forms of energy, and in particular, clean air" and matches with someone who wrote that exact sequence in their essay, then the significance points for that candidate will be 76^76. They will score even more significance points depending on how well they elaborated and how much they connect with the people who write the essays. In theory, the test-quiz part of the election is unnecessary, all we really need to do is score the candidates based on their significance ratings, but we might want to use the test-quiz as well to see how much information was retained by the candidates and by the people, but that would be more like the voting system.

 

The point with this post is to address one portion of your post to show how this essay method would work, if there is any part of it that seems biased or any noticeable way of detecting a critical fail by this system, then I am open to hear about it and I will gladly change my stance wrt this system, however, given the technology we have, and what I know is within my power to do, I have to suggest a system like this because I think that the benefit will outweigh the detriment. If you look at GDP across the last 60+ years, you'll notice that our current system is failing, and it GDP growth has been negative for some time, which should be a concern to a lot of us and could result in another civil war (I think we can avoid this, hopefully). Proposing this system as an alternative could save us from disasters such as a civil war. We are either tipping toward tyranny, or we are inevitably going toward a scientocracy (with or without this particular system). Tyranny would be a result of saving the people in power, which is probably going to be a natural reaction on their part so they don't get killed (can you blame them though? They are in power, that means that they can and will defend themselves). But in order to save ourselves, and I think the people in these positions will notice, we need to adjust to the times and consider what is best for the whole even if it does cost a few people their jobs (which were never promised to be permanent to begin with). I hope we can avoid falling into tyranny again, that would be a shame, and I think that people know by this point that Tyranny is not the way to go, so in order to avoid this inevitability, the people in positions of power will realize what is happening, and they will probably show sympathy if they are rational, and I think that they will understand that it is a Tyranny (by now it very well may be) and accept that the system needs to change, and do so without causing harm upon innocent people. We are, after all, victims to cause and effect, and there is no one we can really blame on scientific grounds. It's just that our system turned out to not be well adapted to unanticipated change. Scientocracy, however, will be able to adapt effectively whenever necessary and significant.

Edited June 20, 2013 by Popcorn Sutton

[padren]

Thanks for the clarification on how your algorithm finds matches. It sounds straight forward and I definitely support using modern technology to better ease consensus forming among citizens, but I'm still concerned about the manner in which it would likely play out.

 

Specifically, it sounds like your algorithm would match "long statement" assertions as a higher order than "short statement" assertions, despite the fact that shorter statements may have more grounds for real consensus forming.

 

Another factor, is even common consensus on an issue like "We need resources to prevent floods" may rank high, but have very different meanings to people in New Orleans, vs people loosing homes in California to water erosion. A politician on the national stage could easily rank high on matches but have a very centralized approach to how to "prevent floods." If the essayists are also after a centralized solution (ie, they both share the same convenient pretext that centralization is the best solution) then the algorithm could produce some useful analysis, but if it's blind to that issue it can result in deep perceptual dissonance between the politicians and the people.

For example: perhaps people know how to use common words to describe flooding, but don't know how to use common words to describe the nuanced relationship of federal and state responsibilities.

 

 

If I was going to tackle the flooding issue for instance, I'd mostly write an essay on how we need to rebuild the National Guard at the State level, so young people can join up without immediately being sent to a desert. This of course requires a change in how we decide to send members of the National Guard overseas, and probably a legislative change to how we define our foreign conflicts so young people have better control of what they are signing up for.

By addressing the issue of the National Guard (which is not and has never been a national organization - each State runs it's own) we could help ensure that people who grew up around levies and trained in disaster relief around those levies, are still in their home state to respond in a natural disaster. Simply growing up in the same area helps crisis workers spot the difference between a potential looter and a potential survivor. Likewise, dealing with flooding in California is so different from New Orleans it is best handled by the people who grew up in that Californian environment and made it their home.

 

However, if I was a politician or citizen in the era of "essay algorithmic analysis" I would feel like my free speech was lessened, because your algorithm would artificially inflate less comprehensive ideas in favor of "long but easy to parrot" catch phrases.

 

Edit: Consider what goes on now to create "useful" search engine rankings for websites based on current algorithms, and how much marketing departments get paid to modify company text into high ranking patterns. We literally pay people to make information less cogent to humans in order to increase algorithmic value. Anyone who tries to get "honest" rankings from their searches understands how easily this approach often adds more noise than signal, and requires "meta meta" properties to re-skew data back towards usefulness.

 

When SEO marketing works for keyword tuning on a website and consumers are happy - it's not because the algorithms work - it's because the company that pays the most to work the algorithms also happen to generally spend more money on their services and products.

 

We end up seeing a correlating factor that tends to be true, but is not a causative factor, and it creates blind spots where websites with good content and services vanish from high order search results due to their limited SEO budgets despite message quality.

 

I know your goal is to "properly rank" these values to correct for such problems but even companies like Google can't create algorithms that aren't immediately profiled and gamed.

 

 

BTW - I appreciate your comment about my writing style and I am always trying to refine for clarity... so feel free to give any feedback you like on the topic

Edited June 20, 2013 by padren

[Popcorn Sutton]

Thanks for the clarification on how your algorithm finds matches. It sounds straight forward and I definitely support using modern technology to better ease consensus forming among citizens, but I'm still concerned about the manner in which it would likely play out.

 

Specifically, it sounds like your algorithm would match "long statement" assertions as a higher order than "short statement" assertions, despite the fact that shorter statements may have more grounds for real consensus forming.

Not necessarily, say that you write a 50,000 word essay and want to be considered as a candidate. In your essay you have "I would prefer to make marijuana illegal" or "We should illegalize drugs altogether." You will gain significance points when someone says "legalize drugs" because it matches to a sequence embedded within what you wrote, but because you don't feel that way, and other people are more likely to elaborate on the legalization of drugs, such as an essayist writing "I think we should legalize drugs," you will not have the significance points that other people will have wrt the entire sequence. Say that when someone does write a lengthy essay about a lot of things that concern our nation as a whole, and among those things is a portion of the essay concerned with phrases such as "It would be a good idea to legalize drugs" and they elaborate further. They are more likely to score more significance points for the entire sequence if other people feel the same way. It's not parroting, it's actually how the sequences are stored in the candidates brain/mind. So if the candidate has a lot of significance points, then that candidate is much more likely to connect with the people. However, if there aren't many people who connect with the candidate, then the candidate will not have the significance points necessary to achieve a position of power.

 

Say that the candidate writes some elaborate sentence that is along the lines of this, "the people may feel that it is necessary and sufficient for the state and/or country as a whole to legalize the distribution of drugs such as marijuana, however, would probably not want to legalize other substances like heroin for the sake of addiction, and by taking this stance, acknowledge that they want to protect their children from the harm that substances such as heroin may cause." This person may not have any single match to the entire sequence, but they may gain significance points for certain key phrases within the sequence such as "legalize the distribution of drugs" and "protect their children". This candidate will probably not be selected because the way they write is obscure, but they will gain significance points for the matches contained within the sequences that they do write.

 

The program will also be spam proof, meaning that for any sequence that you do write, you cannot gain significance points for having the exact same sequence distributed throughout the essay. But, you will gain significance points for being able to put the same sequence in many different contexts. Even if you, as a candidate, do find all sorts of contexts in which you can put a phrase like "legalize marijuana" or "do not aid Syria" it would be better for you to take every stance possible so you can connect with most people. It's technically not rigging the system if you both want to "aid Syria" and "not aid Syria", in which case you can elaborate on why you feel that way for even more significance points.

 

But, like I said, the system would be spam proof so you can't gain enough significance points for writing an essay like "legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana legalize marijuana" and selecting "I want to be a candidate". Also, if we do choose to add the test-quiz part by testing the candidates, and then quizzing the essayists, we can decide whether that test-quiz portion will provide us with the added security of not having a person who is not well suited in a position of power. What it really comes down to (with this system) is a test of cognitive capacity and intellect. That is how we would be basing the algorithmic electorial system to work because, as Economists point out, people in positions of power who are also very intelligent are more likely to sustain a better GDP (as was the case in Ireland for two decades in the 20th century).

 

Long statement assertions would gain more significance points, but they would also match less so it evens out.

 

 

Another factor, is even common consensus on an issue like "We need

resources to prevent floods" may rank high, but have very different

meanings to people in New Orleans, vs people loosing homes in California

to water erosion. A politician on the national stage could easily rank

high on matches but have a very centralized approach to how to "prevent

floods." If the essayists are also after a centralized solution (ie,

they both share the same convenient pretext that centralization is the

best solution) then the algorithm could produce some useful analysis,

but if it's blind to that issue it can result in deep perceptual

dissonance between the politicians and the people.

For example: perhaps people know how to use common words to describe flooding, but don't know how to use common words to describe the nuanced relationship of federal and state responsibilities.

 

I do not intend on changing the democratic system entirely with this approach. There will still be plenty of jobs out there for the state and country. So lets say that out of all the candidates, only 3,000 or so get a job. Out of those 3,000, we rank them in terms of significance points with the highest significance being elected as president, the 200 or so behind him/her get the congress positions, 300 get lobbyists, then the rest go to the states that they connect with most. This way, we can focus, as a state, on the issues that matter for that state and for that particular moment in time. We will get the big issues out of the way first, then whenever any other issues become significant, we will either reelect or allow those that are well adapted to the new necessities to get reelected. It will be one big nation led by problem solvers who are well adapted intellectually.

 

 

However, if I was a politician or citizen in the era of "essay

algorithmic analysis" I would feel like my free speech was lessened,

because your algorithm would artificially inflate less comprehensive

ideas in favor of "long but easy to parrot" catch phrases.

 

This is arguable, I may have addressed it in this post already.

 

I'm not trying to Ad Hoc anything here, just present a software based solution to our problems for consideration, hopefully we can discover something that is truly useful and may benefit us as a whole.

[krash661]

politicians remind me of a bunch of high school kids in a crowed arguing who's the coolest,

which leads to violence and such,

seriously, not much difference between the two.

[Popcorn Sutton]

Ok, either I'm going to have to redefine scientocracy, which is defined as "basing public policies on science", or I'm going to have to give a new name to this type of system. I wish they didn't jump the gun on defining scientocracy that way and I will continue to push for a redefinition, but if I have to give it a different name...

 

I'm not going to give it a different name. Popcornism as an ideal, Scientocracy as the implementation.

Here is the code necessary for Scientocracy. It is written in Python 2.7

 

sequences = []

significance = {}

while 0 == 0:

poi = essay

npoi = ""

while len(poi + npoi) != 0:

while poi not in sequences:

sequences.append(poi)

significance[poi] = 1

if len(poi) != 0:

npoi = poi[-1] + npoi

if len(poi) == 1:

poi = ""

else:

poi = poi[:-1]

if len(poi) == 0:

poi = npoi[1:]

npoi = ""

if poi in sequences:

n = significance[poi];

significance[poi] = n + 1

 

 

 

This is how you can add the significance points up to figure out what is most important, or how common the sequences are. You can expect that you will find the alphabet first followed by phonemes, diphthongs, and morphemes until you reach the most important stuff which is the lengthy sequences that have significance. Matching them to the candidates is simple, if they click the "I want to be a candidate" box, then have them make a username and give their e-mail address and take whatever other information you feel is necessary and add them to the dictionary candidates.

 

Candidates = {}

 

You'll want to add that before you begin the while loop. Then once you have the dictionary for candidates, you can embed another dictionary by their name and use that as the variable for significance, like this.

 

Candidates = {"John Doe": {}, "Tarzan": {}}

 

 

I'd be interested to see this implemented. If anyone wants help in doing so, let me know.

[Popcorn Sutton]

In light of the recent government shut down, I would like to draw attention to this subject again. Please read over the previous two pages and spread the word.

The previous post is very significant in my opinion.