Since then I have been thinking about this issue occasionally, and recently asked myself the most basic question I could think of “How does purchasing what you desire differ from voting for it?”

I have come to believe that the main problem with voting is the issue of “One Man One vote”.

Now, the first thing that might leap to your mind here is that when people “vote” with their money, a rich man has more votes than a poor one. But that is not the issue I am thinking of. What I am currently pondering is the idea that when you “vote” with your money, that money is gone, and can not be used to vote for something else tomorrow.

Consider the case of a simple (non representative) democratic system where each citizen gets to vote on each proposed law. If there are 3 laws on the docket, each citizen gets to cast 3 votes – yea, nay, or abstain on each proposal. When another law is proposed, each citizen receives yet another vote to cast as they choose.

The problem with this is that, unlike a financial market, there is no price signaling. Which is to say, voters do not need to conserve any sort of resource so they can vote heavily for (or against) the things they really care about and thus lightly or not at all for the issues where they have little or no preference. In a system where each man gets an extra vote for each new law proposed, it is possible for a 51% majority of the voters to pass a law that has little meaning for them over a 49% minority for which the law might have dire consequences. Thus, a system that offers no way for participants to signal how much they care about a particular result, creates huge losses of overall human value.

So how might this be fixed?

I propose that we would see much better results with a voting system that actually embodied the concept of “One Man One Vote.”

Imagine a system where every year the entire slate of laws was up for change/renewal, and each voter could only spend their vote once, either for or against a single law. This would produce two likely results:

1. A better representation of actual value in the adopted laws.

2. A Simpler legal system with fewer laws on the books.

This system could also work quite well with a representative democracy. Each representative would have multiple votes to spend (equal to the number of people represented). The representative could spend all or none of them on any given proposed law, but could still only spend each vote once.

Some other possibilities would be to only give representatives votes equal to the people that actually voted in their elections (might increase voter turn out), or the votes of the people who actually voted for them, or only the number of votes by which they won their respective elections (votes for other candidates being like votes of no confidence for the winning candidate).

That’s it.

Simple concept.

One man one vote.

I prefer to analyze moral actions based on expected resultant value, rather than any idea of absolute rights. Doing so, the inherent need for proportionality becomes self evident:

Consider the idea that a good act creates net value and an evil act destroys net value. When faced with a choice between actions, the moral choice is the one that you believe will result in the greatest overall net value, not just for you, but summed over all affected human beings.

Now, killing someone who will otherwise kill you is usually an easy calculation – you probably believe that your value in the world is approximately equal to (if not, because of your exceptional virtues, greater than) that of others. Furthermore, this person is identifying themselves as a killer who may well kill others in the future. Thus, the statement “Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill ‘em right back!” seems obvious and rational.

But does it represent an absolute moral right?

Consider that you are trapped without food and have one fellow refugee trapped with you. If the other person tries to kill you for food, they are revealed as a killer – but only a specifically conditional killer. This situation is unlikely to be repeated, so now the question of who has a life of more overall value is not so easy and things become more interesting. Consider these scenarios:

1.) The other person is great medical researcher working on a vaccine for a plague that is ravaging the world.

2.) You know that she has already invented a vaccine, and if she lives to bring it to the world, the plague will be over.

3.) You are sick and wounded and probably dying soon anyway.

4.) You are dying of the zombie virus and will soon turn into an undead brain eating monster – thus you are a known likely future killer.

If you believe that self defense is an absolute right, you may feel morally correct in killing the other person in each of these cases, but, if you feel that overall expected future value to all human beings is the correct moral criteria, somewhere down that list, you may decide that it is no longer morally correct to defend yourself.

However, please note that the morality of your actions are a separate issue from the question of whether or not it is morally correct for someone else to punish you for those actions. There is a lot of value to be found in simplicity of normal responses to the perceived misdeeds of others. Granting the absolute “legal” right for someone to defend their life is a simple rule that is almost always beneficial. Likewise, the rule that deadly force should not be used in defense of property is also a simple one, although perhaps fuzzier in its degree of benefit.

Thus one should be clear, in this sort of discussion, whether one is talking about what deeds are morally correct or what deeds should be punished.

So, please now consider some of the the various possible systems for deciding on the setting of your bedroom thermostat:

Free Market:

We all live in our own houses and sleep in our own rooms. Each of us has a thermostat, with which we can individually regulate the temperature we choose for that room, based on all the personal factors that weigh into that decision – what range of temperature we are comfortable sleeping in – how much it costs to keep the room at a given temperature, etc… Whatever decision we make, it is the best possible one for us individually, and makes us as happy as we can possibly be, given all the factors involved.

Estimated percentage of total possible value achieved <= 100%

Democratic Central Regulation:

A central authority decides what is the best possible temperature for our room. We have no control over that temperature, other than to vote on what it should be. The average of these votes is chosen. Some people will find that their rooms are colder or hotter than they might like, but only to the degree that they differ from the average. If we assume a standard distribution of preference from the norm, we find that, but with some outliers in total agony, most people are not too greatly inconvenienced.

Estimated percentage of total possible value achieved <= 70%

Partisan Democratic Central Regulation:

A Red Party exists for those who prefer hot temperatures – a Blue Party for those who prefer cold. In each selection period, party primary selections pick two temperatures that compete in the general selection.  Only those truly committed to extreme hot or cold consider themselves party members and vote in the primaries, where primary candidates boast about how much hotter or colder than their opponents they are.  So in the general selection, the two chosen candidate temperatures are each at least a standard deviation off the norm in opposite directions. Regardless of whether it is the Red or Blue temperature that is finally chosen, more than half of the country is unable to sleep at night.

Estimated percentage of total possible value achieved <= 50%

]]> http://www.whysean.com/2010/04/04/political-climate-control/feed/ 0 http://www.whysean.com/2009/12/30/the-last-generation/ http://www.whysean.com/2009/12/30/the-last-generation/#comments Wed, 30 Dec 2009 13:01:36 +0000 Sean Hastings http://www.whysean.com/?p=412 (excerpt from GWYD section 8.1):

If you believe that any of the technologies we have talked about are possible (and there certainly are some good reasons to think so), then it would seem that we can look forward to a very interesting future. It may be that we are destined to be a race of immortal beings with powers that we would previously have described as godlike, or maybe we will just create the machine creatures that will replace us, or even something in between as our technology becomes more and more a part of us. Alternatively, we may still be heading for some sort of end of the world scenario, in which we, and all of our works, will come to some cataclysmic end.

Every technology we have talked about holds immense promise for bringing us all a much better life, however, every technology also seems to have some end of the world scenario associated with it. This could be because any power can be used for good or ill, or it could just be the way we tend to think.

There have been many ‘end of the world’ scenarios before, and we have survived them all without even breathing very hard. Here is just a small sampling:

• A couple thousand years ago, there were people predicting that all civilization was doomed by the military practice of the time of salting the Earth of a defeated nation, so that no crops could be grown there again. The theory was that eventually all farm lands would be salted, through ongoing warfare, and then everyone would starve.
• The year 1000 AD brought the first millennium crisis, with people believing that Christ was sure to return and Armageddon would follow.
• In 1798, Thomas Malthus predicted overpopulation and mass starvation was just a decade away, and it has continued to be thought to be “just a decade away” by many others, ever since.
• In the 1970′s with global temperatures having fallen steadily for 40 years, some concerned environmental scientists predicted the start of a new ice age, and told people that global cooling (yes cooling), caused by our modern industrial practices, was going to freeze us all – unless we shut down all the factories.
• In the 1980′s we were going to be annihilated at any moment by a nuclear war between super powers, perhaps started by computer error or a computer hacker.
• There was another millennium scare in 2000, and this time, there was the millennium bug with computer date stamps not registering properly past Y2K – it was certain to threaten modern civilization with a massive global computer shutdown.

However we have not survived the entire list of imagined world ending disasters – not by a long shot. Just for fun, here are a few additional possible scenarios: (This is the short list. Many more available at www.exitmundi.nl):

• cosmic ray burst
• super volcanism
• drastic climate change
• another big bang
• deadly new mutant animal species
• super virus or bacteria
• black hole

Now here is an interesting thing about all the scenarios we just listed: they could all be natural occurring phenomena. At any time, we could all be killed by a completely natural disaster according to the plot line of any of these scenarios. However, most people do not seem worried about the world suddenly coming to an end through natural forces.

Now take a look at the list again, but this time put the words “New technology causes…” in front of each of them. Do the scenarios now seem more likely? To a lot of people, the prospect that science could cause some of these things seems far more likely, and/or worrisome, than the idea that they might occur without a human cause.

Now take a look at the list again, but this time, put the words “New technology saves us from…” in front of each. Does that make you feel better? Most people don’t seem to think about the fact that we create science to shelter us, and to serve our needs, and that this should make a scenario where science saves us, more likely than one in where science accidentally destroys us.

The point we are trying to make is that there is no particular logical reason to believe that such a disaster will occur soon, let alone that we will somehow cause it with our science. However, the idea that this might be the case seems to be in a lot of people’s heads. Most people seem to believe that the idea of science causing such a disaster is more likely than it occurring naturally. The only explanation we can find for this bias is that certain idea-organisms have reasons to want us to resist technological change.

These idea-organisms will continue to promote disaster scenarios to slow our technological progress. More such scenarios are always in the works. Some people point to prophecies that foretell our immediate doom, saying that the Mayan calendar predicts a “new cycle” in 2012 and that our technology will destroy us then. Some predict that the “real” millennium computer bug will happen in 2038 when the UNIX date time format runs out of space. Global warming has us burned, flooded, or frozen (pick the one that scares you most) sometime in your lifetime. And there is the nanotech earth eating goo scenario.

This all seems very scary doesn’t it? But you can probably always find a prophecy to say whatever you are scared of, if you just look hard enough. For example:

If you believe in prophecy and are afraid of nanotechnology, have you ever considered this registered trademark of The Sherwin-Williams Company? Perhaps they should never be allowed to use nanotechnology in their paint factories…

If we were to allow this to happen, after being so clearly warned by this obviously prophetic logo, wouldn’t our faces be red?

(We know, the joke isn’t as funny in black and white, but color printing costs being what they are, what are you gonna do?)

It is always more interesting to say that the world is about to end than it is to say that the world will continue on and be just fine. It will always grab more attention. It will always produce more newspaper headlines and teasers spots for later news programs. (“There are three common household products that are probably in your home right now, and could suddenly cause the end of the world! Tune in at 11 O’clock to find out what they are.”) Such fears are exactly the kind of thing that Collective Identities use to gain control. The message they send is that you will be safer if control of such dangerous matters is left to some Higher Power.

But why should we believe that the Collective can protect us from ourselves? We know that a free market works to give us the things we want, and that the Collective almost always does a worse job. When it comes to deciding what technologies will be pursued, the free market has a record of producing things that benefit individuals, while large collective entities, in competition with each other, have given us things like atomic weapons and genetically engineered diseases. There is no reason to believe that central control will not do more harm than good.

It may be true that as individuals get more powerful, a single very upset person might one day have the power to destroy everyone and everything. However, a Collective is more likely to create the technology that would make that possible, and keeping someone from using it, once it is created, will be a real trick. Also consider that the only people who ever seem to be willing to commit such acts of murder/suicide are those infected with the urgent cause of some Collective Identity.

If we allow collective Higher Powers to decide what technology is developed and what is suppressed, it is more likely to create harmful dangerous technology, and suppress good uses for advanced technology, such as giving us all longer healthier lives. This could actually make the difference between you living to see some incredible future world, or dying of old age just decades before things really get interesting.

If we can control the future in any way, reducing collectivism’s drag on scientific progress is probably our best bet. As a person living in the early part of the 21st Century, you may well be part of a truly unique generation of human beings on the planet Earth. But which unique generation are you a part of?

You might be part of the last generation that has to die, or the first generation of immortals.

Whether you let the development of new technology be influenced by individual hopes and dreams, or controlled by some collective mindset, could well make the difference of whether or not you get to witness the future of mankind.

We can’t tell you if the future will be hell on Earth, or heaven, or something more mundane in between. All we can say is that we think it would be a real bummer for you to die of old age just before it becomes clear what is actually going to become of humanity. And it would be especially annoying if the only reason you were not saved was because some group of people, hosting idea-organisms based on writings that are thousands of years old, denied your right to life by slowing the progress of medical technology.

Do your best to stick around. You don’t want to miss the punch line, do you?

When I was working on the book, I tried to get several different artists I know to draw this one for me, but none of them would touch it. Apparently they feared for their lives, so I ended up having to do this one myself.

So far, there have been no fatwās calling for my death, but please appreciate how I am putting my neck on the line for your entertainment here, and at least pretend to laugh…

1. There is a historical correlation between atmospheric CO2 and temperature. This correlation is probably mostly feedback from temperature change (more CO2 comes out of solution as oceans warm and more goes in as it cools), but…

2. We know that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so even if we don’t know exactly how much an increase in CO2 will drive temperatures, it is also a forcing factor according to some curve. Now, this curve is certainly not linear and we don’t really know where we are on it, and the majority of correlation being ocean feedback makes it really complicated, but…

3. We have put together computer models that account for everything we know about, and the only way we can get them to fit historical data is to apply certain CO2 forcing formulas. If these formulas are accurate, then the current rise in CO2 that we are seeing will continue to produce greater heat, and eventually this will reach a level of doing more harm than good. And…

4. The only formulas we can figure out that work are based on effects from human generated CO2, so if human beings could just reduce their CO2 output, we might not have to worry about future, potentially harmful temperatures.

* * *

Now, here are the scientific problems I have with this story (the economic issues would require another post):

A. Having a formula that turns CO2 into higher temperatures and successfully maps past temperatures, in no way guarantees that it correctly projects future temperatures.

I know enough math (or could look it up – because it has admittedly been many years) to generate a formula to produce a curve to give a good fit to almost any data set and then have it do whatever I choose after that fit. So, even if I allow for no agenda on the part of the climate modelers, I have to think about their reasons for choosing one formula over another (in this case, a curve that continues linearly, or takes off exponentially, rather than the curve that rises slower and slower logarithmically). Their choice in this regard is based on some hypothesis about how CO2 produces greater temperature, but this hypothesis (there are actually more than one, because different modelers get very different future projections) does not seem to be experimentally testable.

B. There is still a lot of room for doubt that the climate modelers have accounted for every other forcing effect besides CO2 that might have produced recent historical temperature records.

Solar forcing is a strong candidate for being such an unaccounted factor. There are strong historical fits with temperature (even stronger than CO2 correlation on longer time scales) and absolutely no reason to believe that the correlation is feedback rather than forcing – while the mechanism by which earth temperatures can drive atmospheric CO2 is obvious, the mechanism by which earth temperatures could drive sun spots is unimaginable (at least not by me and I have a pretty good imagination).

[Here is a link to a video talking about the most recent science I can find on solar forcing: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1181073/]

C. There is a lot of room for doubting that the modelers have properly accounted for every possible negative feedback effect that might completely mitigate the problem.

It is intuitive that there are such negative feedback mechanisms, or we would probably see many more historical swings from ice-house to hot-house planet and back again. There are only a few in hundreds of millions of years, with our current ice age state exhibiting many many smaller swings that have never broken through the ice age temperature ceiling that we are currently closely approaching. Something happens at that temperature that keep us in an ice age cycle. I am not sure what that is, and I don’t think anyone else is either. But the fact that we have been in an ice age for millions of years, with none of the interglacial periods (like now) breaking a certain temperature level, indicates some downward temperature effect probably kicks in at this level.

This would probably be both some feedback on the shorter time scale of interglacial peaks and a separate downward temperature pressure from whatever slowly sent us into the ice age, as shown by the long term declines of both high and low maximums in the graph below. The later might be the continental drift of Antarctica into a polar position to hold extra ice and act as a reflector.

My favorite candidate for the former shorter-term feedback (unaccounted for in climate models) is cloud cover. Greater heat produces more clouds. More clouds reflect more light. More light reflected causes cooling. Negative feedback.

But that is just a guess – it could be anything or nothing. The IPCC reports I have read basically say [paraphrasing] “We don’t know if there will be more or less clouds or if this would reflect more incoming light or absorb more outgoing heat.” There is a lot of room for uncertainty here.

D. The temperature records upon which the climate models are based, and therefore the degree that CO2 has been implicated in global warming (as the default candidate), may not be correct.

There is an ongoing disagreement between satellite and surface based measurements. The surface based measurements seem to show more recent warming. The argument in favor of the surface based temperature record has been that the satellites do not monitor the poles, and that most of the warming is happening there. But there is no known mechanism (at least not any that I have been able to find an explanation for) by which CO2 increase would mostly heat the poles .

Another issue is that it has recently come to light that there have been some odd choices made in compiling data for the temperature record upon which the models were based. For example, only one site out of dozens was chosen to represent the entire Antarctic continent, and that chosen site showed the greatest warming signal of all stations – an 8x greater warming signal than the raw data from all those stations. This sort of thing could explain the greater polar warming and the land versus satellite data discrepancy.

[Here is a link to an article about temperature data selection in Antarctica:

http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/ghcn-antarctic-warming-eight-times-actual/]

And if the land based temperature record is bad, then the models built to fit it are all bad.

So, when the modelers say things like, “Only human action can explain the temperature record” they may be absolutely correct – its just may be a different kind of human action than what they are considering…

E. And last – but perhaps most importantly – the projections made in the IPCC 2001 models have not proven accurate.

There may be better models now, and they may still predict immanent warming that may reach dangerous levels, but the projections that have been around long enough to be tested at all, have failed that test. With no increase of the hypothetical problem over 10 years, either the hypothesis is wrong, or it is less of an immediate threat than was predicted.

I find it hard to be convinced that there is an urgent need for immediate political action to stop a problem that moves so slowly as to not show itself for a decade.

Personally, I start out as a believer and join the “denier” camp about half way down the list.

So, when do you stop believing?

Scenario 1:

• A. It is claimed that a large asteroids is on a collision course with the earth.
• B. The location of the asteroid is published and astronomers all over the world (professional and amateur) are able to spot it with their telescopes.
• C. Anyone can use well tested mathematical formulas to compute its path and confirm the impending collision. These same formulas have been confirmed by observation to correctly plot the path of other asteroids time and again.
• D. Various studies are published predicting Estimates of the damage that will be done based on land strike and sea strike scenarios. Natural disasters such as earthquakes, fires, floods, and drought are considered possible or likely consequences, depending on where the asteroid hits.
• E. There is a movement with a costly plan to build a rocket that might be able to divert the asteroid to prevent the collision.
• F. The call goes out for your money, vote, and/or personal effort to help the cause.

Scenario 2 (as above, but):

• A. It is a cloud of smaller meteors that will cause multiple smaller strikes.
• E. The plan of action is some sort of magnetic space net. It is widely questioned whether it will actually help, or if it is already too late.

Scenario 3 (as above but):

• B. The location of the threat (the raw data) is kept confidential by a small group studying the threat.
• C. They assure us that there will be a collision based on well tested formulas, but we can’t do the calculations ourselves.

Scenario 4 (as above but):

• A. It is a cloud of space dust, rather than an asteroid.
• C. Rather than well tested formulas, brand new, untested, computer models (code not released to the public) are used to predict the development of the threat based on new scientific theory (space dust is attracted by our planets magnetic field or some such). But we are assured that these scientist know what they are talking about, and anyone who doesn’t believe is a “denier”.
• D. The potential damage predicted is not anything as obvious as physical collisions – but instead the effects of the dust on our atmosphere are projected as being harmful in various ways. It is even possible that there will be some positive effects, but these are downplayed.

Scenario 5 (as above but):

• E. Studies suggest that the threat is increased by human action. (The use of electricity is said to be causing our magnetic field to be more attractive to the theoretically harmful space dust that only the trained scientists can see) There is a movement with a costly plan to reduce human industry – replace electricity with older power technology – fund development of theoretical new power technology.
• F. You are asked to accept new central political control over a huge section of human industry/production.

Scenario 6 (as above but):

• A. The threat is not anything extraterrestrial but based on global measurements of with regular natural variance that may be as large as that being pointed to as evidence of a threat.

Scenario 7 (as above but):

• C. A whole decade passes with no increase in the threat.
• E. Believers continue to claim that their is no time to waste and that the “scientific debate is over”.

Scenario 8 (as above but):

• G. Leaked emails, data, and computer code show that the “scientists” who would not share the data or code willingly, appear to have an agenda in promoting the threat and suppressing any scientific study that disputes their alarming claims.

I have been on national radio and TV a few times, but that is really just talking to two or at most three people;  one asking questions, one doing sound, and one holding a camera. There is something viscerally different about having an audience large enough that they could lynch you…

Anyway, I discovered the secret reciepe for public speaking – two shots of tequilla and a pear cider.

Judge for yourself how I did:

Sean Hastings – The Seasteading Institute Conference 2009 from The Seasteading Institute on Vimeo.

(Group A Forever ! ! ! )

As a right thinking member of Group A, I know that all of our societies ills are the fault of Group B. Of the hundreds (maybe thousands) of things we disagree on, it is clear to me that Group A holds the correct position on each and every one. It is purely a coincidence that there are an almost exactly equal number of people who support the ideas of Group B – holding the exact opposite position on these issues. The only explanation for this large group getting every single issue exactly wrong is that half of all people are smart and half stupid.

Now, occasionally someone in group B will say something that I am forced to agree with, and occasionally it may seem like one of THEM is actually also a smart person. The explanation for this is that it is a trick. If you are smart enough to see deeper to the subtext, they are saying true stuff, not because they think that important truths need to be said, but because it is a way to make Group A look bad. Or, if one of them is smart, they are also evil and just say what they do for personal gain, not because they believe it. So instead of looking for common ground in what appears to be a shared truth, or stopping to consider why another person sees the world differently than I do, the smart thing to do is defend OUR position by shouting them down.

To give any one of THEM credit for either good intent or valid insight would add support to the positions they hold that I do not agree with, so instead I must claim that they are only saying true things for false reasons. Then I must bring up all the bad stuff I blame on their group and try to shift the argument to the issues that I feel most comfortable arguing that make me more sure that everything my group believes is the truth – even though all the issues are not logically connected and I have just put them in the same mental bucket labeled “things Group A believes” so that I can just think about the ones I am really sure about and conclude from those ideas, that all of the others that I don’t have time to think about, because they are more complicated, must also be true.

Now I know that some people actually claim to have a set of beliefs that holds some things that Group A believes and some things that Group B believes. While these people might be well meaning in some cases (like situations where they agree with me on a particular issue) my below the surface analysis reveals to me that they are really just deluded tools of Group B.

It is important to me that there only are two possible sides, and that all the various positions held on various issues by my side must be right and the other side must always be wrong. If this is not the case, then the whole group identity falls apart. If people can be right about some things and wrong about others, then there would really be millions of possibles “sides” and it is no longer US against THEM with a large, easily understandable enemy and many many good friends, but rather, it might turn out that it is just me alone, and a lot of other people who are all individuals – not easily viewed as 100% friends or 100% enemy – 100% right or 100% wrong.

It might even turn out that on some issues there are no 100% right answers that work for everybody – that sometimes I don’t know best – that sometimes nobody knows best, and that the best thing to do is actually let people act according to their own hearts, rather than trying to set a single rule for everyone to follow. It might even turn out that this is true for almost every issue that divides us into groups…

And that would be very scary and confusing.