All public logs

Combined display of all available logs of Information Rating System Wiki. You can narrow down the view by selecting a log type, the username (case-sensitive), or the affected page (also case-sensitive).

18:29, 13 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Contract as a method to mitigate the basic liberties imposition (Created page with "{{Main|Political Systems}} There is a natural conflict between community needs and individual basic liberties. Sometimes, under exigent circumstances, the community will have to impose on its members to the point of taking away their basic liberties. In extreme cases this might include their life. One way to ameliorate this problem is to have a contract upon admission to the community in which the prospective member agrees in advance to these impositions. If the membe...")
15:46, 13 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Defining utopia (Created page with "{{Main|Political Systems}} Dan mentioned at one point, somewhat tongue in cheek, that we are designing utopia. But what is our definition of utopia? I think it would be a good idea to have folks describe their thoughts on this. Mine are below. Utopia permits personal freedom of choice, expression, and action. The only constraints on these involve interactions and effects on others. Utopia, mostly through personal choice and consensus, distributes its wealth equitably....")
15:09, 13 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Power distribution as a corollary to income distribution (Created page with "{{Main|Political Systems}} In our society, the distribution of power is as important, if not more so, than the distribution of income. In fact, one reason we are concerned about the distribution of income is because it profoundly affects how power is distributed. We have discussed ways our ratings-based society might choose to change the distribution of income. This is fairly easy becau...")
14:05, 13 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Democratizing resource allocation (Created page with "{{Main|Societal optimization}} One of the primary benefits of a system like ours will be in improved resource allocation. Current resource allocation systems (eg regulated market capitalism) wastes a tremendous amount of wealth on unnecessary labor and goods. Furthermore, we distribute wealth in counterproductive and undemocratic ways. We underpay manual workers, overpay managers, maintain positions in which no actual work is accomplished, create make-work projects, spe...")
21:24, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Steps in policy-making (Created page with "{{Main|The subjective and community ratings system}} Policies are plans of action and guidelines for solving problems. They are not necessarily specific solutions to individual problems although they can result in that when implemented. They are usually not quite as general as a mission statement (which often conveys no meaning) but they don’t always tell you “how” to do anything in particular. They just guide you in a direction, eg Our policy is to promote human...")
21:06, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Justice and defense in communities (Created page with "{{Main|Ratings system}} ==Thoughts on justice== It is not a happy thought but there is and will be criminal behavior in all societies. Our idea is that the ratings system will temper this to a large extent since it wouldn’t be possible to “get away” with alot of bad behavior. The criminal would be exposed to more than just a supportive friend-group. It is also the case that people with a tendency toward bad behavior might be more easily identified early-on throug...")
20:25, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Economic losses and counterfactuals (Created page with "{{Main|Economic systems}} {{Main|Systems thinking}} $5.9 billion is a lot of money but probably no one actually “felt” the loss. This is usually the case with financial fraud. If someone robs our bank, we do not personally feel the effect of that. For one thing, the FDIC insures our accounts so the loss is only felt collectively. But another problem, obviously, is that much of what counts as a loss is only measurable in the future. In other words, the loss is the d...")
20:03, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Weight assignment -- The equal weight method (Created page with "{{Main|Ratings system}} In our last meeting (7/3/2024) we discussed methods for delegating trust weights. Dan’s preferred system is to give everyone 100 points to dole out as they see fit. You can spend points on other people and accumulate points spent on you from other people. One question that came up is whether you could spend the points you were given by others. The consensus seemed to be that yes, you could. If you accumulated say, 500 points, you could proxy it...")
19:14, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page The subjective and community ratings system (Created page with "{{Main|Ratings system}} === The subjective and community-based ratings system === Let's begin by stressing that first we are building a subjective ratings system in the context of a peer-to-peer network. Everyone would have their own network of contacts, choose their own categories for ratings, algorithms for aggregation, weights for aggregation equations, etc. Individuals would identify themselves to their peers of choice with a public key or similar methodology. T...")
15:35, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Freedom of speech (Created page with "Last week, Leo asked whether our ratings system requires freedom of speech. The answer is yes, but perhaps we’ve been too quick to assume that. Freedom of speech is a complex subject because, even in the most free societies, there are restrictions. Dan mentioned perhaps the most important of them, defamation. Fortunately the ratings system has a built-in mechanism to oppose those who slander others. We have, incidentally, discussed having a separate legal framework to...")
15:18, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Commentary on technology and feasibility of the ratings system (Created page with "The system we are proposing is far-reaching and may strike many as unrealistically grandiose. But it is also unrealistic to doubt the impact of technology. Consider that today our mobile technology, in particular, has wrought a type of dystopian present where everyone is addicted to their phones. I was looking at students at a bus stop not long ago and every single one of them was immersed in their phone. It reminded me of a Star Trek TNG episode from decades ago where e...")
15:08, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Thoughts on trust (Created page with "{{Main|Trust}} Trust can be looked upon as the probability of an interaction with someone having an expected favorable outcome. This might mean they tell the truth when asked a question. Or it might mean they don’t cheat you in a financial transaction. The outcome must be expected because normally we don’t count on random outcomes, even if they are favorable. And the outcome must be favorable because that is, presumably, the reason for the interaction in the first p...")
14:51, 12 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page SRBE and CRBE (Created page with "{{Main|Economic systems}} Last time we clarified some terms with regard to Lem’s “gift-giving” economy. We will call it instead the Subjective Ratings Based Economy (SRBE). In this economy, we use each individual’s personal ratings system to evaluate economic “deservingness” of claims. My alternative to this would be to vote on a ratings system that the community would use for handling economic claims and “deservingness”. We might call this a Community R...")
21:33, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Communities and the right to secession (Created page with "{{Main|Community}} We envision ratings-based communities as voluntary organizations. People choose to join them voluntarily and can leave them at will. The US, as well as many other nation-states, have a joining process (ie green card, citizenship, etc) and a process of citizenship renunciation. For individuals, community-based processes will exist for these although we anticipate that it will be less bureaucratic, faster, and more informal. The ratings system itself wi...")
21:30, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Balance between individual liberties and the community (Created page with "Last time we noted the recent decline in Ukraine’s score according to Freedom House. This obviously coincided with the beginning of the Russian invasion and we assumed that it had something to do with forced conscription of civilians into military service. Lem posed that forced conscription is wrong because it violates the basic liberties of otherwise free citizens....")
21:28, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Relationship between community members and its policies (Created page with "{{Main|Community}} Policy adoption means that all members, even the ones that favored other policies, have agreed to be bound by the policy once it is created. This binding of participants to the community is fairly standard but in our case it results from a conscious choice among participants. No one is, by default, a member of a community they didn’t choose. There is no notion of being “born into” a community to which you then have obligations. And, generally sp...")
21:26, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Government and physical space (Created page with "{{Main|Community}} Government jurisdiction is traditionally coincident with land within specified boundaries. In some sense, it is hard to separate government from this constraint. Much of what we need from government is a result of where we live. Road construction, water & sewer infrastructure, protection from invasion, etc. depends on physical presence. But much of what we need is also independent of location: information, education (at least when delivered virtua...")
20:17, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Libertarian socialism (Created page with "<h3>Libertarian Socialism, Chomsky, and the Kibbutz Movement</h3> Communities will be able to adopt any ideology they want. However if libertarianism and egalitarianism is our goal, the ideological approach would roughly correspond to an established concept, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism libertarian socialism] (LS). This is essentially the same approach used by Twin Oaks although libertarian socialists tend to focus on the means of production whil...")
19:50, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Community and libertarianism (Created page with "{{Main|Community}} One aspect of our culture is a strong emphasis on individual agency and rights. We may not all be formally libertarians but a libertarian ethos pervades our views and, as noted above, is strongly connected to the crypto community where the idea of a ratings system might find its first adopters. There is inevitably a conflict between a ratings system, communities, and libertarianism. There is further conflict when we add concerns about privacy, which...")
19:01, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Polling (Created page with "Dan mentioned polling as one of the important applications of the ratings system, particularly the community ratings system (CRS). The CRS, in this context, is useful, not just for ferreting out the truth but for the equally important task of finding out what other people think. We’ve discussed at length how the ratings system is a voting system and certainly polling plays a role in th...")
18:53, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Culture and privacy in a ratings-based society (Created page with "{{Main|Privacy, identity, and fraud in the ratings system}} Judging from our own society, we can infer that most members of a ratings-based community will not understand the encryption scheme well enough to assure themselves that it is, in fact, private. But they may take the word of cryptologists who do it for them. This is another reason why organizations will be important. In this case, crypto-organizations will be a trusted party for advanced cryptographic methods....")
18:29, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Opinion change and propagation (Created page with "Dan asked if we can look into how opinions change and propagate. Are there algorithms we can build that will detect that? The first thought that comes to mind is the difference between short-term and long-term opinion changes. === Short-term opinion changes === Short-term opinion changes are clear and can be traced to an event or, perhaps, an influencer. The attack on Pearl Harbor changed US opinion on whether or not to enter WWII. The 9/11 attacks provided an impetus...")
14:43, 11 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Opinion (Created page with "Traditionally, an [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/opinion opinion] is defined as "a view, judgment, or appraisal formed in the mind about a particular matter". We usually distinguish it from [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fact fact] by noting that facts have "actual existence" or "objective reality". In the ratings system, however, we consider all views, whether factual or not, as opinions. Therefore any statement made for ratings purposes is c...")
21:17, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page The ratings system, the media, and overcoming bias (Created page with "{{Main|Ratings system}} ==What's wrong what we have?== Traditional mass media is biased toward the status quo. It relies on corporate advertising, uses government sources for the bulk of its information, and is very reluctant to break out of traditional left-right boxes. Chomsky accuses it of “manufacturing consent” per the title of one of his books. The consent in this case is for a “Washington consensus” in world affairs and a general bias toward “free” m...")
20:54, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Thoughts on identity (Created page with "To determine if there is a real person claiming to be named X (i.e. person claims identity X) * I have met X in person N times. Consistency of physical appearance of X (to determine if it is same real person in each case) * X looks like/sounds like/dresses like a,b,c … Measure “activeness” of an identity (higher activeness requires increased work to maintain a false identity and also increases the chance for contradictions to be detected). There are many things...")
20:06, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page A straight average algorithm with continuous input distributions, complex trust, and intermediate results (Created page with "{{Main|Aggregation techniques}} In this previous post we discussed an algorithm for modifying probabilities using a more complex trust factor, one involving random lying, bias, and biased lying. We also discussed a simple case of combining continuous distributions using Bayes, straight averaging and trust-weighted averaging. However, the continuous distributions in this case did...")
18:33, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Avoiding feedback (Created page with "<span id="methods-of-preventing-feedback"></span> = Methods of preventing feedback = Say we have a fully-connected trust network that looks like: <kroki lang="graphviz"> digraph G { fontname="Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif" node [fontname="Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif"] edge [fontname="Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif"] layout=dot alice -> bob [dir="both"]; alice -> carol [dir="both"]; carol -> bob [dir="both"]; } </kroki> And ''alice'' wants ''bob''...")
17:32, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Arrow's theorem (Created page with "MCDM can be used for voting but runs into [https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arrows-theorem/ Arrow’s impossibility theorem]. Kenneth Arrow, an economist, won a Nobel prize in 1972 for his contention that it is impossible to extract a social order of preferences from individual preferences while also adhering to fair voting principles. To get some understanding of this, it is useful to imagine a scenario where we are trying to choose between Policy A, B, or C. Suppose...") Tag: Visual edit
15:44, 10 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Cardinal voting systems (Created page with "<h2>Cardinal Voting Systems</h2> A cardinal voting system is one where voters give an independent rating to each preference, in contrast to merely ranking their preferences. This requires more information but avoids Arrow’s paradox and provides higher quality results, especially for policy-level decision making. It is frequently the case that voters care a great deal about a few subjects and are mostly indifferent to the rest. An ordinal voting system forces a ranking...")
15:48, 9 September 2024 Pete talk contribs moved page Privacy in the subjective and community-based ratings system to DELETE Privacy in the subjective and community-based ratings system
15:36, 9 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Identity trust in the subjective ratings system (Created page with "{{Main|Privacy, identity, and fraud in the ratings system}} <h3>Establishing trust in a subjective ratings system</h3> Incidentally, the subjective ratings system mitigates the problem of multiple manufactured identities coming from the same person. People could certainly manufacture public/private key pairs and present them as new identities over the network. But each public key “identity” would only be trusted to the extent that it meaningfully interacte...")
20:44, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page The ratings system in light of our current institutional failures (Created page with "{{Main|Ratings system}} Recent and past supreme court decisions are an important reason we are constructing the ratings system. Over time we have realized that the courts, rather than objectively assessing the law, are in fact biased. Our present system of checks and balances, one that was <i>deliberately designed into the system</i>, is breaking down. What better way to prevent this outcome than to have a continuous check, by the people, on institutions using technolog...")
20:02, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Hysteresis (Created page with "{{Main|System modeling}} We have identified hysteresis as a necessary component of social systems, as it certainly is in natural systems. Generally speaking we want our ratings system, and associated decision-making systems, to not fluctuate wildly in their output. We especially want to prevent rapid fluctuations in policy based on the whims of the moment. So we’d like to build some hysteresis into these systems and understand any hysteresis that’s already built-in...")
19:59, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Software for social and economics modeling (Created page with "We’ve discussed the need for systems thinking and optimization at the societal level. Our argument has been that an objective, rigorous approach to problems will both improve public policy and quiet partisan discord. Community members will literally have to become knowledgeable about modeling social systems. Needless to say, education will have to be made available to folks in this area. In this vein we might provide an overview of the types of software that exist for...")
19:57, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Societal optimization (Created page with "{{Main|System modeling}} We have discussed optimization as the basis for policymaking in our ratings-based communities. Given its rigorous nature, optimization provides not only an analytical tool by which to measure outcomes, but also a method by which political rancor can be reduced. Not many people will sustain emotional debate when faced with a requirement to produce objective functions. An objective function is simply an equation that tells us what variable we wan...")
19:56, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Systems thinking (Created page with "{{Main|System modeling}} If political philosophy is a good required course for building a new society, then an even better one might be system dynamics, sometimes referred to generally as systems thinking. Our discussions of optimization and Pareto fronts presuppose a society well versed in this subject. Systems thinking was pioneered by the computer engineer [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay_Wright_Forrester Jay Wright Forrester] at MIT. He turned his attention to soc...")
19:53, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Multi-criteria decision-making methods (Created page with "{{Main|System modeling}} This section primarily addresses the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potentially_all_pairwise_rankings_of_all_possible_alternatives PAPRIKA] method by [https://www.1000minds.com/decision-making?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=20315873486&utm_content=150520272373&utm_term=decision%20making%20process%20software&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiArLyuBhA7EiwA-qo80Noemh5EsGq1GMdWy_qRDUBqhRtx8eKfx2DiXutN8BYFwD9w8-HOwhoCyq8QAvD_BwE 1000minds.com]...")
19:46, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page System modeling (Created page with "System modeling as expressed here refers to creating rigorous (ie mathematical to the extent possible) models of society and the effects of proposed policies. The idea is that through diligent modeling, simulation, and optimization we can make better socio-economic decisions without succumbing to futile ideological debate and political rancor. The ratings system will potentially transform society for the better and require a large amount of time from its members. We ant...")
16:30, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page More argument mapping tools and proposed ideas for our own such tool (Created page with "{{Main|Logic}} Last time we reviewed [https://carneades.github.io/ Carneades], an academic argument mapping tool/language. Here we will review some more such tools and propose an argument mapping system for our purposes within a trust network. <h3>[Argdown](https://argdown.org/)</h3> Argdown is a markdown system for making arguments and creating debates. It has a graphical visualizer w...")
16:29, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Software for argumention -- IBM Project Debater and Carneades (Created page with "{{Main|Logic}} <h3>IBM Project Debater API</h3> IBM maintains an [https://early-access-program.debater.res.ibm.com/ “early access program” for Project Debater] which includes a Python API. You must login as Guest and accept the agreement before getting access. The following installation procedure was followed: <pre>$ pip install debater-python-api $ pip install tqdm (not included in above install for whatever reason)</pre> Upon attempting to run one of the exam...")
16:28, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Informal logic and fallacies (Created page with "{{Main|Logic}} <span id="informal-logic"></span> == Informal Logic == Most informal logic is based on analyzing arguments, written in plain English, for known fallacies. Fallacies can occur in all types of arguments (deductive, inductive, abductive) but in deductive arguments a fallacy is regarded as an invalid argument, equivalent to a math mistake which can be established using the rules of inference and equivalence discussed before Internal:FromGitlab/Deductive_&_...")
16:27, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Deductive & inductive arguments and use cases (Created page with "{{Main|Logic}} <h2>Deductive Arguments and Use Cases</h2> Deductive arguments are ones where the conclusion must be true if the premises are true. They can be reduced to symbolic form and proven in the same way that we prove math theorems. They aren’t as common as inductive arguments (more on those later) but they form the foundation for all arguments and have significant applications of their own. Let’s take an example of a deductive argument that might be used i...")
16:25, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Prolog for deductive proofs (Created page with "{{Main|Logic}} <h2>Intro to Prolog</h2> SWI-Prolog was used here, from which the 64-bit Windows version was installed. Versions for Linux and other OS’s exist. It is distributed with the Simplified BSD license. https://www.swi-prolog.org/ SWI Prolog presents the user with a command prompt in which to enter queries and an editor for entering facts. Any editor can be used but the built-in one offers some syntax highlighting. After saving an edited file use the followi...")
16:23, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page More methods for propositional logic, syllogistic logic, and quantificational logic (Created page with "<h2>Other ways to establish truth in propositional logic</h2> <h3>The short truth table method</h3> As we saw last time, the truth table method requires <math display="inline">2^n</math> rows to complete an analysis of any propositional argument. Clearly this becomes untenable as the number of variables <math display="inline">n</math> increases. One simpler technique is to work backward...")
16:22, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Thoughts on symbolic logic to assess the truth of arguments (Created page with "<h2>Assessing validity using propositional logic</h2> Symbolic logic can be used to assess the validity of arguments without distracting, or even deceiving, ourselves with English verbiage. Here we will confine ourselves to propositional logic in which propositions (or statements) have a truth value and can be combined together to form conclusions. Let’s look at an example: P1) John is at the Library or he is Studying (L or S, ie <math display="inline">L \lor S</mat...")
15:44, 8 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Logic (Created page with "One of the central goals of the ratings system is to help people think better. Logic is a fundamental aspect of that, along with having reliable factual information.")
21:16, 7 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Privacy differences between the subjective and community ratings system (Created page with "<span id="differences-between-the-community-and-subjective-ratings-system"></span> == Differences between the Community and Subjective Ratings System == Last time, Eric ran through various schemes of increasing complexity designed to mitigate trust concerns in the subjective ratings system (SRS). In the next section, we will take a look at these and see how they apply to the community ratings system (CRS). But...")
19:44, 7 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Differential privacy, secure multiparty computation, and homomorphic encryption (Created page with "==Differential privacy== Eric gave us a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_privacy reference] to the idea of differential privacy (DP), a technique used to anonymize datasets with personal or sensitive information. In DP we introduce some statistical noise into the answer each person gives in a way that gives that person plausible deniability while still providing a reliable aggregate statistic (eg an average). The simple example given to beginners is to imagi...")
19:33, 7 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Ideas for encryption in aggregators (Created page with "<span id="deniable-authentication"></span> = Deniable Authentication = While I don’t have a concrete use case in mind right now, it seems like we may encounter a use for ''deniable authentication''. These systems allow the participants to be confident about the authenticity of the data exchanged, but the participants can later deny that they generated the data and a third party could not prove otherwise. “Off The Record Messaging” is an implementation of deniable...")
19:31, 7 September 2024 Pete talk contribs created page Privacy in ratings aggregation (Created page with "Let’s say our aggregation technique is a straight average. This is a subject we covered before and decided that the privacy-enhanced version of it would include each node only passing on summed values to the next node up. That way, the final node that performed the aggregation (and presumably reported it) would have no knowledge of the individual components making up the average. But this may be scant comfort to...")