[pp.int.general] liquidfeedback myths? /was Re: LQFB: status quo in Germany // was: liquid feedback papers and/or data?

[Cal.]

On 27 April 2014 15:46, carlo von lynX <lynX at pirate.my.buttharp.org> wrote:
> Oh, the Italians decided to dominate the debate again.. hehe..
> unfortunately I can't just bail out if certain things are said.

someone is wrong on the internet.

> It's the fundamental problem of mailing lists, they are easily
> dominated by loud minorities.

like you, we are seeing.

> Alessandro, does it matter much if 76 or maybe 40 people gave some
> person some feedback on some idea on how to organize inner party
> policy making? People have ideas all the time and it is nice that
> so many people are still paying attention, considering the vote is
> of zero binding value. Maybe if you insist hard enough you can
> find a voting which is of actual relevance - but then you will be
> confronted with participation in the hundreds. Damn.
>
> On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 02:34:54PM +0200, Cal. wrote:
>> It's peculiarly funny how you call that "fiction."
>
> Yes, several points were ficticious, like claiming there are no
> LQFB developers, claiming the UI could keep people from exercising
> democratic rights or the myth of the excluded offliners.
>
>> > I would add there was another essential ingredient to our 2011
>> > success: humility. We were humbled by our collective intelligence
>>
>> I remember you accounting that to "magic."
>
> Yes, I used the word "magic" as a placeholder for something that
> isn't clearly understood as yet. I presume it was humility.

so, magic. reproducibility is a necessary condition to a scientific
experiment. it's not scientific, so I don't find that wrong to call it
"magic"

>> Today, I feel confident enough to say that lqfb only works in Berlin.
>
> Not sure if it still does as much as in 2010, but we've had our
> share of people who publicly claim things contrary to the consensus,
> too, if that is what you are referring to as Leninism. If that is
> Leninism that could actually mean that Lenin was an intelligent man,
> too bad only that at his time there was no technology that could
> produce the necessary consensus, so he had to adapt his ideal system
> to some form of representation, which then spoils it of the quality
> of the results and of its legitimacy.

This, is what I'm referring as leninism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_centralism

If you want to say that pp-de-be is a leninist party, that is another thread.

>
>> You are confusing democracy and voting. You are again being a propagandist.
>
> I am not confusing it. I am merely convinced that it doesn't work to
> have people vote on something they didn't spend enough time upon
> understanding it. And unfortunately it has been shown that if you
> ask them for an opinion, they will almost always have one. No matter
> how stupid or superficial. So if you call my convictions "propaganda"
> you are merely insulting me, not challenging me.

insulting is your attitude towards evidence.

>
>> To say superior, greater than, you need an order relationship. Are you
>> saying lqfb produces more democracy? That has been debunked some
>> messages ago.
>
> Not that I know of. LQFB isn't perfect, but it is by far superior
> to having small groups decide things (lobbyism, corruption) or
> making large groups take decisions on things they cannot be sufficiently
> competent about - and probably at a frequency that would take them
> more than full time to make an informed decision.

why are you bullshitting us?


>> That is not. The "YOU are the problem" attitude is the very base of
>> your message, and the base of every reply to a lqfb question I have
>> ever heard (or given).
>
> Eh? At the Italian party the certification procedure is a the heart
> of becoming a full party member. All participants in our LQFB are
> certified. What are you talking about?

What are *you* talking about.

I was talking of lqfb fanboyism attitude and its principles. Not
italian identity verification procedures.

>
>> > Other pirate parties
>> > have understood that the participation in a voting platform
>> > is a political act which deserves to be transparent like we
>> > expect other political groups to be transparent. It's ridiculous
>> > that Germans expect their privacy to be respected when they are
>> > acting as politicians.
>>
>> Are you joking or what?
>
> Can you stop this trolling style?

No.

>
>> You are de facto excluding privacy-concerned people from pirate parties.
>
> No, there is plenty of space for activists, but if you are participating
> in a political decision that will influence the future of your country
> the electorate deserves transparency in how that decision came about.
> Also no-one asked you about how many times you cheated your husband.
> So please stop the superficial/populistic argumentations here.

The electorate deserves? It's not you who decide what the electorate
deserves. They decide by themselves in a periodic event called
"elections."

>
>> entitled to privacy, I don't even need to call my friends at CIA to
>> blackmail you; when you are a politician, that becomes very big
>> problem.
>
> Blackmail about a political decision they made in the past? That
> is not blackmailing. That is transparency. You can throw away
> votings of the past when they are replaced by new votings, but
> as long as the votings are the basis for the political activity
> of your parliamentary representatives, it is a right of every
> citizen to find out how those decisions were made. Otherwise we
> are not better than some transatlantic trade organization.

Whatever. You are focusing on people instead of decisions. A good
decision should stand up on its own. What are you fearing, with this
enormous authority principle appeal?

>
>> > It is important to understand however that the problems with
>> > direct and representative democracy are serious and big and
>> > cannot just be ignored and denied as you are suggesting to do.
>>
>> Nobody is denying those problems. Nobody even spoke about direct or
>> representative democracy.
>
> The Meinungsfindungstool that refuses delegations is yet another
> direct democratic tool. The Internet is full of those and the reason
> LQFB stands out is because of its liquid democracy principle.

Circular reasoning. liquid feedback is better because is liquid feedback.

I don't know if that tool is better; I won't care unless it is ready.
What I'm trying to say, and what you are refusing based on propaganda
and solely propaganda, is that LIQUID FEEDBACK IS A FAILURE (it. only.
works. via. magic.), regardless of other platforms' merits.

(you start to understand why I forked the thread to reply to you?)

>
>> You are assuming that a person without time to vote has time to
>> control and validate their delegates' ones.
>
> No, I assume that if a person votes on something in a scandalous
> way that everybody starts talking about, that person will immediately
> stop having such a strong political influence.

Protection against scandals? Is this all we get?

> This is a huge advance-
> ment compared to representative democracy were you can yell at your
> political leadership day-in day-out for betraying your interests,
> and after 4-5 years you are back at having to choose the least worst
> evil. People who speak of superdelegates as being similarly bad as
> representative democracy are just lying to themselves, being emotional
> on the topic rather then scientific.

You have no faint idea of scientific process. We have 3 year data run,
but I need you to remind me what your thesis was, when we started this
liquid experiment.

> Usually they are the types who
> would like to be the bosses of the movement and actual democratic
> consensus has not been in their favour.

ad hominem?

>
>> > Secret vote is necessary in an election of a
>> > person because after that election the person stays in power for
>> > a certain number of years.
>>
>> There is no relationship between hypothesis and thesis.
>
> Ok, please refine by reading the appropriate wikipedia pages or
> law text explanations for the respective laws that some countries
> have on that topic. There are some missing elements in my summary
> that lead you from hypothesis to thesis.

you inserted a causal relationship between secret voting and voting on
people. you said that secret vote is only needed when voting on
people.

there are secret votes that are not about people, and this is your
counterexample.

>> Somewhere around here was mentioned the demotivational effect of
>> delegation kings. That is a very important point and I was eager to
>> destroy you counter-argument, but you self-kindly ignored it.
>
> Actually everytime you apply democracy there is something
> demotivational about it. No democratic system is going to
> fully satisfy you simply because you are probably not 100%
> conformant with the general consensus.

please. you are again being a propagandist by confusing unanimity and consensus.

> If that hurts too much, don't be in a political party.
> Parties are not made to foster everybody's ideas but rather
> focus on those that they can agree upon.
>
> Superdelegates are less bad than elected representatives.
> Superdelegates are less bad than loud minorities.
> Superdelegates are also less bad than populist voting
> without intelligence.
>
> You don't like superdelegates, because your opinion or
> almost always contrary to the ones of the party majority.
> It has nothing to do with superdelegates. Even the word
> "superdelegates" is propaganda by people that are
> dissatisfied by liquid democracy because their minority
> opinions get their fair chance, but then lose out compared
> to better proposals. And some folks just can't accept that
> and rather blame the methodology.

ad hominem and/or leninism and dismissal of minorities. again.

> That is how the hope for a better democracy is dismantled.

propaganda.

>> > Which is exactly how LQFB is actually being used everywhere where
>> > a binding permanent assembly has been implemented with it. You could
>> > spare yourself the work by simply enforcing that delegations are
>> > disabled if a person hasn't been participating frequently enough.
>>
>> Everywhere I saw lqfb used most delegation where based on social
>> connection, not actual knowledge of issues. What you said is just a
>> lie.
>
> I didn't say anything about delegation happening by competence.
> That was the original idea, but of course the people first of all
> delegate by trust - then within trust they choose someone who is
> likely to be careful on how she will use her voting power. This
> doesn't always work out - I think LQFB can be improved a lot in
> this area, for instance by having regulations that impede certain
> types of populist rhethoric and eliminate unfair proposals. When
> superdelegates "fail" it is frequently connected to the rhethoric
> that was used in the proposal that lured them away.

language analysis and antispam in a voting tool? will your party be
taken over by some bot?

> Still all of this is less bad than electing a representation,
> having the loud minority decide by itself or having populism
> by default and reasonable debate as the exception.
>
> Stop expecting perfection from liquid democracy. Accept that it
> is merely the least bad of democracies and do something on how to
> improve it - if that is really your goal.

ad hominem?