Gabriel Bodeen @gabe@qoto.org

I'm intrigued by the idea of a decentralized platform like Mastodon, but all in all I think the federated structure is a failure in practice. It comes in two extremes: acrimonious, censorious groupthink on the one end, and on the other end a torrent of spam 'n porn.

MySpace of old, & early Facebook is a better model: one-to-one symmetric connections, with no activity feed at all, not even a chronological one. Private group chats are also good. The keys are privacy, small scale, & either natural conversation patterns or long-form text. All these things are so much healthier, happier, & more fun.

In short, I'm outta here. I wish you all the best.

The biggest feature needed in this app is "block all anime posts"

Technically a 36 hour week, down from 40 hours, but still fit into 4 days instead of 5 that's a decent deal.

Another method could be a "fixed point" approach. As if on faith, take a particular idea as the fixed point -- something not only immune from skepticism, but indeed to be treated as foundational. Every other idea would be judged by its degree of compatibility with the fixed point.

Obviously, by itself, that's a straight path to nonsense as bad as conspiracy theory reasoning. But what about if it's not by itself?

Consilience is an intriguing potential method. The idea is look at what ideas survive under many different fixed points. Such ideas are robust across many worldviews. Thus it feels right that consilient ideas would be well worth trusting even if we don't fully accept any fixed points.

#philosophy

In particular, for a long time I've had a suspicion that worldviews are largely a matter of aesthetics. So could we make a clear, rigorous way of resolving philosophical questions based on aesthetic criteria?

Parsimony seems to have started off as an aesthetic principle. It says not to multiply entities unnecessarily, or in other words, whenever you have multiple possible explanations, it says to prefer the explanation that relies on the fewest, smallest new assumptions. That feels like an aesthetic to me! It tells us to be sparing and minimalistic in certain ways, re-using & re-combining a small set of ingredients into elaborate recipes.

Over the centuries, parsimony got formalized, and now it's also rigorously definable, e.g. with the Solomonoff prior and Kolmogorov complexity.

Lately I've been wondering what other methods there might be by which a community could resolve disagreements about philosophical questions. Clearly there are better and worse ways. The motto that comes to mind is:

> The choice of the method determines the value of the results.

#philosophy

If you start with philosophy questions and add a method of resolving disagreements, you give the practice a new name.

• Philosophy where disputes are resolved by the axiomatic method and formal logic is called mathematics.
• Philosophy where disputes are resolved by experiment is called science.
• Philosophy where disputes are resolved by majority or consensus is called politics.
• Philosophy where disputes are resolved by appeal to a canon of texts and an interpretive history is called tradition (usually a legal, religious, or academic tradition).

#philosophy

In general, I strongly support following the existing Constitution.

But suppose the President abrogated elections. Then the US Constitution would not be being followed by the federal government, and attempting to follow the Constitution at the federal level would offer no achievable remedy to that situation. The only path forward to a Constitutional order would be via the states.

The staid option is an Article V convention, because it's an established idea. But this is for proposing amendments to a Constitution that is already being ignored (in the hypothetical). So it seems mis-aimed.

What we'd need, I suspect, is for a collection of large, powerful states to ratify a new Constitution. It would be ratified on its own terms, just like the current Constitution was ratified on its own terms, not by previous rules.

I think daily about ways to make a better constitution. It's always been just an idealistic thought experiment for me. But this year I'm less sure it's irrelevant.

If the President creates a Constitutional crisis that has no viable remedy solely following Constitutional procedures, would that justify dissident states ratifying an updated Constitution?

Nifty quote!

Nifty quote!

Always good advice in coming months.

Pick your priorities & focus your efforts where they count. Don't get swept up in impotent outrage. Acknowledge there will be terrible new stuff every day and you don't have energy or power to fight it all. Just tune in for occasional summaries from level headed people with solid analysis, & adjust your priorities as needed.

"Vote for 1, Top 2 Win"

In the short term (0-1 years), we'd see districts elect either two standard Republicans, two standard Democrats, or one of each.

In the medium term (2-7 years), I think we'd see districts get a choice between a conservative, a moderate, & a progressive, and elect 2 of the three.

In a longer term (8+ years), I think we'd get a real third party that stands for different things than either of the Republicans or Democrats. The political spectrum would change into a political triangle, each party having a base in one corner & competing to win over the voters in the center and on the sides between each other.

This is not an idealistic reform. I'm sure few people will like it, because they prefer something more idealistic.

Its chief advantages are:
• No Constitutional amendment is required.
• It only requires extremely minimal changes.
• We know from our country's history that it would create both effective government and depolarization.
• It maximizes the proportion of people who are represented in the governing coalition (two thirds of voters, rather than half, will get their way).
8/8

The US Constitution has a quirk that would come into play at this point. If no candidate gets a majority of the electoral votes, then the state congressional delegations choose the winner from among the top 3 candidates.

This strengthens Congress relative to the President, and further eliminates gridlock: Whichever two parties form a coalition, they will always choose one of their own, giving them a President they can work with.
7/

The other big wrinkle in the US is of course the Presidency. Only one Presidential candidate can win under the constitution, so that strongly pushes national politics to a two-party system regardless of the voting method. Even with rankings, it's necessary to win the majority, and it's fighting for a bare majority that motivates a two-party system.

What would work? We could require states to award half their electoral votes to each of the top two Presidential candidates in the state. That would make it a true 3-way contest.
6/

The two-party system is created by our voting methods. Rather than ranking or rating or approving candidates, we are only allowed to vote for one, and only one candidate wins in each district. Strategically this forces voters to collect into two parties and fight over the median voter. You've probably heard about voting reform proposals to rank or rate or approve multiple candidates.

I propose instead: Vote For One, Top Two Win. Strategically, this forces voters to collect into *three* parties that all fight to pull voters from each other.
5/

So it's worth thinking about what further reforms can mitigate the harms of polarization -- but without anything like the terrible injustice that 20th century depolarization was built on.

Fortunately, I think there's a simple answer: Bring back a three-party system with three roughly equal parties. That will bring back the requirement for compromise plus the huge, uncomplicated coalitions that make governing possible and effective under our Constitution.
4/

But of course it was all built on terrible injustice. The civil rights movement fought for & won a great moral victory, for which we as a country can remain proud, & we can honor their struggle.

We can simultaneously recognize that in restoring relatively free elections to the South, the reforms set the stage for re-polarization. There are always side effects. Unfortunately, polarization in our political system makes the system work terribly. I think we can lay part of the blame of our current political disaster on the political consequences of polarization.
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No one of the three factions could pass anything by itself nor hope to gain a majority, so coalition or compromise were the only strategically valid options for party leaders to pursue. But with a coalition of nearly two-thirds, they could very easily pass laws on matters that the coalition agreed about. Furthermore, the coalition was formed of only two factions, so coordinating the factions was relatively simple, much more so than for the many-party coalitions that sometimes occur in countries with proportional representation.

So this period was characterized by high levels of compromise, and political depolarization between the parties.
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