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- Hacker News
- Title is: SimPolitics - America’s Quest to Solve Politics with Computers
- Wouldnt this be a show hn?by JimsonYang
- Thanks! I should have put that in the post in the first placeby mckelveyf
- I didn't read the book but the problem in politics is always the silent majority.
On the internet, the 5% of haters and the 5% of the biggest fans mostly comment. 90% of the people don't, the silent majority.
How are you gonna model what those who don't give an opinion say?
Polls? Remember the USA 2016 election where Trump won?
by NotGMan - But that's always been the case. Nixon started to use the term in 1969 just as his campaign was working with top advisor to build more interactive systems to measure and predict the elections per riding. A bit theme of the book is how to appreciate the gap between a simulation and reality, something old and new.by mckelveyf
- Can anyone tell me if it acknowledges the dialectic?
- Its got sublimes for cheap.by mckelveyf
- Looking forward to "modeling the economy with AI agents".by amelius
- The nuance that kept me from spinning out in writing the book was the assumption that politics is weird, and not the same as the economy.by mckelveyf
- Great video on the subject of applying science to business and government: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sf0vb4yiZR4&t=2sby liampulles
- Thank you for this, I'm going to give it a read.
I am unfortunately very bearish on politics in general. All politicians think short term, look after themselves, their families, their friends, and their interests first; Facts, and working simulations just get in the way. (I am still looking for a politician that is an exception to this rule) Human nature is unfortunately real, and the only way I can see to "solve politics" is to remove human's entirely, but that comes with a whole new set of issues and is another book I guess.
by boznz - Exactly right, and same for society in general. There’s a degree to which humans work okay in their primitive state (hunter-gatherers, small homogenous communities), but once scaling and technology enters the picture we’re 100% toast without a fundamental recalibration towards genuinely caring for one another.by gigatree
- I think it's less that politicians think short term, and more that voters think short term. Politicians are just responding to the incentives created by willfully ignorant voters.by Hammershaft
- You should read Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Politics. This was a known problem 2,400 years ago.
https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html
https://www.sciencetheearth.com/uploads/2/4/6/5/24658156/pla...
by rayiner - People sure tried. But really the book traces how that happened. I think it became easier to imagine politics working like a computer than with people, like how computer reasoning and rational choice became an ideal to measure other political thought.by mckelveyf
- I get the bearish case but it is easy to forget how much difference good vs bad politics can have and that politics isn't primarily a game of facts. It is an optimization problem under many unknowns and its history is littered with academic theories debunked and hard won compromises.by oezi
- "solving politics" is nonsensical beyond winning elections.
Most political issues don't have a "solution", they have various trade offs that are contingent.
by telxosis - Theres a big problem, which has been described by many philosophers and political theorists (from socrates to Machiavelli) which is that politicians are first and foremost self-serving.
Most political work is not done for the population as a whole but for the own continuing of the political class and personal enrichment. Yes, sometimes these incentives align with the interests of the constituents. But if politics is about compromise and you have two groups with opposing views whose only common ground is "we are all politicians here" its most likely that a lot of the agreements are going to benefit the political class.
There's people arguing for sortition and sortition (at least as citizens assemblies, the way the OECD describes) tries to solve this problem. As people go into an assembly and don't have other incentives than to defend their own positions with regards to a certain topic of discussions. Its not a permanent body and that gets rid of some of the perverse incentives of politicians.
by jerojero - I think a better way to run a democracy might be to have our leaders chosen at random. Sounds like a joke, but I’m serious:by left-struck
- Open access link
https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/6166/SimPoliticsAm...
by al_hag - Thank you! Hope you find it interesting!by mckelveyf