An elegantly simple way to revolutionize government

What started as a somewhat complex mathematical analysis of the game of politics using game theory (the mathematical study of strategic decision making) has evolved years later into an extraordinarily simple idea that would revolutionize government at all levels.

Deception is the lifeblood of our political system. A system claiming to work for the best interests of the people, while in fact largely working for corporate special interests, must necessarily be riddled with elaborate lies and deception. Our political system, with great help from mainstream media, is designed to foster mass deception rather than expose it. But a simple rule change to our game of politics would instantly and reliably expose deception. This would destroy the status quo and revolutionize government.

Rather than trying to establish a level playing field for the game of politics, we could heavily stack the deck with a simple rule change that rewards informed truth seekers while severely punishing liars (and the ill-informed). We could establish a simple rule change that effectively forces intellectual honesty passively, without any required action by the players of the game. Too good to be true? Read on.

A modest proposal that would revolutionize government

A government website (or other website) would be modified to allow the public to search using the ID of any bill (e.g., HR 492) and find (side by side for easy comparison and scrutiny) a pro and a con argument for that bill. Supporters would collaborate to write the pro argument and detractors would collaborate to write the con argument.

However, there might be a blank space for one or both arguments since providing them would be strictly voluntary. Our representatives (on either side of an issue) would be free to provide a single sentence as an argument, multiple pages, or nothing at all. But what makes these arguments special and gives them the power to reward informed truth seekers and severely punish liars (and the ill-informed) is this: they’d be dynamic, they’d be evolving works in progress—like Wikipedia articles.

Game theory predicts the arguments would quickly stabilize with fewer and fewer changes (like Wikipedia articles)—they wouldn’t go on and on in a tit-for-tat fashion.

Adding to their power to reward informed truth seekers and severely punish liars (and the ill-informed), pro and con arguments would be developed/modified out in the open (on the Internet for all to scrutinize). Both sides would watch the other side’s argument evolve and use this information to strategically develop/modify their (opposing) argument. At any given time, the public would see the current best pro argument and the current best con argument.

The game theory behind why this would revolutionize government

To understand how this simple rule change would work effectively, you need to look at politics as the strategic game of deception that it is. You need to envision yourself as a player viewing the game alternately from the standpoint of an informed truth seeker and then from the standpoint of a liar (or the ill-informed). You will soon see this simple change makes the game of politics very easy for informed truth seekers and very difficult for liars and the ill-informed (just the opposite of our current system).

Our current political system rewards liars and punishes truth seekers by using a complex web of mechanisms that ultimately make it easy (with great help from mainstream media) to deceive the masses and hard to get the truth out to the masses. Once the masses are fooled, our politicians are free to rob us blind, to start illegal wars for profit, to rape the environment, to break laws with impunity, or to commit any number of atrocities to serve their corporate masters.

Our current political system makes it easy for liars to evade defending their positions with even a semblance of a sound argument. They’re free to spout specious, often emotional, arguments that are typically only superficially challenged by mainstream media. There’s little pressure on the liars to respond to cogent arguments against their positions. So their deceit remains largely hidden from the masses. But why would merely providing empty space for pro and con arguments radically change things?

If you build it, they will come

Once the space for pro and con arguments is established (on the Internet for the world to see) there’d be great incentive for both truth seekers and even liars to put at least a figment of an argument in this space. Why?

Unless the bill is trivial or uncontroversial, leaving your argument space blank reeks of intellectual dishonesty and allows your opponents to skewer you in their opposing argument space. If you’re an informed truth seeker, you’d be eager to give the public a clear, cogent argument justifying your position. But if you’re a liar, you’d like to evade as much as possible. But if you do, your empty argument space tells the world you’re a crook. You’d be foolish not to offer the public something. But being a liar (or ill-informed) the best you can offer is a clever specious argument, which leaves you wide open for attack by your opponents. As a liar, you’re between a rock and a hard place.

Your clever specious argument might have easily fooled the masses, but it won’t fool your opponents (and friends of your opponents). As an informed truth seeker, you’d be able to easily recognize exactly where the (liar/ill-informed) argument is being deceptive or inadequate (if you can’t, get help from your friends). Using this information, you’d then modify your (opposing) argument to emphasize this deceit or ignorance for the public (who are always watching the two arguments evolve).

Some game strategies for developing arguments

  • As a truth seeker, if your opponents’ argument points out legitimate weaknesses or errors in your argument, you simply correct the weaknesses or errors, which forces your (liar) opponents to remove those assertions from their argument—or look stupid—AND it makes your argument even stronger.
  • But as a liar, if your opponents’ argument points out legitimate weaknesses or errors in your argument, you can’t really correct them (because they’re legitimate). If you do an evasive “correction”, your evasion will be apparent to your opponents and they’ll hang you for your intellectual dishonesty. So all you can do is remove the weaknesses or errors, which will weaken the clever speciousness of your original argument. The deck is heavily stacked against you when you can’t evade.
  • Liars often lie by omission. Truth seekers would simply expose this in their argument space for the whole world to see.
  • Truth and error have fundamentally different natures. Thomas Paine said, “It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.” If you’re an informed truth seeker, you need not fear any inquiry that challenges your argument—you welcome inquiry (even attacks) because it can only lead to your argument getting stronger.

But if you’re a liar (or ill-informed) you must shrink from inquiry because you’re in error and must do all you can to evade inquiry. But unfortunately for liars, the truth seekers (or their friends) will immediately recognize your evasion and hang you for it by updating their (opposing) argument to emphasize it for the public to see.

Let’s start a revolution in government

Send a copy of this essay to all your government representatives (state and federal) and ask them if they favor this simple new rule change for the game of politics. If they reject the idea, they’re admitting they prefer stacking the deck in favor of liars rather than truth seekers.

Thoreau said, “There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” The root of evil in the world is mass deception in politics. We can destroy this root with a simple rule change to the game.

Carmen Yarrusso, a software engineer for 35 years, designed and modified computer operating systems (including Internet software). He has a BS in physics and studied game theory and formal logic during his years with the math department at Brookhaven National Lab. He lives in New Hampshire and often writes about uncomfortable truths.

3 Responses to An elegantly simple way to revolutionize government

  1. Carmen Yarrusso

    Many details were left out of this piece to make it readable. These details deal with such things as daily operation, options for ease of use, reliability/corruptibility, software options, structured options for arguments about complex issues, deeper insight into the mechanisms, and more. Here are just a few for those interested:

    – Only authorized government representatives(*) would be allowed to modify the pro and con arguments. Arguments would be modified/updated in a wiki manner using the exact same software used for Wikipedia (except two arguments would be maintained per subject (bill) instead of just one (article) per subject for Wikipedia. Like Wikipedia, all modifications are ID and time stamped, so the world could see which government representative made which change and when. Like Wikipedia, a complete and indelible revision history would be always available for public viewing. Various versions of any argument as it evolves could easily be compared to highlight changes.

    *ACTUALLY, there are also two “shadow” pro and con arguments that are open to anyone in the world to construct for each bill. These public-input pro and con arguments can be used to expose deception when our “representatives” are in cahoots on a bill, where both sides are in favor of a bill against the peoples’ interests.

    See WikiArguments: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki...

    –Government representatives would be free to get facts and evidence from anyone in the world to support their side of an argument. As new facts and evidence come in, each side could strategically update their respective arguments. In fact, each side is free to get anyone in the world to write an argument or part of an argument for them.

    –Game theory predicts the argument on the side of truth would tend to evolve to become stronger, whereas the opposing argument on the side of error (developed by liars or the ill-informed) would tend to evolve to become weaker. There’s a kind of invisible hand of truth operating in the algorithm here that would quickly expose which argument is based on truth and which argument is based on lies (or ignorance).

    – The heart of this powerful idea is dynamic arguments in full view of the world. Dynamic arguments uncover truth efficiently, whereas the various means currently used in our political system for uncovering truth actually hide the truth.

    –This idea isn’t just for top level government. A simple system of dynamic, transparent pro and con arguments would be set up for all government agencies. Deception is just as rampant in government agencies as it is in Congress. If the EPA is contemplating a new rule, for example, both sides would have to present the public with their best current pro and con arguments.

    Remember, the product our dishonest “representatives” are selling is DECEPTION (to ease passage of special interest legislation). This simple new rule change exposes practically any deception thus greatly devaluing the product for sale thus taking big money out of our political system.

    Don’t confuse these side by side DYNAMIC pro and con WikiArguments with side by side STATIC pro and con arguments. Ordinary people read a static pro argument and think, “that sounds pretty good.” But when they read the static con argument, they think, “this too sounds pretty good.”

    Static side by side pro and con arguments about a political issue are better, for example, than TV “debates” or back and forth forums, for exposing deception, but this common form of “truth seeking” still tends to hide deception rather than exposing it.

    But DYNAMIC pro and con (wiki)arguments work in a very different way that quickly and effectively EXPOSES deception.

    Just as a Wikipedia article gets closer and closer to the truth as it evolves under the duress of differing views, DYNAMIC pro and con (wiki)arguments evolve to get closer and closer to the truth for the argument with truth on its side and further away from the truth for the side in error. The two (wiki)arguments co-evolve as they each react to each other changing.

  2. I like the basic idea. However, if put it into the control of our two big business political parties we will only get a continuation of the status quo. Put the process under the jurisdiction of we the people and then we might actually get some results.
    Example Obama and Kerry wanted to bomb Syria in retaliation for a chemical weapons attack that actually originated in rebel held territory according to UN weapons inspectors. Republicans on the other side of the political coin did not object to the bombing, only to Obama’s handling of the Syrian crisis from Day One. Although largely uniformed on the particularities of the crisis, the majority of the American people were not in favor of bombing Syria. But it took Kerry putting his foot in his mouth when talking with Putin for a non U.S. intervention policy to get mentioned (Syria giving up its chemical weapons). Neither political party had anything to do with peacefully (for us at least) resolving the crisis. It was the American people and people across the globe being against it and the bumbling Kerry’s verbal mistake combined with Putin’s input that kept us out of another shooting war, at least for the time being.

    Another example: monetary reform–that might put you to sleep so let me reconfigure the issue as “Full employment at a living wage, rebuilding our country’s infrastructure, paying off the national debt as it comes due and making debt-free money available to our beleagured state governments and interest free loans for infrastructure available to local governments is all possible by reforming our monetary system.”
    See “Occupying The NEED Act”
    http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/11626
    Yet the bill sits without a single sponsor from either political party and will certainly get no support from either party on such a website, unless the people are in control of this system and able to generate the issues that will actually make a difference in our lives.

    http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/11626
    Occupying The NEED Act

  3. Carmen Yarrusso

    Nick–
    The problems you outline above would be handled nicely using the pro and con “shadow” WikiArguments I mention above. These two arguments can be modified by anyone in the world to develop a clear, sound argument for bills that aren’t being supported by either political party (both parties are often in cahoots against the people they claim to represent).

    If the proposed site were up and running, by using the shadow pro and con arguments, people around the world would see the merits of the bill in question and pressure their reps to support it.

    This “simple rule change to the game of politics” would allow the world to see a sound argument for just bills (that aren’t being supported by Congress)and also see any attempt at deception (in the form of specious opposing WikiArguments against these bills.