Has there ever been a practical proof-of-concept system, even a toy one, for futarchy? Not just a “bare” prediction market, but actually tying the thing directly to policy.
If not, I suggest a programming nomic (aka codenomic) for this purpose.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of nomic, it’s a little tricky to explain, but there’s a live one here in ECMAScript/Javascript, and an old copy of the PerlNomic codebase here. (There’s also a scholarly article [PDF] on PerlNomic, for those interested.)
Also, if you’re not familiar with the concept of nomic, you don’t read enough Hofstadter.
I am trying to write a programming nomic that uses SpiderMonkey for its engine—essentially, EcmaNomic but without the part where it sucks. >.> Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit akratic about it lately. If anyone knows C or C++ or anything like that, I would love it if you could assist me in any way. Of course, encouragement would also help a bunch.
I’m curious why you want to use a particular JavaScript engine, rather than using whatever happens to be built into a web browser.
Anyway, if you link to a Github repository or something, I’ll at least have a look at it and offer encouraging comments. I know C and C++, but prefer to avoid them. :-)
SpiderMonkey is what happens to be built into a web browser; it’s used by Mozilla browsers. :P
What you meant, I think, is having the code simply be run in people’s browsers. The thing is, nomics are inherently multiplayer, so if the code ran in the people’s browsers, each person’s instance would have to connect to the other instances and… eh, it’s just a lot easier and simpler to run it on the server side.
If it were feasible, I would; unfortunately, the problems I see in EcmaNomic are not in the code it runs, but the way it runs it. In particular, in EcmaNomic, all code runs with the same permissions, and the nomic’s entire state is sent out to the browser every time a page is loaded. This means that the nomic can’t run code it doesn’t trust, nor can it easily keep any secrets from the players, nor can it store an amount of data too large to send out to everyone often.
So, I’m writing an entirely new engine.
Oh, and as for poking, please do; the more this is kept on my mind, the more work I can do with it.
Nomic is way too complicated for a toy futarchy. RH suggests that a test system should be a single decision tied to a single conditional market. In particular, he suggests a fire-the-CEO market. You might call “futarchy” any conditional prediction market that is sponsored by (or even just known to) the decision makers. I am not aware of any such examples, but I think most prediction markets are fairly secret, so I would not be terribly surprised if some exist.
By no means. The great thing about complexity is that it can be managed: just break it into pieces and give a piece to each person. With a codenomic, that complexity can be self-managing to an extent.
Something like Wikipedia.
Anyway, futarchy in a codenomic? You can just come up with a simple English description of each possible change and let people “vote” based on it. It’ll go nicely enough.
Given the downvote (parent currently −1) it might be worth pointing out that Warrigal has been an active player in the “best” nomic (which as been running since 1993) in a non-trivial capacity. E appears to have been a historian of Agora as of 2008, and (despite my lack of current knowledge of the nomic community since I stopped playing years and years ago) may well be one of the most experienced and historically knowledgeable “current nomic players” on the planet. On this basis I would weight eir opinion on the matter of “what can be done in a nomic” rather strongly.
As an aside, nomic is super fun, very educational, and quite time consuming. If anyone here is a college student with expectations of a year of on-and-off free time I would recommend joining Agora by reading the rules, signing up for the mailing lists, and having some fun. When you get older, you probably won’t have time for actual playing, but will appreciate the memories :-)
I have been an active player in the past, but I’m not currently; I don’t know when or if I’ll get back into it. I was Agora’s Historian only very briefly before that position was eliminated. My total nomic experience is definitely not more than a couple of years, as I only discovered it recently, and my historical knowledge is only what I’ve witnessed personally and the small amount that I happened to read once.
Are you perhaps thinking of Suber’s original, paper-and-tabletop, Nomic ruleset? The codenomics I’ve seen tend to consist of little other than bare self-amendment (direct democracy, generally). They’re considerably simpler than most natural-language email nomics, which in turn tend to be perhaps strictly more complex than Suber, but also less intimidating in the style of prose.
Fire-the-CEO is no good as an early test system. It may be temptingly simple, but it will never actually be put into practice until after the theory has been fairly well-established, because you don’t trust something important like the CEO to a system that’s still being tested.
A test implementation needs to be a toy system, one that won’t damage anything important if the theory turns out to be wrong. (It wouldn’t need testing if you already knew what would happen.) Hence, a computer game.
I’m going to be starting a game soon, but I’d planned on doing it on another forum (which is home to a few LW lurkers—who knows, we may vote to move the thread!) I’ve been working out the initial rules over the past few weeks. Should I make mention of it here when it starts?
Yes, please do, and PM me. I haven’t played Nomic in a while, and would love to play with LW people. Is there some reason you don’t want to start with either Suber’s Initial Rules or “Rule 1: Players may modify these rules by majority vote”?
One problem with Suber’s Initial Rules is that they do not enforce timing—that my (sadly expired) Livejournal nomic lasted as long as it did I attribute in part to having explicit deadlines for turn-based play.
Yes. This structure is modified to immediately abstract the notion of mutability, chunk rules by abstraction so that audiences of different levels all feel like they have a focal point, and most importantly, realize from the start the idea of guiding principles for sets of rules. It’s an experiment, and one of the few initial primary principles is for players to make the game ever more fun to play.
Has there ever been a practical proof-of-concept system, even a toy one, for futarchy? Not just a “bare” prediction market, but actually tying the thing directly to policy.
If not, I suggest a programming nomic (aka codenomic) for this purpose.
If you’re not familiar with the concept of nomic, it’s a little tricky to explain, but there’s a live one here in ECMAScript/Javascript, and an old copy of the PerlNomic codebase here. (There’s also a scholarly article [PDF] on PerlNomic, for those interested.)
Also, if you’re not familiar with the concept of nomic, you don’t read enough Hofstadter.
I am trying to write a programming nomic that uses SpiderMonkey for its engine—essentially, EcmaNomic but without the part where it sucks. >.> Unfortunately, I’ve been a bit akratic about it lately. If anyone knows C or C++ or anything like that, I would love it if you could assist me in any way. Of course, encouragement would also help a bunch.
I’m curious why you want to use a particular JavaScript engine, rather than using whatever happens to be built into a web browser.
Anyway, if you link to a Github repository or something, I’ll at least have a look at it and offer encouraging comments. I know C and C++, but prefer to avoid them. :-)
Your project sounds interesting.
SpiderMonkey is what happens to be built into a web browser; it’s used by Mozilla browsers. :P
What you meant, I think, is having the code simply be run in people’s browsers. The thing is, nomics are inherently multiplayer, so if the code ran in the people’s browsers, each person’s instance would have to connect to the other instances and… eh, it’s just a lot easier and simpler to run it on the server side.
I might put it on GitHub at some point.
Hi Warrigal!
I don’t have the programming skills to know whether this is feasible, but have you considered writing it up as an EcmaNomic proposal?
I seriously doubt I could help with something like that except to poke you occasionally.
Hey, Pavitra.
If it were feasible, I would; unfortunately, the problems I see in EcmaNomic are not in the code it runs, but the way it runs it. In particular, in EcmaNomic, all code runs with the same permissions, and the nomic’s entire state is sent out to the browser every time a page is loaded. This means that the nomic can’t run code it doesn’t trust, nor can it easily keep any secrets from the players, nor can it store an amount of data too large to send out to everyone often.
So, I’m writing an entirely new engine.
Oh, and as for poking, please do; the more this is kept on my mind, the more work I can do with it.
Nomic is way too complicated for a toy futarchy. RH suggests that a test system should be a single decision tied to a single conditional market. In particular, he suggests a fire-the-CEO market. You might call “futarchy” any conditional prediction market that is sponsored by (or even just known to) the decision makers. I am not aware of any such examples, but I think most prediction markets are fairly secret, so I would not be terribly surprised if some exist.
By no means. The great thing about complexity is that it can be managed: just break it into pieces and give a piece to each person. With a codenomic, that complexity can be self-managing to an extent.
Something like Wikipedia.
Anyway, futarchy in a codenomic? You can just come up with a simple English description of each possible change and let people “vote” based on it. It’ll go nicely enough.
Given the downvote (parent currently −1) it might be worth pointing out that Warrigal has been an active player in the “best” nomic (which as been running since 1993) in a non-trivial capacity. E appears to have been a historian of Agora as of 2008, and (despite my lack of current knowledge of the nomic community since I stopped playing years and years ago) may well be one of the most experienced and historically knowledgeable “current nomic players” on the planet. On this basis I would weight eir opinion on the matter of “what can be done in a nomic” rather strongly.
As an aside, nomic is super fun, very educational, and quite time consuming. If anyone here is a college student with expectations of a year of on-and-off free time I would recommend joining Agora by reading the rules, signing up for the mailing lists, and having some fun. When you get older, you probably won’t have time for actual playing, but will appreciate the memories :-)
I have been an active player in the past, but I’m not currently; I don’t know when or if I’ll get back into it. I was Agora’s Historian only very briefly before that position was eliminated. My total nomic experience is definitely not more than a couple of years, as I only discovered it recently, and my historical knowledge is only what I’ve witnessed personally and the small amount that I happened to read once.
Are you perhaps thinking of Suber’s original, paper-and-tabletop, Nomic ruleset? The codenomics I’ve seen tend to consist of little other than bare self-amendment (direct democracy, generally). They’re considerably simpler than most natural-language email nomics, which in turn tend to be perhaps strictly more complex than Suber, but also less intimidating in the style of prose.
Fire-the-CEO is no good as an early test system. It may be temptingly simple, but it will never actually be put into practice until after the theory has been fairly well-established, because you don’t trust something important like the CEO to a system that’s still being tested.
A test implementation needs to be a toy system, one that won’t damage anything important if the theory turns out to be wrong. (It wouldn’t need testing if you already knew what would happen.) Hence, a computer game.
I would love to see a LessWrong Nomic game.
I’m going to be starting a game soon, but I’d planned on doing it on another forum (which is home to a few LW lurkers—who knows, we may vote to move the thread!) I’ve been working out the initial rules over the past few weeks. Should I make mention of it here when it starts?
Yes, please do, and PM me. I haven’t played Nomic in a while, and would love to play with LW people. Is there some reason you don’t want to start with either Suber’s Initial Rules or “Rule 1: Players may modify these rules by majority vote”?
One problem with Suber’s Initial Rules is that they do not enforce timing—that my (sadly expired) Livejournal nomic lasted as long as it did I attribute in part to having explicit deadlines for turn-based play.
Yes. This structure is modified to immediately abstract the notion of mutability, chunk rules by abstraction so that audiences of different levels all feel like they have a focal point, and most importantly, realize from the start the idea of guiding principles for sets of rules. It’s an experiment, and one of the few initial primary principles is for players to make the game ever more fun to play.