A Country Without Objectivity?

For as long as I can remember, I have argued that our Two Party System is horrendously misleading to Americans. In the past few years, I have seen the general collapse of both political parties, and the general polarization of America into two extreme, unrealistic viewpoints. Americans are led to believe that there are only two lenses with which to view the world: Conservative Capitalism and Liberal Socialism. This is not true. In truth, these lenses are both outdated. And, they depend on the other to exist: they depend on the belief that the other is the true enemy of America- a corrupting web of illusions taking us in the "wrong direction". However, an objective mind could see that NEITHER lens takes us in the right direction, because both are 20th century ideologies that have largely failed to "optimize" any nation anywhere. Why? Simple: Optimization is a scientific process that only works if there is a single stable equilibria possible. Optimization requires the following things: 1) objective facts that can have a single, correct interpretation 2) an accurate assessment of the problem 3) a precise solution that is transparently "optimal". 21st century systems are based on matching people to others that share views/interests, rather than trying to change people's views; and, providing each group what they want in their own community. In essence, the 21st century world "feels" decentralized. Even if the services are provided centrally by a large actor, 21st century services feel local, feel, personable, feel small, feel vibrant, etc. In other words, a 21st century solution isn't radically subjective (all people are unique) or radically objective (standard optimal solutions exist for all people)...but balanced (a handful of groups of people are stable entities, and we should create solutions for each stable entity). 21st century systems are predominantly peer-to-peer and based on building "commons" that are cooperatively operated by likeminded individuals. It is easy to build, say, a thriving Mormon community of all Mormons, but hard to build one with active Satanists. This is not self-segregation in a negative sense, as all protected forms of civil rights are excluded. Rather, this is a self-segregation process built on those aspects of society that are considered fair game: peaceful political differences, peaceful religious differences in institutional practice, and peaceful economic (consumption/production) principles/tastes. Instead of warring tribalism, whereby people align against shared enemies, this system seeks to align people on shared projects and positive community participation. Alignment for the purposes of exclusion or exploitation of any other group is not an acceptable peer principle. While this isn't the only 21st century political idea, it is the strongest one we have...and it has emerged as the de facto, objective reality alongside the emergence of the internet. https://p2pfoundation.net/ But both parties work hard to ensure that such objectivity is not possible by avoiding objective scrutiny. They also work hard to deny that there is anything new under the sun external to themselves. They are both conservative, subjectivist idealist parties that want you to believe they are forward-thinking and objective. They do this in two primary ways: "confirmation bias" in the form of "selecting on the dependent variable", which is one of the largest sins in modern science; and "selection bias" aka "selective scientific amnesia". CONFIRMATION BIAS: SELECTING ON THE DEPENDENT VARIABLE For example, Democrats select nice sounding results. A world without environmental disaster. A world without racism and sexism. A world without poverty. Surely, everyone agrees that these things sound nice. But these better worlds cannot be accurately described, and assume that we have the power to achieve these results - and then after making these assumptions, Democrats go looking for ANY policy whatsoever that might contribute to the elusive "good outcomes". When they find any candidate solution - such as carbon cap-and- trade - they immediately try to force it to work, building a Frankenstein piece of legislation that distributes funds and authorities to attempt to enforce the cap-and-trade idea, etc. Democrats then seek to connect the shaky dots in a cavalier, "can do" fashion. This approach results in large statistical Alpha errors: false confirmations that a particular plan will work. Why? There must be only ONE progressive plan! The classic example of selecting on the dependent variable is to only pay attention to policies that fit the supposed good outcomes, and to ignore the possibility that bad outcomes might also be correlated with that same policy. Confirming the only plan you have is a dangerous thing. The classic example of selecting on the dependent variable was the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. NASA knew it wanted to launch, so it only paid attention to data that encouraged launch. They systematically ignored several engineer's attempts to report a critical O-Ring failure in the fuel system: after all, how could such a minor thing lead to disaster? But of course, this small yet critical fact prevented an otherwise glorious invention from reaching space - and killed a whole crew! Republicans love to point out any example where Democrats are blind to their own over-confidence in roughshod policies. The Democrats quickly forget such errors, optimistically pushing on towards the policy goal they seek to confirm - often with reckless results. In a rush to make the world a better place, the Democrats routinely select on the dependent variable because there is only ONE progressive policy alternative on the table , and its GOTTA be forced to work SOMEHOW. They assume the world is better off with more change than less change. SELECTION BIAS: SELECTIVE SCIENTIFIC AMNESIA The inverse problem is selection bias: systematically rejecting facts that don't fit one's preferred world view. Selection bias can cause large beta errors: false rejections of a truly good plan! Note the famous accusation of the GOP nurturing "alternative facts". Republicans systematically remember even the smallest snafus of a past Democratic policy, while selectively covering up the huge errors that the Republicans have made, so that they can revisit their same old mistakes with great gusto. This is the reverse of selection on the dependent variable. Rather than looking for confirmation, the GOP looks to enthusiastically reject most government plans before seeing any facts. They assume the world, as it exists today, is better off with LESS change than with more change. After all, we all survived the prior world, didn't we? The only thing that the GOP takes for certain is that the past was survivable, if we could find a way to repeat it - the future is all risk... HOW TO "OPTIMIZE" A POLICY, THE 20TH CENTURY WAY The only thing that the two American parties can agree on is 20th century notions of federal standardization. In the middle of the 20th century, many people believed in objective, scientific management. As part of that, the government would be trusted to make progressive social policies: one great educational system; one Nuclear family model of living; one system of healthcare; and so on. Likewise, large, scientific businesses would be trusted to make conservative economic decisions in producing goods and services. Businesses focused on standardizing products, simplifying them, streamlining offerings, and giving everyone a single solution: ONE Cola to rule them all; ONE great car that all families will drive; ONE family entertainment behemoth called Disney, with one cast of characters; and so on. be some optimal place to be. But what we found out very quickly is that : "there is no perfect Pepsi, only perfect Pepsis". The more we heeded the scientific data, the more we learned that human wants are diverse but enumerable. There is no one kind of education, or mode of living, for all. There is no one Pepsi for all. For example, in order to optimize your diet, you have to know what diet will facilitate your "peak condition". But diets don't exist in a bubble. Michael Phelps is a human dolphin, and has an extreme diet for his swim season. Eating like him, routinely, would kill the average person. But, most champion swimmers have similar diets . Barring individual issues, like lactose intolerance or soy allergies, most swimmers enjoy similar high calorie diets, biased towards huge mounds of traditional breakfast foods like eggs and pancakes. As such, we can create a diet specifically for champion swimmers. Similarly, picking the optimal set of policies for a government involves diagnosing the patient correctly first: for WHOM are you making this "government"? With 323.9 million Americans (2016), it is hard to imagine that there are so many regularities in this country than can be simply reduced into TWO choices. We need to know how many Americans would prefer choice 3, or choice 4, or choice 5. A "Pareto analysis" lists impactful factors starting with the largest, followed by the next largest, and so on. Many Pareto optimal lists involve truncating only the big factors. For example, Malcolm Gladwell had a legendary TED talk about the brave individual who convinced American businesses to pursue greater product variety in the 1980s: Harvey Moskowitz. (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=harvey+moskowitz+malcolm+gladwell&view=detail&mid=369FDA950441F5AFEE6F369FDA950441F5AFEE6F&FORM=VIRE). Prior to Moskowitz, every major company was seeking to perfect singular products of staggering excellence- and failed enormously. Consumers couldn't agree on, for example, the correct amount of aspartame in a diet beverage, or the correct amount of caffeine in a cola. Moskowitz famously got Prego to offer chunky tomato sauce on discovery that 30 percent of Americans wanted it, but nobody was selling it! So, now we know that 30 percent like a simple marinara spaghetti sauce, 30 percent want a chunky sauce, 10 percent want a spicy sauce, 8 percent prefer blush vodka sauce, 7 percent like puttanesca, and so on. Pareto analysis looks for the point in this list of features that we can safely "stop" and ignore the fine grained details. However, the main determinant of this artificial break-point - this gross simplification of human options - is cost effectiveness. The modern grocery store offers enough varieties of spaghettis sauce that it takes an hour to carefully read the whole aisle: over a hundred! And this is merely a minor product. Who knew variety was so important to Americans that they have one hundred sauce options? Obviously not the 20th century "optimizers". CONSIDER SPAGHETTI SAUCE What is the right number of sauce features? In the 1990s, marketers tested "feature fatigue": what happens when you offer too many options. As it turns out, most products have an optimal number of choices. (https://hbr.org/2006/02/defeating-feature-fatigue) , If you offer too many features, people cannot keep up, and they resort to selecting only the simplest, most widespread blockbuster products again! In part this is due to cognitive burden, but even moreso it is due to the desire of humans to SHARE EXPERIENCES WITH EACH OTHER. In the 20th century, we thought the product was the WHOLE idea. Now we realize that the social experience around the product is even more important than the product itself- thus, there must be some limited number of options so that we can SHARE experience. How can we talk to each other meaningfully if every person lives in a unique bubble? Its a lonely world when we cannot all see the new Star Wars movie and bicker about it. In fact, the bickering and discussing is one of the most meaningful experiences of being alive- the conversation is more important than the product itself. Similarly, having 100 political parties is just as bad as having 2, because of the immense cognitive burden to be able to have constructive conversations. The right number is probably close to the number of varieties of computing devices - widely shared and appreciated product platforms that each requires substantial effort to appreciate - not the number of varieties of sauces, which are fickle products requiring little effort to appreciate. 4 to 6 parties would probably do the trick. Any more would be too hard to explain, or too nuanced to stand alone.

HOW TO "SATISFICE" A POLICY IN THE 21ST CENTURY Let us talk about the essential facts for engineering a better American political system. 1) Objective political parties should "satisfice" clear short-term goals, not optimize vague long-term goals. As Herbert Simon demonstrated back in the 1940s, humans don't optimize. They satisfice. They set goals and incrementally improve on them, seeking "good enough" solutions in each new iteration. However, you will see the Republicans talk about a vague restoration of what was formerly great about America, without ever accurately defining "it". You will see Democrats attempting to optimize a society that is color blind, or a society that provides fair wages; but, these goals are so vague that they cannot be accurately described with a single, shared lens. Can you get ALL Americans to agree on what these worlds will look like? At what point does the cost of tweaking it exceed the benefits? Scary to think about, sure, but it needs to be considered. In reality, we need a political system that asks: "What was great to whom, specifically? What was never great to whom, specifically? And, how do we give each individual the simultaneous perception of a positive change? What is the appropriate stopping point for social progress in each budgetary cycle?" 2) In order to satisfice, a 21st century political party should think like a 21st century product developer. The Republicans and Democrats are still living in the days where "One Pepsi for all" made sense. The Republicans want ALL Americans to have limited civic/social government, 20th century family values, reliance on faith-based and family-based support networks, and a massive military. The Democrats want ALL Americans to have federally standardized protections, standardized wages, standardized education, etc. With 323.9 million Americans and 50 states, BOTH parties are federally imperialist, seeking to standardize a diverse geopolitical region. Neither thinks like a product developer: supplying each customer segment with the product they desire. That "product" is a positive thinking, likeminded community, solving the problems it sees fit. In other words, the ultimate govt. product is a CITY of people who share a general sense of purpose. As long as it doesn't violate constitutional freedoms, govts. and businesses should be focused on producing the best handful of varieties of flowers, not standardized flowers. And, this also means allowing states to drift further apart in their regional flavors of conservatism (e.g., libertarian Alaska vs. bible thumping, conformist Utah) or progressivism (e.g., freewheeling Colorado vs. methodical establishment New York). As such, we need the federal government to fund states that, in turn, purposefully produce cities/communities as varieties of products. 3) Arbitrarily reducing national policy into two biased options is, in and of itself, an exercise in confirmation bias and selection bias. Without knowing the true, underlying distribution of demand, it is hard to know if we are providing people political parties that reflect their own thinking ; or, if we are merely manufacturing consent. At minimum, we need a third option: a party that reflects on the over- and under- estimations of both parties, shrewdly considers regional and international contexts, and offers AT LEAST ONE ALTERNATIVE PLAN TO EVERY FEDERAL PLAN. For domestic issues, they must at least offer several regional variants to the generic plan. For issues of national standard policy, like the military, they must offer compromise plans that challenge both sides as being biased.

Both parties are one-armed scissors: neither party offers credible cost-benefit analysis. The goal of third parties should be to offer more credible analyses, not more radical, divisive positions on issues. In the future, I will give examples of how to operate a centrist party that seeks to produce alternative plans. Sometimes a centrist party will align with one party in the short term, while other times it will align with the other. Such parties are usually more progressive on technical and social change than a conservative one would be; but, it would still be highly critical of the humdrum, standardized "progressive" approaches to solving the particular problem, and seek to offer more nuanced alternatives. Americans need to have adequate competition and variety to critically evaluate plans. In the 21st century, balanced, systemic plans should outweigh narrow, vague ideologies.