The Science of Politics

After our discussion relatively recently about political systems that are most advantageous, I have been wondering if we can explore this issue scientifically. How does one go about testing a political hypothesis without implementing it on a population? Can we currently accurately simulate the actions of a population on computer so that we can apply various political systems to find which is most advantageous to certain populations?

What about transitional governments? The characteristics of certain populations may not be conducive of better government immediately, and may require transitional political systems that lead in to better political systems.

I currently favour Libertarianism as an ideal in it's absolute form, perhaps not realistically attainable but approached nonetheless. Don and others are right to assert that not all people are capable of being sufficiently self-reliant in such a free system of government. I think that human progress into a possible posthuman future will give many more individuals the capacity to become more self-reliant. I see libertarianism as a political system that would least interfere with the volitional actions of it's population.

With that said though, I think politics could benefit from scientific rigor.

Cosmos, I posted the following yesterday but deleted it after thinking that others might have some information that’s closer to what you’re looking for. Since no one has answered yet, I’ll give it shot…

One might not be sure whether you’re asking if political systems are in fact explored scientifically or if, given the available resources, there are better ways of exploration than are currently established? To both parts of the question, respectively: “Yes” and “Not sure.”

Regarding the first part, it’s a multidisciplinary endeavor that tends to fall under the areas political methodology (a branch of political science) and economic systems (a branch of economics), which do include mathematics at their cores, such as econometrics. Also, both areas break down even further into areas such as political analysis and evolutionary economics.

Regarding the second part, the current research establishment for this endeavor, to my perception, is so complex that one really can’t make a judgment such as “The whole establishment can do noticeably better, with its present given resources, than what it’s currently doing – it’s not doing its honest best.” However, one could say, of course, “I’m interested to know what difference I could make if I made my way to the forefront” – the point being that if something like evaluating hypothetical political systems is important to someone, this person would almost certainly need, at the least, a highly specialized education grounded in very broad knowledge and credentials.

Mainly, I am wondering if we can do better in exploring this area scientifically. Can we effectively anticipate the actions of a population under different political systems? This would require computer simulations, but is it beyond our capability today? If not, it could be an invaluable tool in deciding which political system to shift to while maintaining stability and peace.

Okay, I think I understand what you’re asking. All I know is that there tends to be a colossal implementation gap between models and normalization, with the exception of nominal organized anarchy, regardless how sophisticated the models.

In other words, not everyone agrees on end-states, unless you’re planning to override this phenomenon with totalitarianism. Otherwise, radical social change in a direct sense is a pointless preoccupation for the transhumanist, IMO.

Nate:

In other words, not everyone agrees on end-states, unless you’re planning to override this phenomenon with totalitarianism. Otherwise, radical social change in a direct sense is a pointless preoccupation for the transhumanist, IMO.

Posthumans likely won't be able to transcend governments immediately.

It may be more beneficial for all, if politics was not about competing ideologies but competing hypotheses. Perhaps I'm too naive or ill-informed because I've never formally studied political science, but I see distinct advantages if it is possible.

Nate, I don't necessarily seek radical social change, as long as those societies do not interfere with my goals and actions. However, there is no guarantee that it will be smooth sailing for those of us who anticipate and accept a likely posthuman future for ourselves.

(I see your post Chip)

The Christian Post: The Revolt Against Human Nature

Nate, it's these people and their views that may threaten my actions and goals. Our "ideology of choice" will lead to "big trouble", according to this article, hinting that government restrictions may be required to keep everyone adequately human and arbitrarily limited.

I'm not on a mission to win hearts and minds, but I'd hope those other minds would not impose their worldviews and beliefs upon me.

I have been enjoying this discussion already and I will contribute from time to time. Recently I was reading an article about a new computer model that was building a planetary ecology and evolving species without DNA.

I am still looking for that article but here are a few that are relevant to the discussion that I found on the way.

The point is that developing evolutionary models for species approaches the complexity of developing evolutionary models for culture. In fact it may be easier.

In the case of evolution we have identifiable and quantifiable criteria. In the case of culture we have a lot of supposition and even what we think we can call valid criteria doesn't often lend itself to being *quantifiable*. we are a long way from developing algorithms that are both broad enough and defined enough to be very practical yet, however the time is coming IMHO.

I hope these help.

On modeling cognition and culture
J Henrich, R Boyd -
... units” in order to build evolutionary models (BR 1985 ... itself does not lead automatically to ‘cultural inertia’ — the existence of social groups in ...
http://springerlink....ults,1:106625,1

Social & Cultural Evolution links
http://socio.ch/evo/index_evo.htm

Computer Models of Cultural Evolution
... In EVOLUTION IN THE COMPUTER AGE -
Proceedings of the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life ...
Whitney: Well let's just say that they're modeled after us...
http://www.sscnet.uc...comocultevo.htm

Cost-Benefit Analysis of Social/Cultural Learning in a Non-Stationary Uncertain
Environment: An Evolutionary Simulation and an Experiment with Human Subjects
T Kameda, D Nakanishi - View as HTML -
... discuss how evolutionary game modeling of cultural learning, coupled. with
experimentation, provides useful insights into various social psychological phenomena ...
http://scholar.googl...ionary modeling
Evolution and Human Behavior, 2002 - ns1.shudo-u.ac.jp

Evolutionary Analysis of the Relationship between Economic Growth,
Environmental Quality and Resource Scarcity
http://www.tinbergen...apers/04048.pdf

Evolutionary Perspectives on Simulations of Social Systems
Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation vol. 4, no. 4
http://jasss.soc.sur...c.uk/4/4/8.html

cosmos The Christian Post: The Revolt Against Human Nature

Nate, it's these people and their views that may threaten my actions and goals. Our "ideology of choice" will lead to "big trouble", according to this article, hinting that government restrictions may be required to keep everyone adequately human and arbitrarily limited.

I'm not on a mission to win hearts and minds, but I'd hope those other minds would not impose their worldviews and beliefs upon me.

Cosmos, that’s precisely why transhumanists should allow the Christian ideology to blow up in their faces. Their beliefs help shift production possibilities, which translates to more chaos in the markets, which translates to better underground mobility, which translates to more potent intractable transhumanist projects that assemble sets of customized components that stealthily draw from the market chaos.

nate, I like your style.... The ends justify the means.... [thumb] not unlike my own preffered method of opiating the massess. [wis] I must concur with your assessment and advise others to do the same, as it proves beneficial to the long term goals of the transhumanist movement. Let their chaos become our order.

I believe that political systems will be accurately simulated within a decade based on eveloutionary psychology, which, even by itself, constitutes the most realistic portrayal of human behaveoir that we have devised in our primitive anthropological ramblings. There is indeed little, if any deviation from this time tested model of predictive prowess, as to the basic machinations of human behavoir on a sociobiological scale.

Here is another good article by Henrich and Boyd. It is a little more recent.

What I like about it is that it's sidestepping the issue of memetics while in fact seeking a means of quantifying them without calling them memes. It may actually be offering such measures. It also is basically describing the political aspects of culture.

BTW Nate I tend to agree that the religious are their own worst enemies. The real problem is that they are also inclined to practice scorched earth battle strategies and surviving their mass insanity is not necessarily all that easy.

The Evolution of Conformist Transmission and the Emergence of Between-Group Differences
Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, California

Unlike other animal species, much of the variation among human groups is cultural: genetically similar people living in similar environments exhibit strikingly different patterns of behavior because they have different, culturally acquired beliefs and values.

Such cultural transmission is based on complex, derived psychological mechanisms that are likely to have been shaped by natural selection. It is important to understand the nature of these evolved psychological mechanisms because they determine which beliefs and values spread and persist in human groups. Boyd and Richerson showed that a tendency to acquire the most common behavior exhibited in a society was adaptive in a simple model of evolution in a spatially varying environment, because such a tendency increases the probability of acquiring adaptive beliefs and values. Here, we study the evolution of such “conformist transmission” in a more general model in which environments vary in both time and space.

The analysis of this model indicates that conformist transmission is favored under a very broad range of conditions, broader in fact than the range of conditions that favor a substantial reliance on social learning. The analysis also suggests that there is a synergistic relationship between the evolution of imitation and the evolution of conformism. We conclude by examining the role of conformism in explaining the maintenance of cultural differences among groups.
© 1998 Elsevier Science Inc.
{intro}
http://webuser.bus.u...nrich/H&B98.pdf

Oh I almost forgot to include this one for review. Whether you agree with the premises or not it is almost impossible to have a rational discussion about the *Science of Politics* without at least some comparison to Game Theory IMHO.

http://plato.stanfor...e-evolutionary/

Evolutionary Game Theory

Evolutionary game theory originated as an application of the mathematical theory of games to biological contexts, arising from the realization that frequency dependent fitness introduces a strategic aspect to evolution. Recently, however, evolutionary game theory has become of increased interest to economists, sociologists, and anthropologists--and social scientists in general--as well as philosophers. The interest among social scientists in a theory with explicit biological roots derives from three facts.

First, the ‘evolution’ treated by evolutionary game theory need not be biological evolution. ‘Evolution’ may, in this context, often be understood as cultural evolution, where this refers to changes in beliefs and norms over time.

Second, the rationality assumptions underlying evolutionary game theory are, in many cases, more appropriate for the modeling of social systems than those assumptions underlying the traditional theory of games.

Third, evolutionary game theory, as an explicitly dynamic theory, provides an important element missing from the traditional theory.

***********

4.1 The meaning of fitness in cultural evolutionary interpretations

As noted previously, evolutionary game theoretic models may often be given both a biological and a cultural evolutionary interpretation. In the biological interpretation, the numeric quantities which play a role analogous to "utility" in traditional game theory correspond to the fitness (typically Darwinian fitness) of individuals. How does one interpret "fitness" in the cultural evolutionary interpretation?

In many cases, fitness in cultural evolutionary interpretations of evolutionary game theoretic models directly measures some objective quantity of which it can be safely assumed that individuals always want more rather than less and interpersonal comparisons are meaningful. Depending on the particular problem modeled, money, slices of cake, or amount of land would be appropriate cultural evolutionary interpretations of fitness.

Requiring that fitness in cultural evolutionary game theoretic models conform to this interpretative constraint severely limits the kinds of problems that one can address. A more useful cultural evolutionary framework would provide a more general theory which did not require that individual fitness be a linear (or strictly increasing) function of the amount of some real quantity, like amount of food.

In traditional game theory, a strategy's fitness was measured by the expected utility it had for the individual in question. Yet evolutionary game theory seeks to describe individuals of limited rationality (commonly known as "boundedly rational" individuals), and the utility theory employed in traditional game theory assumes highly rational individuals.

Consequently, the utility theory used in traditional game theory cannot simply be carried over to evolutionary game theory. One must develop an alternate theory of utility/fitness, one compatible with the bounded rationality of individuals, that is sufficient to define a utility measure adequate for the application of evolutionary game theory to cultural evolution.


4.2 The explanatory irrelevance of evolutionary game theory

Another question facing evolutionary game theoretic explanations of social phenomena concerns the kind of explanation it seeks to give. Depending on the type of explanation it seeks to provide, are evolutionary game theoretic explanations of social phenomena irrelevant or mere vehicles for the promulgation of pre-existing values and biases?


{excerpts}

cosmos The Christian Post: The Revolt Against Human Nature

Nate, it's these people and their views that may threaten my actions and goals. Our "ideology of choice" will lead to "big trouble", according to this article, hinting that government restrictions may be required to keep everyone adequately human and arbitrarily limited.

I'm not on a mission to win hearts and minds, but I'd hope those other minds would not impose their worldviews and beliefs upon me.

Cosmos, that’s precisely why transhumanists should allow the Christian ideology to blow up in their faces. Their beliefs help shift production possibilities, which translates to more chaos in the markets, which translates to better underground mobility, which translates to more potent intractable transhumanist projects that assemble sets of customized components that stealthily draw from the market chaos.

"I'm not on a mission to win hearts and minds...."

I wrote that to mean that I did and do not intend to coerce others. The future may unfold as you describe, but I think followers of Christian ideology could pose a substantial existential threat. That which they currently claim to hold dear, including democracy and freedom, they may dispose of to stop us.

If I didn't understand you somehow, sorry.

I don't think you misunderstood me, there's no need to apologize. I simply took it upon myself to clarify and expand on my last post, with emphasis on the possible threat this group poses to the rest of us.