I just recently realized this place is even here, but simplifying concepts and applying better pedagogical techniques so that people of average intelligence can learn them is one of my main areas of focus. I believe we could do a lot better job both teaching and getting normal people interested in learning which are two sides of the same coin.

I think it’s not only nice, but a necessary step for reducing information asymmetry which is one of the greatest barriers to effective democratic governance. Designing jargon terms to benefit more challenged learners would carry vastly more benefit than designing them to please adept learners. It wouldn’t harm the adept learners in any significant way (especially since it’s optional), but it would significantly help the more challenged learners. Many of my ideas are designed to address the problem of information asymmetry by improving learning and increasing transparency.

“Some jargon can’t just be replaced with non-jargon and retain its meaning.”

I don’t understand this statement. It’s possible to have two different words with the same meaning but different names. If I rename a word, it doesn’t change the meaning, it just changes the name. My purpose here isn’t to change the meaning of words but to rename them so that they are easier to learn and remember.

As far as jargon words go, “linearity” isn’t too bad because it is short and “line” is the root word anyway, so to your point, that one shouldn’t be renamed. Perhaps I jumped to meet your challenge too quickly on impulse. I would agree that some jargon words are fine the way they are because they are already more or less in the format I am looking for.

However, suppose the word were “calimaricharnimom” instead of of “linearity” to describe the very same concept. I’d still want to rename it to something shorter, easier to remember, easier to pronounce, and more descriptive of the idea it represents so that it would be easier to learn and retain which is the goal of the jargon index filter. All words that aren’t already in that format or somewhat close to it are fair game, regardless of how unique or abstract the concept they represent is. The very abstract ones will be challenging to rename in a way that gives the reader a clue, but not impossible to rename that way, and even if we assume it is impossible for some words, just making them shorter, more familiar looking, and easier to pronounce should help.

All that said, this is an enormous project in itself because it would need to be done for every major language, not just English. It would need to be an LLM/human collaboration wiki project. Perhaps I should establish some guidelines for leaving certain jargon words alone for that project.

Claude is fine if you ask him to cite his sources since you won’t be directly relying on Claude. It’s still prudent to check the sources.

Thank you for taking the time to explain that. I never took linear algebra, only college algebra, trig, and calc 1, 2, and 3. In college algebra our professor had us adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing matrices and I don’t remember needing those formulas to determine they were linear, but it was a long time ago, so my memory could be wrong, or the prof just gave us linear ones and didn’t make us determine whether they were linear or not. I suspected there was a good chance that what I was saying was ignorant, but you never know until you put it out there and ask. I tried getting AI to explain it, but bots aren’t exactly math whizzes themselves either. Anyway, I now stand corrected.

Regarding the graph vs the equation, that sounds like you are saying I was guilty of reification, but aren’t they both just abstractions and not real objects? Perhaps your point is that the equation produces the graph, but not the other way around?

I’m trying hard to understand your points here. I am not against mathematical notation as that would be crazy. I am against using it to explain what something is the first time when there is an easier way. Bear with me because I am not a math major, but I am pretty sure “a linear equation is an equation that draws a straight line when you graph it” is a good enough explanation for someone to understand the basic concept.

To me, it seems like “ A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y)” is only the technical definition because they are the only two properties that every linear equation imaginable absolutely has to have in common for certain. However, suppose I didn’t know that, and I wanted to be able to tell if an equation is linear. Easy. Just graph it, and if the graph makes a single straight line, it’s a linear equation. Suppose I didn’t want to or couldn’t graph it. I can still tell whether it is linear or not by whether or not the slope is constant using y=mx/b, or I could just simply look to see if the variables are all to the power of one and only multiplied by scalar constants. Either of those things can help me identify a linear equation, so why is it that we are stuck with A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y) as the definition? Give me some linear equations and I can solve them and graph them all day without knowing that. I know that for a fact because though I am certain that definition was in some of my math textbooks in college, I never read the textbooks and if my professors ever put that on the board, I didn’t remember it, and I certainly never used it for anything even though I’ve multiplied and divided matrices before and still didn’t need it then either. I only got A’s in those classes.

That’s why I am having trouble understanding why that definition is so important how it is too wordy to say “a function or equation with a constant slope that draws a single straight line on a graph” The only reason I can think of is there must be some rare exception that has those same properties but is not a linear equation. Even so, I am fairly certain that homogeneity and additivity could be summed up as “one output per input” and “the distributive property of multiplication is true for the equation/function”. That’s still not that wordy. Let’s pretend for a second that a math professor instead of using words to do the lecture read the symbols phonetically and explained everything in short hand on the board. Would more or fewer people passing the class in your opinion?

I am also wondering what your definition of jargon is. Jargon has 2 required elements:

The key elements of jargon are:

1. Specific to a particular context: Jargon is used within a specific industry, profession, or group and may not be easily understood by those outside of that context.

2. Involves technical terms, acronyms, or phrases that are not part of everyday language.

Straight Line Property doesn’t qualify for the second element which is why I like it. That said, linear isn’t the best example of jargon because it has the word “line” in it which at least gives the reader a clue what it means. I’m not trying to redefine words, I’m merely trying to rewrite them so that they use common language words that give a clue to what they mean because I am certain that leads to better memory retention for the layperson hearing it for the first time and is also less jarring to readers with poor vocabulary skills. This should apply equally to all jargon by the definition I gave. However, giving a clue may be very challenging for some jargon words that describe very abstract and arcane concepts that don’t map well to normal words which is what I initially thought your point was.

The only downside I see to providing an option to automatically replace useful jargon on demand is that it might lead to a more permanent replacement of the words over time which would irritate people already familiar with the jargon. If your point is that it is not useful, then I would like to hear your counterargument to the point I made about memory retention and the jarring cognitive effect on people with poor vocabulary skills. The jarring effect is easily observable and it’s hard for me to imagine that word familiarity and embedded clues don’t help memory retention of vocabulary, but I am open to counter arguments.

That’s actually good feedback. It’s better to think of the barriers to success ahead of time while I am still in the development phase. I agree that convincing people to do anything is always the hardest part. I did consider that it would be difficult to stop a competitor who is better funded and more well connected from just taking my ideas and creating a less benevolent product with them, and it is a concern that have no answer for.

I don’t think $10 a month to subscribe to a local official in exchange for extra influence is a big deal because $10 isn’t a lot of money, but I can see how other people might ignore the scale and think it’s a big deal. I’m not married to the idea though. The main reason I wanted to include that feature is to thwart the control of special interests. I’ve considered that special interests are inevitable to some degree, so if we could decentralize them and make the same influence available to the general public at a nominal cost, that would be an improvement. The other reason I liked the idea is because I don’t think weighting every vote identically creates the smartest system. If someone is willing to participate, pay attention, and pay a small amount of money, that should work like a filter that weeds out apathy, and I don’t see how reducing apathy within the voting system wouldn’t increase the quality of the decision making process rather than decrease it. I agree it would be a hard sell to the public though because it sounds bad described in the abstract, general sense like “paying for representation” when the entire concept isn’t considered with proper detail and context. That said, we already have a system like that except you have to have a lot more than $10 to buy representation, so what the idea actually does in theory is democratize the system we already have.

As far as following through, I plan to try my best even if it fails because I will feel better having tried my best and failed than to have never tried at all and let things spiral down the drain.

Regarding being non-partisan, I have decided the only way to do that is to be explicitly apolitical other than supporting democracy. I could put that right in the charter for both organizations and create incentives for keeping to it and disincentives for abandoning it. If both organizations can’t take sides on any issues, then I don’t see how they can be partisan. Personally, I don’t have strong feelings either way on most issues other than I don’t want an expansive, homogeneous government that is so large that it is very difficult to escape from. We only have such a government because of the advantages of a centralized military power which is rife with abuse.

Regarding moving being bad for children, just a quick skim shows me that those studies aren’t necessarily telling you what you think they are. For instance, one portion cites 3 studies that show “ High rates of residential mobility have been associated with social disadvantage including poverty [1, 2, 4]” yet they didn’t appear to control for these variables in the studies I skimmed. Even for the children in those conditions, moving might actually be beneficial. I would assume it depends on what alternative we are comparing it to. In the many cases, moving may be less harmful than staying such as when they are moving from a bad neighborhood with bad schools to a good neighborhood with good schools. I think the same thing applies to complaints about democracy not protecting minorities well enough which was the trigger for this conversation. Compared to what? I am open to suggestions. Which system of governance protects minorities better than democracy? If the answer is none, then that is an argument for democracy, not against it.

Ultimately, I probably should have waited to post about this on here until I had a very detailed outline to put everything in context with all of the supporting arguments and proper citations. Either way though, even if not a single person here likes the ideas, I would still write the book and attempt to carry the plan out, but I would use the criticisms to modify the plan. Like l’ve said before, I love it when people shoot holes in my arguments. I don’t want to cling to bad arguments or bad ideas and I value both positive and negative feedback as long as it is honest.

I don’t particularly agree about the math jargon. On the one hand, it might be annoying for people already familiar with the jargon to change the wording they use, but on the other hand, descriptive wording is easier to remember for people who are unfamiliar with a term and using an index to automatically replace the term on demand doesn’t necessarily affect anyone already familiar with the jargon. Perhaps this needs to be studied more, but this seems obvious to me. If “linearity” is exactly when A(cx) = cA(x) and A(x+y) = A(x) + A(y), there is no reason “straight-line property” can’t also mean exactly that, but straight-line property is easier to remember because it’s more descriptive of the concept of linearity.

Also, I can see how the shorthand is useful, but you could just say “linearity is when a function has both the properties of homogeneity and additivity” and that would seem less daunting to many new learners to whom that shorthand reads like ancient Greek. I could make more descriptive replacement words for those concepts as well and it might make it even easier to understand the concept of linearity.

I’m not sure if certifying a candidate as a leader and optionally holding them to an oath by holding collateral would count as an endorsement, but you never know with legal issues. It is definitely something to look into, so thanks for that information. It would be better for LOCALS to qualify as a tax exempt organization and charity that accepts donations. However, I am not assuming this is legally possible. I would need to find legal expertise to figure out whether it is or isn’t.

Regarding experimental politics being unpopular, I agree that it would be unpopular if I frame it as an experiment. Framing is very important. The better way to frame strong local self-determination for communities is that it gives the community freedom to make their own rules how they see fit with less interference from external actors who have no skin in the game with the local community, and the fact that it provides us opportunities to get more data on the effectiveness of social policies is a coincidental side benefit for doing the right thing in the first place.

I haven’t done or found any studies on whether kids having to make new friends is a common sticking point for mobility, but in my experience, it isn’t. My parents moved a couple times for jobs they didn’t particularly need because they already had good jobs with little to no concern for that. I also had lots of friends as a child whose families moved away for trivial reasons. I am not assuming my experience is representative of the mean, but I wouldn’t assume it isn’t either.

I agree I should make an official post. I will when I am less busy. Thank you for the help.

//There are different kinds of political parties. LOCALS sounds like a single-issue fusion party as described here: https://open.lib.umn.edu/americangovernment/chapter/10-6-minor-parties/

Fusion parties choose one of the main two candidates as their candidate. This gets around the spoiler effect. Eg the Populist Party would list whichever of the big candidates supported Free Silver.

A problem with that is that fusion parties are illegal in 48 states(?!) because the major parties don’t want to face a coalition against them.

LOCALS would try to get the democrat and the republican candidate to use Co-Co to choose their policies (offering the candidate support in form of donations or personnel), and if they do then they get an endorsement. I’m still a bit iffy on the difference between an interest group and a political party, so maybe you are in the clear.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion_in_the_United_States //

Thank you for that information. I did not know anything about fusion parties, so you had me worried for a minute. I then looked up what “cross-endorsement” is and this in not remotely like anything I had in mind. Consider the name “Liaisons for Organizing Community Action and Leadership Strategies”. Besides being a clever acronym, it is very descriptive of the intended purpose of the organization. The group will have three main missions: 1. Developing leadership through an in house program (This is where future candidates sworn to uphold democracy will come from), 2. Organizing community actions such as referendums, planning and fundraising various local charity projects, organizing voting initiatives, lobbying local government and local businesses for various reasons, planning other various political strategies for the community, etc. 3. Maintaining the Township-Talks portion of Co-Co for their political district chapter. Other than #3, I plan to keep locals and Co-Co as completely separate organizations with separate agendas. LOCALS will be a nonprofit organization (Probably) while Co-Co will be a for profit corporation (Most Likely). As I mentioned before, I am not yet solid on structural organization, but I do know that they will be separate organizations. This is important because if they were the same organization, LOCALS might very ambiguously be considered a political party which I not only don’t want but absolutely can’t have for the plan to work.

To explain this, I will need to explain how part of the Township-Talks (the political section) portion of Co-Co will work which will be the main part that the LOCALS chapter manages. There will be a page/section for each current representative for each office within the LOCALS chapter political district. A person, bot, or combo will be assigned to each representative to collect information and post it there. Upcoming/past votes and voting records will be collected and posted there along with an AI generated synopsis of what the issue they are voting on is about. There will be tools that the representatives can use to talk to the public and hold town hall meetings online if they so wish. The representatives can also submit to make corrections for information about them, but they won’t directly be in charge of this information. The LOCALS chapter will research and populate this information into Co-Co will then take the information collected by LOCALS, compare it to the data collected from users via surveys and other sources, and then use an algorithm to score every single office holder/representative with a “democracy score” that indicates how well they are doing the will of the people. This way, LOCALS will simply be doing the nonprofit work of researching all of the available officeholders and merely using Co-Co as a tool to upload their research to for the public to view. Co-Co will then do the rest of the data collection and algorithmic sorting and figuring on its own to rate how the officeholders are doing and get the information to the constituents of the political district. There will also be a section for candidates during elections as well which will somewhat overlap with the officeholders because we expect incumbents to run for office again.

All this said, LOCALS will not be directly putting up any candidates. The only thing LOCALS will be doing is training candidates, getting them to swear oaths to uphold democracy according to a specific set of rules enshrined within the open source Co-Co algorithm that calculates the will of the people, and optionally putting up one or more assets with the LOCALS trust as collateral in case they violate their oath.

Now this next part is where I worry things might get somewhat sticky legally, but I am more certain that it is legal than not. There will be a monetization feature as well for any officeholder or candidate willing to swear the oath to uphold democracy via township talks data that can be where in exchange for a standardized low monthly user fee (like $10), a township talks user can answer special additional polls related to upcoming votes, propose legislative changes, and get more interactive time with the officeholder they are subscribed to. Besides those extra privileges, the algorithm that calculates what the officeholder should do according to the will of the people in Co-Co will be weighted heavier for the subscribers of the officeholder. Co-Co will receive a small portion of the funds, the rest will go directly to the officeholder as income. Importantly, this won’t be the only way to get beneficially weighted by the algorithm. There will be civics and local politics education courses that once completed have that effect, uploading proof of local charity work or donations will have that effect, and participating in online town halls and debates will also have that effect. I will likely add other ways to get further weighted as well (all of this in general rather than officeholder specific). In this way, users will build capital towards having more of a democratic influence in their community thus we have “stakeholder democracy” as I call it. The problem with plain democracy is that the fentanyl junkie gets the same vote as Mother Theresa and Albert Einstein. The most competent and virtuous people are the ones who ought to be in charge of decisions, so I had the idea to weakly integrate meritocracy and virtue ethics into the process while also getting the officeholders decentrally paid by their active constituents for their work so that the results are skewed towards good faith individuals and competent decision makers. I also figure that most politicians live off bribes these days, so rather than expecting the bribing to stop, why not have the option for the constituents to very weakly and decentrally bribe the officeholders to do what they want? It is not much different than campaign funding except it happens while in office, and the officeholder just gets to keep the money and use it however he or she wishes. As part of this process, the officeholder would sign a multi-lateral contract that incurs strong financial penalties if they don’t do what they promised and would be forced to pay back the fees to the subscribers.

Finally, besides for officeholders, as I mentioned before, candidates will get similar pages and they will be able to raise campaign funds via Township Talks also so long as they are sworn to uphold stakeholder democracy. It would work the same way as with the officeholder subscriptions. Subscribe to your candidate, and if they win, you get further weighted in the algorithm for any issues they vote on. I would make this a significant weighting because it is riskier considering the candidate might lose.

Anyway, LOCALS will neither directly run nor fund candidates. Instead, they will train leaders who will then run independently from LOCALS as candidates who will be certified by LOCALS under the democrat and primary tickets. What you are calling a fusion party involves a literal political party running a candidate say, the Libertarian party, under both the Libertarian ticket and the Republican ticket at the same time. So, for instance, if the Libertarian party nominated Donald Trump, then Donald Trump would be both the Libertarian and Republican party candidate. Absolutely nothing like that is even happening here. LOCALS doesn’t even have a ticket, doesn’t seek ballot access, or technically even field candidates. LOCALS merely trains and certifies candidates who they hand pick for their leadership program and who swear to uphold democracy according to a specific set of rules, agree to campaign in a certain fashion, and may optionally choose to put one or more assets up for collateral with the LOCALS trust that would be lost if they break their oath. This would make 2 types of LOCALS certified candidates: 1. a LOCALS certified candidate, and 2. a LOCALS certified Trust candidate. In this manner, rather than running candidates (which I improperly said for simplicity sake in the earlier response), all they will be doing is hand picking and training leaders and helping them enforce self-imposed rules. The self-imposed part is important. If the problem were officeholders didn’t have enough freedom in how they vote and run their campaigns and offices, we would have a problem. Because the problem is that they have too much, we can create candidates that work based on self-imposed rules without breaking/changing any laws or rewriting any constitutions. That realization is what got the gears turning for this whole idea. There is also a precedent in both major parties for hijacking them. With the GOP we had/have “the Tea Party wing” and “the MAGA wing”, and for the Dems we have “The Squad” (originally known as “Justice Democrats”). Upon seeing these in party rebels take over from the primaries, I said to myself “why not both parties?” If LOCALS can get LOCALS certified candidates to win both primaries for a single office, that office is guaranteed to go to a LOCALS certified candidate. It’s also easier and cheaper to win in the primaries because there is less turnout and less funding, and if Co-Co takes off, Co-Co can organize voter turnout for the LOCALS certified candidates.

//I love your vision of how a politician should answer the abortion question. Separating the three questions “who do voters think is qualified” “what do voters want” and “what is true” would be great for democracy. Similar to: https://mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/futarchy.html//

I love how you were able to grok that from the few context clues that I gave you. That’s exactly what I was thinking. American elections are not democratic because they are too ambiguous to functionally achieve democracy in quite a few ways. The voter has to somehow figure out which candidate is trustworthy (won’t back stab or sell out later or is just lying to begin with), competent, supports their values and interests, and has a reasonable chance of winning all at the same time (assuming such a candidate exists, which usually isn’t the case). I harp on people confusing elections with democracy all the time. Sure, an election happens in that situation, but nothing remotely close to the will of a majority of people is happening because of the election. I liken it to voting on who gets to punch you in the face. Logically, the democracy part can only happen after the election. The election should only be about who is competent and trustworthy and the issues sorted out later by the constituents via data science. It doesn’t even make sense for the candidate to promise what they will do ahead of time because circumstances change and decisions should change with them. All this seems obvious to me, but most other people don’t generally seem to understand what democracy actually is. They think democracy is elections. I always like to point out that we could have democracy entirely without elections if we switched to sortition instead. I am not saying we should, though I doubt it could be worse than what we have now, but the point is that democracy doesn’t even require elections. I also don’t want to do the stupid form of democracy like the article you linked referenced which is why I designed a system as a stakeholder democracy to weight the process towards merit, virtue, and participation.

//When it comes to local vs not local, if 1/100 people is an X, and they are spread out, then their voice doesn’t mean much and the other 99/100 people in their district can push through policies that harm them. If the Xes are in the same district, then they get a say about what happens to them. I used teachers as an example of an X, but it is more general than that. (Though I’m thinking about the persecution of Jews in particular.)//

Yes, Claude chided me often about protecting political minorities as well. As I told him, this is less of a concern in a local community sovereignty setup in modern times where mobility is cheap and easy because of the ability to vote with one’s feet than it would be in literally any other known system. I am actually hoping that people do just that and move wherever they like the politics. I am a big fan of intentional communities, and if people move based on political preferences, then they will naturally self sort into intentional communities. The gain in social capital from living in a community of people who share your beliefs and policy preferences is enormous! Regarding Jews, I think they are protected under federal law anyway. However, for political rather than racial/ethnic minorities which is I believe what we are discussing now, voting with one’s feet still applies. Suppose you hate gun control and 95% of the community is for it, you can just move to another community that loves guns. People already do it now. Are you a wing nut and your community hates private airplanes? Just move one community over where they either like them or don’t care. Problem solved. That’s why I am very serious about making sovereignty as localized as possible. If literally every neighborhood were sovereign, you wouldn’t have to go very far to escape a bad policy. I have also toyed with the idea of creating a way to use Co-Co and/or LOCALS to grease mobility even further for people.

The fact of the matter is, no matter what type of government is chosen, the risk of becoming a disgruntled political minority is always a possibility. That being the case, the only real insurance against this is, in fact, radical decentralization of political districts coupled with local sovereignty. This actually fits well with social contract theory which is the main theory that political science is based on. Social contracts are implicitly agreed to by staying within the jurisdiction. If the jurisdiction is too difficult to escape, then the implicit contract is violated. Perhaps most importantly, it would be very beneficial to have lots of different communities trying lots of different things. That’s how we could really advance the social sciences. We need the data, but we don’t want to do anything too widespread because of the risk profile involved. Single community testing is perfect. If it works one place, others will likely try it too. If it fails miserably, that's unfortunate, but at least others will avoid it like a hot stove. The risk profile for localism makes a lot more sense for empirically testing, implementing, and improving social policies in an iterative manner.

Speaking of empiricism, I also think that lack of empiricism in politics is one reason why the U.S. and western civilizations appear to be having a political mental health crisis. Being passionate about abstractions reported in the news regarding far off places is not good for mental health. People in California should be a lot more worried about the homeless guys shooting fentanyl in camps on the streets than what is happening in Ukraine or Gaza. We can’t even know if the information regarding that stuff is accurate. It could be almost 100% BS. Being spoon fed your worldview by provably dishonest media organizations that are probably at least partially controlled by various intel agencies and special interests both foreign and domestic isn’t conducive to a stable, healthy worldview. Furthermore, when you are trying to politically control the entire nation, the stakes are too high and we get strong political hatred like we see now. That’s why I want to stop people from focusing on and controlling what happens in Ukraine or Gaza (which is absurd!) or even across the nation in other states and start worrying about controlling the literal streets they live on instead. We’re experiencing a megalomania crisis where everyone thinks that modern tech coupled with sham democracy allows them to control not only the entire country, but the entire world! Control your own neighborhood people! Then you can start worrying about the neighboring communities. Don’t even try to control the world. You can’t and shouldn’t anyway. It would be unethical even if you could. However, if the people can organize to be sovereign at the community level, the federal government will automatically get weaker and have fewer teeth. They can’t control every individual neighborhood. We do the feds a huge favor by not caring enough about our neighborhoods and focusing on national/international politics instead. It’s much easier to control a power vacuum caused by a confusopoly.

That said, I realize what a logistical nightmare that many districts with strong sovereignty might be, but we have AI and other software now. Coordinating communities to collaborate and trade is part of what Co-Co will be programmed to do. I think we are set for solving logistics problems. I don’t have all the answers yet, but I know that people could figure out a way to seamlessly integrate things with modern tech, and figuring out how to do so should create jobs anyway.