Our Corrupt Sense of Fairness
“That’s not fair!” We have all said it, and we have all heard it. Everyone is born with a sense of fairness, but somehow everyone doesn’t agree with what is fair.
This feeling fairness has a built in bias that tends to favor our own perspective. If we feel we are better off under a certain set of rules, then we are more likely to consider the rules fair. It takes someone with great empathy to see fairness from another person's perspective.
What is even more troubling for those who are rational is that “rational fairness” can often be perceived as “unfair” by almost everyone. In fact, how we choose to perceive things can change what we think is fair.
What is fairness?
adjective: in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate.
adverb: without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage.
What we learn from these definitions of fairness is that it all depends upon some “rules” or “standards”. If everyone can agree to the rules, then any outcome that adheres to the rules is inherently fair.
An sufficiently complex set of rules needs to be derived from principles.
principle: a fundamental truth or proposition that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.
If we are to be rational about fairness, then all rules should derive from principles and should never be in contradiction with those principles. A system that is in contradiction with its principles is not in line with the rules or standards and therefore illegitimate and unfair.
What principles guide voting?
Here are some general principles that people may have:
- everyone get’s a say
- everyone is equal
- majority rules
- secrecy
When it comes to joint ownership of a company or currency, the principles are effectively the same except it is every-share instead of every-person.
A voting system is a means of measuring everyone’s equal say for the purposes of making a decision that is binding on the group. Whenever there are a group of individuals there are two or more different opinions on which way a decision can be made.
Unfortunately the range of available opinions is infinite and more often than not contingent upon other people’s opinions. This means that a perfectly expressive voting system would have everyone submit a smart contract that would take everyone else’s opinion as input and generate an output. A computer would then iterate as many times as necessary to compute a stable opinion.
Unfortunately this process is not guaranteed to reach equilibrium and the order of computation can influence the outcome.
It is possible to express opinions that cancel out mathematically yet cannot be calculated iteratively. In the debate between rabbit season and duck season the result of that vote is “unknown” until someone else changes balance of power.
Perception of Fairness in Voting
Everyone (or every share) is entitled to an opinion and deserves equal weight. When two people have opposite opinions (rabbit season vs not rabbit season) both opinions are legitimate. How do we decide who wins? Can a decision be made?
Under this situation we have no outcome that can be rendered. When exactly two people are voting and they disagree the result is “no decision can be made”. In most cases this means status-quo remains unchanged.
The voting rules can be configured to bias the decision. For example if “last vote wins” then the balance of power is shifted… who ever moves for change first loses. If first vote wins then it becomes a race to vote. Alternatively the system could be biased to say that in the event of a tie, “duck season” is chosen.
In other words, the rules of the game can favor certain outcomes over other outcomes. This may be acceptable assuming everyone agrees the bias is “fair”, but I doubt Daffy would think defaulting to “duck season” is fair.
A perfectly fair voting system would bias the outcome in favor of neither Daffy nor Bugs.
Perceived Unfairness is often a Rejection of Reality
Suppose Daffy always disagrees with Bugs. Bugs could claim this is “unfair” because it means that neither Daffy nor Bugs gets to decide. It is always Bieber Season.
Is it legitimate for someone born without legs to claim that it is “unfair” that other people get to walk around? Is it legitimate for someone born in Africa to claim it is “unfair” that someone else was born in USA? If you were alone on an island, is it “unfair” that you have to do everything for yourself? Fairness has nothing to do with it.
Our much of our situation in life is beyond our control. If you happen to be born into a world with an evil twin who always does the opposite of you and opposes you at every stage is that unfair? To whom is it unfair, twin A or twin B? Depending upon whose perspective you adopt the “other guy” is evil.
In effect what someone claiming unfairness is saying is, “their opinion is unfair, they are not entitled to that opinion”. They are upset because both of them are attempting to steer the car in equal and opposite directions and therefore the car continues straight.
Fairness is all in Our Head
Imagine you were the only living person in the world and everyone else was a robot that was pre-programmed with a certain set of behaviors. Could you claim anything is unfair? That is just the way the world works. There are no “people” that are hurting you, the rules are created by nature and beyond the power of you or any of the robots to control.
It is the attitude of entitlement that is the seed of unfairness. The expectation that you deserve something that someone else has. This attitude of entitlement is often rooted in envy, you want what the other person has and you feel they don’t deserve it.
When it comes to negative voting the feeling of unfairness is identical to feeling it is unfair that you were born with an evil twin while everyone else wasn’t.
Principles Against Negative Voting
In an effort to look at things from both sides, I attempted to identify any principles of voting that may contradict with the concept of negative voting. What I came up with is the following:
- The only legitimate opinion is one that is derived independently of everyone else’s opinion
- All votes should be secret
The theory behind this stance is that it takes work to create an opinion, but costs nothing to destroy an opinion. Furthermore, if all votes are secret then it becomes impossible to express a legitimate opinion that is exactly the opposite of someone else.
I feel both of these principles are fundamentally flawed. For starters, every choice and idea we have in life is influenced by the opinion of others. We are more likely to adopt someone else’s opinion than develop one of our own. Tribe mentality, catch phrases, and memes. It is far easier to copy than to create. In fact, more often than not people are not able to defend their own opinions from first principles, but instead appeal to authority.
We can conclude from this that affirmative voting would not be fully legitimate independently derived opinion, but the aggregation of other people’s opinion filtered through personal bias. In other words, it is just as biased and derivative as a negative vote.
Secret voting prevents accountability. Accountability is critical in game theory, especially in prisoners dilemma. If people down’t know who is responsible for bad votes, then they don’t know who to shun in the market. Without recourse people will vote in anti-social manner. In other words, the principle of the secret ballot is in direct contradiction with the principles of transparency and accountability.
Conclusion
I still believe that negative voting is a critical component of an anarchist society and is inherently fair. I also believe that every other system is less expressive and ultimately less able to represent the will of the people (or shares).
That said, perception often matters more than reality and we must design systems that are perceived to be fair even if they are logically and “objectively” less fair from the perspective of mathematics, deductive reasoning, and first principles.
Perception is Reality. Change your perception and you change your reality.
It's not so much that negative voting isn't fair mathematically speaking. It's that negative voting isn't fun. It's not fun for people doing the negative voting a lot of the time and it's not fun for the people receiving the negative votes. If it's possible to get the same achieve the same without spoiling or griefing someone else's fun then why not do it the path of least resistance?
But it's also not fun to feel the need to exercise a negative vote and not be able to do anything except abuse the flag.
This is a legitimate point of view. This article was in response to the vast number of messages arguing fairness.
Very well said!
I agree with your assessment @dana-edwards. Negative voting is not fun, and it will definitely start wars. Not everyone is evolved to the Vulcan development stage, so wars will inevitably start and continue to eat away at some people's internal organs.
@dana-edwards you said what I was going to say but more eloquently.
Do you have any specific suggestions how to "achieve the same result" because many of the comments from others on this issue, and I think maybe from you elsewhere (apology if incorrect), which mostly involve voting for something else instead, do not achieve the same result.
Fairness can be violated by creating a system wherein first mover or creator bias leads to overwhelming control over the system. Then using that control, one devises retroactive rules that further increase one's control over the system.
In all cases it is trivial for the rule maker to say any actions they took were "fair" because those actions or rule modifications conformed to the existing rules.
P.S. I've voted myself up on this post to underscore the fact that the OP also voted himself up.
Do I understand correctly that you're referencing the initial "mining" by a select group of devs and friends, resulting in "overwhelming control" by means of vests now?
Or am I just imagining things? :)
I never vote my comments with full power.
Never devised rules to increase my control. In fact I do the opposite, devise rules to decentralize control.
@dantheman Whatever I did to get black balled can you remove it sir?, sincerely asking. My post shuts down after a few votes, is my content really this bad please just enlighten me.
Your reputation system gave you a very high reputation score, calculated reputation based on retroactive data, and you just exercised control with it by downvoting me. How does it feel to be baited so succsessfully?
I agree the reputation score should have started anew, and not interpreted past votes in a manner that was never intended when those votes were cast.
I ended up spending quite a bit of time personally cleaning up the mess created by the initial values of Dan's reputation system, especially in the form of enthusiastic users having their Steem dreams crushed by being sent into deeply negative rep by generally a single minor offense of poor taste or a mistake that happened to be downvoted by a whale (often Dan himself). Or even in some cases a downvote that was inexplicable (and possibly in error). I don't know how many simply quit instead of appealing for help, but I'm sure some did.
When the rep system is redone yet again, it should start with reset reputations rather than repeating the mistake of reinterpreting history.
@stellabelle, I don't think he intentionally rigged the rep system to give himself a high score, but I think he deemed it acceptable because it gave himself and others who he considered worthy high scores (and possibly because it did not place him at risk of having his reputation severely damaged if he were to make unpopular posts, as others much consider), while paying little to no attention to how it treated the others. If a proposed reputation system happened to give him or any of his favorite members a very low score based on past votes, he'd probably have revised it, or started with reset reps.
I would add, however, that if Dan were interested in giving himself a high reputation score, don't you think he would have made it so that he had the highest one? He does not in fact have the highest one, and myself and @tuck-fheman have a higher rep than Dan, so we could at any moment decide to downvote him. This reality doesn't align itself with excercizing greater control over the system by the ones who created it. If Dan was in fact not an honest person, he would rig the rep system, giving himself the highest number.
It doesn't matter at all in the big picture, when company accounts are used to censor any conversation (as they have been doing and will likely continue to do) they please, regardless of community voting consensus.
This has already been proven by the actions of management using those accounts for this purpose.
Anyone believing Steemit as it exists currently to be a censorship free platform for free speech is sadly mistaken.
Please be aware that a downvote from you or @tuck-fheman can only bring about 10% of impact on rep score than a downvote from @dantheman, because he has about 10 times more SP than you.
His score doesn't need to be the top score. It just needs to be very, very high. It would be unnecessary and impossible to design a retroactive rule set that perfectly optimized for a chosen account without the need for obvious special cases.
It's great that you have a high rep, but it would have not been difficult to assign everyone the same score at the start of a new fork and allow reputation to evolve from a point where everyone has equal footing.
If the environment is created by the person, it is still fair that they change the rules of the environment - so long as it is communicated and they're not misleading, manipulating, or violating anyone's rights.
Others choose to participate in the environment or not. Their choice is also fair.
The problem is when the environment is presented as something other than what it really is, or when those that are in control feign community interests "trump" theirs...all the while using company assets to silence those they do not agree with. That is what people are having a big problem with regarding Steemit as it stands.
"That said, perception often matters more than reality and we must design systems that are perceived to be fair even if they are logically and “objectively” less fair from the perspective of mathematics, deductive reasoning, and first principles."
Herein lies the problem, dan.
This is where the swindling occurs, because people are being sold lies - hence the frustration.
I don't think there is anything unfair about having amassed great power.
But with great power comes great responsibility.
Downvoting/flagging currently does two things at the same time.
I've seen whales carelessly smash the precious hard-earned reputations of innocent minnows for merely taking the initiative to promote Steemit with a billboard or merely asking for community input on the inkling of an idea of a concept for how to help grow the system. No explanation. No warning. Just smash!
This is abuse of power, it is harmful to the community, it is de-facto censorship and it has nothing to do with fairness.
I agree with everything you said but it's not what I'd think of as censorship since the posts are all still on the blockchain. It's more deprioritization and a form of arbitrary punishment. In any case it's not how I would use my Steem Power because it takes away from the user experience but doesn't seem to add anything. If I vote to take something away from someone else then it damages the user experience not just for that someone else but also for everyone who witnessed me do it.
Imagine this: You publish a post which says only this: "I need money to buy a new car" and some people who know you personally upvote your post just because they like you. I see this happening and negate those upvotes. You, as the author of the post, are obviously not happy about it but does it really damage the user experience for everyone who witnessed me doing it? I guess not. For them I'm a hero who prevented some kind of abuse. And it was an abuse by those who upvoted, not by the author of the post.
I have argued this fact as well about it being in the blockchain. I am fairly technical and can determine how to get at it if I want. Likewise, if the government deems certain things are banned and locks them in a vault. They technically still exist it is just difficult to get to them.
So in effect the crushing hammer blow of a down vote can be very similar to shoving something in a vault. Many people will be unable to view it. Perhaps someone will make a reversesteemit.com or something where the trending page and popularity is 100% the opposite. You'd have to wade through a ton of spam but you might see these posts that were splattered. The problem is this shouldn't be being done for opinion.
Except it doesn't just affect that piece of text. It harms the author.
But that isn't how the downvotes are being used. Authors are being down voted because some people think their content didn't deserve that big of a reward. It's not like there are posts of people saying "I want a car, upvote me" and them getting huge $20,000 payouts. I haven't seen an example like that, have you?
But even in that case, it's not like you are a hero for blocking other people from receiving rewards. It's more you can use that as an example of an excessive payment to someone who doesn't really need it, but at the same time in other instances the person really could need it, and the same downvote should make you a villain like it would make you a hero right?
And if we are going to downvote based on who we think doesn't need any more money, well then what is the total amount in payouts that each author should be allowed to get before we collectively determine it's justified to start blocking them from getting any more money?
Agreed. I use my downvote in cases of stalking, abuse, scams and the like. While I dislike people spamming their own content within my posts, I tend not to downvote them, but instead, write a warning, letting them know I will not read their posts if they spam them into comments. I think the whales misused their power and slammed innocent minnows who were struggling to get their posts seen. Giving people explanations instead of downvotes is a the proper thing to do in the cases of minnows seeking more exposure. Or at least if you downvote, let the person know why you're doing it, so they can learn for the future. This is basic emotional intelligence and proper use of empathic learning and teaching. Downvoting without explaning is a bad move and it is also insensitive. This only applies to people doing innocent self-promotion.
In the case of abusers, stalkers, and and scammers, of course, a heavy hand is necessary.
Agreed @stellabella, I came across a someone commenting on a couple of posts this morning. The person wasn't spamming but his/her opinion that was being expressed was not in what would be considered to be conventional thinking. I didn't agree with most of what was said but did notice that some people had been flagging the person's posts. I looked further and found that the person had been flagged to the point he/she left the platform.
If that sort of bullying off the platform can take place using the post flag, I shudder to think what people like that would do with downvotes. Some may use downvotes reasonably but I suspect that would not be the majority.
Better to either respectfully express disagreement or move on than to allow anyone the power to downvote with impunity. The misuse of the post flags are bad enough. IMO
This is actually why I prefer no downvote (still think we need a report post function) as I see it as more of an attack, where I don't believe we really need attacks. I view it more like a market for content and ideas. If it is being approached like a stakeholder voting at a board of directors meetings that usually has other factors besides just market and yes/no might be needed. Yet even though we are stakeholders with our steem power (VESTS) I do think it could work without downvotes. There would still be problems with potentially people being unhappy someone was getting paid too much and FREE SPEECH would certainly allow them to be vocal about it, but they wouldn't be in a position to negatively attack someone other than with words. Currently this is very much not the case. A downvote can be used in a hostile attack method. We are counting on there being more good whales to offset this and that they will have time to commit to stay on top of this. Murphy's Law is screaming at me when I consider this.
"It is the attitude of entitlement that is the seed of unfairness." I have been thinking about this for days now. It is my firm belief that those who are firmly entitled are the ones who complain the most, while the ones who don't feel any entitlement whatsoever are the ones more likely to express genuine gratitude. The ones that enter life with an open attitude free of entitlement and with a work-horse mentality are generally those who gain the most in an environment of open transparency and free discussion.
I truly enjoyed this post of yours because it forced me to think of voting, reality and perception in a more nuanced way. My question is now, have you come to any solid conclusions about negative voting and will negative voting become part of the rules of the game soon?
I agree with some others that the result of negative downvoting will probably result in downvoting wars. People are extremely touchy, that's something that humans have not evolved out of. Just because something is a good idea for a certain number of Vulcanesque individuals who have grown out of personal vendettas and the like, does not mean that it's necessarily good for the masses who might be embroiled in their own hellish operations with other human beings.
You make a good point. Not every individual on Steemit is an INTJ personality type. In fact, that personality type is extremely rare. When trying to figure out how the general public will react to a new UX feature it is important in my opinion to focus on the personality types which by percentage are more popular in society.
It is also good to look at other similar projects, and the closest thing to is are gaming universes. I don't think we should look at election systems and corporate environments because if we are going to emulate that then we could end up creating a new hellish game which few people really want to play. Most people don't like politics, or corporate space, and won't like voting wars.
You've been thinking about this 2 hours-old quote for days now? That's extraordinary, teach us oh Great Oracle of BS.
What's your deal, man? The subject of this post and related topics have been hot button issues around here for not only days but weeks. A lot of people have been thinking about them.
You bring up some great points @dantheman.
To even begin to discuss this and come to a consensus we must take into account that our perspective is simply that "our" perspective. Others ideas should be treated with the same respect as your own. If you can have a respectful dialogue about your beliefs, you have a much better chance to have someone actually consider your ideas without instantly becoming defensive.
That being said, just because the value of the opinions should be equal, the amount of voting power should continue to be based on vested shares. Someone who just joined steemit and has only the few steem power given freely may have a great idea about the voting system, but a whale may have invested tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars and their voting should reflect their stake in the system.
The whales best interests are to keep steemit running smoothly and to do what's best for the platform long term ecause they want their investment to pay dividends. New people see them as having too much power, but that power is usually used carefully to promote what the future of steemit should be according to each individual whale (or multiple users in @smooth case).
I also think that people become jealous far too easily. If you told people they could make up to $5 dollars commenting on users posts, I think everyone would have been thrilled. But since there is no cap, when someone sees their comment make $5 and someone else's make $500 they become jealous. That same $5 they would have been happy with now brings them to wish they had what someone else did and can cause bitterness.
I think all users should be grateful that there is any sort of reward system and that @dantheman and @ned value content enough to change people's lives and potentially make a career out of this platform.
The money is nice of course, but to me it is really just a bonus to a creative, heartfelt community that is working together to make something special in this world.
Hopefully we can set apart our differences in what we believe the "best" voting practice will be, because as humans there is never going to be a perfect system. If we can work together and form a solid majority, I think that will suffice, and while some may not like it, it sure beats the alternative of posting for free on twitter, facebook, or reditt.
I think we as a community should show some more gratitude for what has been done already and trust that those making some of the important decisions value our opinions, but may not always choose our way.
So thankyou @danthemman @ned @smooth @berniesanders and all the others that keep pushing steemit forward. It has truly changed my life and brought me out of a deep depression where I felt I had nothing to contribute to the world.
I see steemit as a place to help others, enjoy friendships, learn new things, be entertained and all while making money and having fun along the way.
I'll dismiss any minor voting discrepancies and say that for being in beta, steemit has far outperformed what I even thought possible. Where else are trolls so easily rendered invisible and comments so meaningful? If you can tell me of another place, I would love to know.
agree on that we should be more explicit in our aims as a community, as "group of people with common values". Steemit has it's own rights and targets. It has it's target and a kind of will. It has rights to just defend. Any one could quit at any point he decide to split and continue arguing on his (her) points on any (still) available channels (fb, tw, etc.).
There are people flagging my posts and comments out of nothing but malice because I pointed out their plagiarism. So, in the current system, when you try to be principled and stand up against spam, you get punished rather than rewarded. I couldn't call that "fair" in any way, when it happens to me, or anyone else.
I think this is mostly UI issue. Too much good job (pointing out plagiarism) goes unseen currently. Plagiarist hunters are getting way too few upvotes for their valuable work.
But on the other hand, plagiarists are usually downvoted so their reputation will suffer and their votes won't have much effect if they decide to revenge.
In World of Warcraft or in the gaming world it's called griefing. The purpose of griefing is to take the sense of win from someone else. We already know from the gaming community that this is the behavior of a griefer and griefing has a negative effect on the overall funness of the game.
Downvoting for reasons not outlined in some sort of manifesto, rules or personal criteria, is possibly just griefing. When it's justified then at least people have to break some rules first.
References
@condra, I want to thank you for being a plagiarism hunter. If every noob, like me, did a quick check before upvoting, we'd catch a lot and with lower personal repercussions. But I plead wuss to this cause. I can thank you, though, and acknowledge that I have benefited from the grief you've taken. Somebody has to do it, but that never had to be you. Thank you for sacrificing yourself. You're a good citizen.
"negative voting" will need to be separated from reputation...
@dantheman - sorry for the out of band communication; any chance you could jump into mumble and answer a few tough questions from Jeff Berwick??
Ok. In 5 min.
Thank you sir :)
I love this post. If Steemit had a retweet or share option where a portion of the rewards go to the original poster, I would share this for sure. That said, Medium and Reddit don't have those options, so I understand if it doesn't happen (and reasons why it shouldn't).
Can you clarify your stance on the difference between a "negative vote" and a "flag"? Are you in support of a negative vote that doesn't also impact reputation? That, to me, seems like an important step forward, along with a "give a reason for your flag" option.
THAT to me is the key . Monetary reward downvote separate from reputation.
Why have a monetary down vote at all? Is it a boardroom, or is it a free market for ideas and content. If it is the later then producers usually are only interested in people consuming those products. People not interested cannot suddenly change the value for other people. If it is a boardroom due to vests then yes in such yes/no votes do matter in a different way. I knew I would ramble so I simply blogged about this. Defining what steem/steemit is intended to be might clear some of this up for those of us here. Likely will continue to be an issue as new people learn the ropes.
Monkeys... Monkeys everywhere.