“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.
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.
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.
We can have negative voting without abusing the flag. It's called voting for something else. People seem to forget that the available rewards during any voting period are fixed, and we're just voting on how those rewards get allocated. Which means your vote for one thing effective DOES negate a vote for something else. The difference is that by casting votes affirmatively for one thing rather than negatively against another, we'll avoid causing downvoting wars and an otherwise nasty and cutthroat culture here. @dan, I'm a big fan of yours, but I really hope you stop it with this vote-canceling nonsense. At least as it relates to Steemit.
I cannot agree with that. Voting for something else does not result in what I want to achieve with my Steem Power. I see a post which I consider overpaid and I want these funds to be distributed to anything but this post. This is a legitimate need and right now all I can do is this: suppress it and feel frustrated or fulfill it and abuse the flag. This does not look like good user experience.
It's my certainty that I need this feature versus your speculation that this feature will be abused and will cause negative consequences. In other words, it's something that undoubtedly exists (unless you question my ability to define my needs) versus something that might come into existence but we can't be sure (unless you have some special ability to predict human behavior with 100% accuracy).
Therefore in my view, the right thing to do is to introduce the feature (so that the existing need is fulfilled) and then find out if your fear materializes or not. If it does then we need to reconsider and possibly remove the feature. But doing nothing is the worst option: I'm deprived of something that I truly need just because of your speculation which might be false.
But how can you determine something is "overpaid" without relying on the consensus of all the other votes? I don't see how you can know something is or isn't overpaid without a market consensus and if you decide arbitrarily, without any justification, then you harm the user experience.
Where we differ is, I do not assume that I alone can or should determine the value of a post. I consider that if a lot of other people find value in it then even if I don't personally see why they value it so much, I do not have enough information to determine it's overpaid unless I know a lot about the person receiving the payment.
For example if a millionaire posts on here and gets lots of big rewards then the fact that we all know he is a millionaire, we could say he's being over paid because we know his net worth and that he doesn't really need the money. On the other hand, most of the people abusing the downvote are voting in a way which judges the author as much as the content, so they are saying with their vote "you are being paid too much and I don't like it8" but without any justification as to what "too much" is or why they don't like it. This could easily have the author think the voter is singling them out and does not like them personally.
Because other authors might post similar content and not be voted down, it will harm the user experience for that author but also for other authors who see they can be downvoted for no reason at all or for completely arbitrary reasons which very well might be personal. And thats the problem with it.
Yes, this is one (of a handful) of the big problems with the downvote. Nicely articulated!
OK, you've made your point quite well and I begin to understand your concerns: if an author has an audience it's quite inappropriate to come and shut down the show.
But the thing is we have the flag tool. So if I really want, I can come and intervene anyway. The status quo just makes the emotional tension bigger that it needs to be and prevents nothing. That's why I propose to give people a way to do what they can do and will do anyway but at least minimize the negative aspect associated with flagging.
From my post on incentivized downvotes and a possible implementation. So in response to:
I'll say that I agree, but you're also downvoting everything else on the platform. Also, the weight of that negative vote is nowhere near that of an upvote, so you create an imbalance that inflates the value of posts with higher visibility. Not a good thing.
Spot on. If you don't like something don't vote for it. Negative voting is just asking to be abused as an option.
This:
We have votes, and we have flags. We have rewards, and we have reputation. It seems to me that to make negative voting more "fair" in more people's minds we need to make these things distinct. Starting with
To be perceived as "fair", negative voting (with voting being about how others have voted as opposed to the value of a particular piece of content) should not negatively affect the reputation of the person who created the content, and voting in general should be rebranded as the slicing of the pie.
Those are my thougts. Sorry for using "we" while talking about your system.
Thank you for voicing this here, @jsteck. As you know, I've been thinking about this the same way: up and down votes as setting value and not to be taken at all personally.
There are articles I've read here that I wouldn't downvote at any price. Other times, a good posts's overwhelming success creates an wave of copy-cat posts of varying quality that trend due to speculative voting on the topic. To me, that seems to disincentivize exactly the type of behavior that will add value while rewarding a game-the-system attitude. Maybe that's for whales to handle or a downvote isn't the solution for some other reason.
But, couldn't it simply be understood that downvotes have nothing to do with who wrote it or what it's about? Couldn't we educate ourselves to expect a rise and fall of post value with no cause to be butt-hurt?
I know I'm a dreamer...
Then I'm a dreamer too. I think that first we need to make a leap of faith and arrange the system the way we want it to be in our dreams and only when this proves to be an illusion (because of the flaws of human nature) we can reconsider and possibly go back to what we have now.
But let's not throw away a possibly valuable idea just because of our fears. It's our dreams that should drive our actions, not fears.
This is exactly how I would like it to be.
You are thinking about this too much from the philosophical standpoint.
I suggest more practical way of thinking: try to understand what exactly is the real problem, identify a few possible solutions and try them. If something doesn't work, revert back to the old. If something works, great, you can either spend some time optimizing it or focus on to the next problem.
The goal should be to have a well functioning, happy and flourishing community. To get there, try lots of different things and keep those that cause benefits for the system and ditch everything that causes harm.
More and faster evolution, less theoretical philosophy.
Perception is Reality!
Very wise!
Humans are biased to perceive as fair whatever paradigm maximizes benefit to themselves or their cause. To achieve fairness, or to derive a set principles that are benefit-neutral, an actor cannot have any sense of self. Historically, this is where the concept of a 'God' or other 'Supreme Being' steps in. Ironically, supreme beings are human constructs of selfless actors from which principles/rules/laws can be accepted as fair and just... and if you look at Christian or Muslim history you'd have a hard time accepting their principles as fair and just.
As you are human and therefore possess an inherently biased paradigm of fairness it is not possible to create any system that is fair as a singular actor. It is only possible use a consensus model to attempt to maximize benefits for the majority - which is exactly what is being done with Steemit.
If the best that can be achieved is to maximize benefits for the majority there will necessarily be a minority that perceives the system as unfair. Humans are not capable of creating anything without flaws - there is no thing a human has created which is objectively perfect. So in creating a 'fairest' system humanely possible, unfairness must be accepted. Ironic, yes?
All that said, the current socio-economic system is fair for 1% and unfair for 99% of the participants. If you can get Steemit to distribute wealth and security in such a way that it is fair to 51% of participants you've just made the world a much, much better place. ;)
I think your characterization of 1% and 99% is exaggerated greatly. We have built a system that systematically transfers value from those who don't work to those who do work. In time it should spread.
All life starts out as a centralized single cell organism and eventually decentralized through cell division. That is what we are doing. If a system grows too fast it loses identity and dies. Things must grow in controlled manner to maintain structural integrity.
I have seen the wealth shifting from a few accounts to many and that is easily seen through the transparency of the blockchain. Hard work is rewarded from what I can understand, a lot of what steemit bases its value on is the contribution of work similar to the (meaningless in my opinion) miners that search for specific bits of information to mine a block.
Our content is the block and miners are more like curators. I could be completely wrong, but I see some similarities between these aspects, and also realize that bitcoin must make some changes because I don't think it can handle what will be coming its way once it becomes far more mainstream.
And you are right originally you created the idea and the wealth was concentrated in a very small area like a single celled organism. that organism breaks and expands into multiple cells with a lot of different roles. Some are vital parts that would be deadly if removed and others are of lesser importance individually, but together form an incredible system. As wealth is distributed, we will find those that are the brain and those who contribute to purge the system of toxins as well as those who just wish to float along and be part of the body.
Again not a perfect example, but one that helps me visualize what steemit may become in the future if it continues at this state. Right now I see it as an embryo about ready to grow larger and be birthed out into the real world where it will interact with people outside the cryptocurrency amneotic fluid that surrounds it now and into the mainstream users hands.
Right now the wealth distribution on Steemit is less fair than wealth distribution within the current fiat system; currently 1% of fiat participants control more than 50% of fiat wealth, whereas on Steemit:
Steemit is definitely distributing wealth from the 1% the 99%, whereas the fiat economy is funneling wealth to the 1% at an alarming rate. So Steemit is doing a much better job of creating a fair system of wealth distribution. I also agree that value is, for the most part, being transferred very efficiently from those not contributing to those that are. The analogy of healthy organic growth is spot on - Steemit is barely a newborn baby!
Now, what I really meant to say was .... "All that said, the current fiat/central bank socio-economic system is fair for 1% and unfair for 99% of the participants." ;)
I see Steemit as David and the US Federal Reserve as Goliath. If you can do a better job distributing wealth than current central bank complex, you win. And if you win, the 99% wins too.
The idea of wealth distribution is way overblown and becoming more and more so in a digital world, as users can seemlessly transfer wealth among different digital assets without censorship. The usual argument against the US dollar is that the US left the gold standard in 1971. So what? What is to stop a person from creating their own gold standard by converting dollars into gold every time they get a paycheck, effectively eliminating their exposure to US dollars... and they could have done that for the past 45 years.
The unfairness comes in when gold is outlawed and confiscated as was done in 1933 by the US government. With blockchain-based solutions coming online, it may eventually be possible to seamlessly hold gold and pay with dollars without censorship... and that goes for any other digital asset, or synthetic digital asset.
Wealth and money aren't the same thing. Money tracks wealth but it isn't the wealth itself. This means as long as there is a platform, there is a possibility for bloggers to leverage their talent for upvotes which can result in high money rewards. The talent is the actual wealth, the rewards are supposed to flow toward the talent.
To reflect on last part of your post. All new users that would come to platform will probably be in a minority and new distribution would need to take place to satisfy new 51%. That 51% percent would be again percieved by those 49% to be unfair. Truth is that you can't satisfy everyone. Even in perfect system where everybody would be equal and 100% would think it's fair, someone would think that its not fair for him. Since each being has his own moral code and principles where he measures himself to others.
Yes, it is completely possible that today's 99% are tomorrow's 1%. It's actually very likely... if Steemit matches the market cap of Facebook, 1 STEEM = ~ $3500 USD. So the 70,000 or so users that are here today would become the new wealthy elite, and those that join Steemit in five years will consider wealth distribution to be unfair. Kinda like the baby boomers and the millenials...
if i understand it correctly SP is diluted at 10% a year if your account stays passive. As for me, this is single biggest selling point of steem. This is paradigm shift, because we will have organizations like were most influental people are actual users and contributors and not passive rich 1%
Yes, the dilution is complete genius. The passive rich can park their wealth in SD and earn interest to preserve purchasing power, but then they loose influence. If they want to maintain influence.. they have to work for it! It's awesome.
The problem? Steem Dollars aren't currently properly pegged to the USD.
Steem Dollars are working very well, it just takes the market some time to grow up around it. Like a toddler getting its balanced. The market learns from experience more than intelligence. In recent days steem dollar volume has been increasing and it has been trading at 96 to 97% of the dollar. About a credit card processing fee. It will only get better.
We saw the same thing with bitUSD - the peg is very dependent on liquidity. I'm personally amazed at how well the peg is working given how new the asset is. With everything the devs learned working on bitAssets I'm 100% confident the SD peg is only going to get tighter.
Yeah i get jelly sometimes, but that's life :)
Okay now I really feel like an ass! That was a very interesting and enlighted way of looking at things, one which I am bookmarking and will refer back to next time I feel "unfairly" treated here on Steemit or elsewhere....
Oh and thanks @dan (@dantheman), now I have to do an apology post!
Never a dull moment eh
Apology post is here!
Interesting conclusion regarding perception vs. reality. Perception is fickle and changes quickly while the reality is something that can be controlled. Regarding fairness, I think sticking to reality and not worrying about perception is the optimal approach.
but your perception is your reality ;)
I think that people will never be satisfied with any one model or a system - no matter how good. It's in their nature.
There was an excellent scene in Spartacus: War of the Damned final episode that pretty much sums up the concept of "fairness":
"Crassus and Spartacus leave the others for a face to face.
In conversation, Spartacus lets slip that a female slave killed Tiberius.
The two men compare personal losses; Crassus has lost a son, Spartacus, a wife.
“There is no justice, not in this world,” Spartacus says.
“At last,” Crassus responds. “A thing we agree upon.”
The two men clasp arms.
There will always be hungry people on Earth, so why put any effort in trying to solve world hunger?
The point @dantheman is that the current structure has nothing to do with fairness. Not everybody started with reputation of massive steem power. Some of us spend hours writing material that have some quality while others shoot 2 paragraphs and get a steady income.
At the end of the day, if this continues only the whales will remain—jerking each other off. There has to be some incentive for people to adopt it. some relative distribution based on quality.
Right now Steemit, has nothing to do with anarchy and everything to do with plutocracy. Whether people give their money to anarchic steemit whales or "statist" Zuckerberg, is irrelevant. People won't buy into it unless they are dollarvigilante level...
Attacking people for expressing their perceptions of unfairness is a classic move by those in positions of power. It's a go to tactic designed to squash dissent. It is coercive, because it is designed to produce shame, guilt and embarrassment in people who feel like the the deck is stacked against them. Usually this tactic is employed after attempts at persuasion have failed....
Fairness is difficult to achieve as a collective. The competitive instinct is too much for some to behave in a fair manner.
I'm also distracted by the question of who programmed the robots? Also, being British I would still complain the weather is unfair.
Here is majority one with many vesting shares.
Post with 105 votes was earning 0.26$ and due to one down vote it went to 0 and being hidden.
Negative voting is needed, it however has to be used properly and not to be abused, especially by the ones with power. I just found a couple of SPAM posts to flag... :)
There is not enough incentive to flag. That's why we are drowning in copypasta.
Exactly, negative voting suffers from tragedy of the commons. No one has incentive to do it unless they are willing to be a sacrificial lamb and take a bullet for everyone else. This is why I am not worried about it being abused.
On the topic of flagging.. what was wrong with my post @r4fken haha
If negative or down votes were allowed, I wonder how many would actually use the feature constructively? Especially if it reduced the payment of the author. Humans being human, it's easy to imagine a person getting angry at how his point of view was being received and downvoting those who disagreed with him. I also think very few people would downvote anyone with significant SP out of fear of retaliation. I guess the real question is, what appropriate criteria should be used for negative voting? I agree that it's needed in order to have a balanced feedback system. But how to best implement it so that it's constructive and not abused?
The premise of this whole article is that there is only one account per user. That is not the case. And even if it were, the assumption that the majority will treat the minority with fairness, is also wrong.
That was not the premise of the article. The premise is one vote per share (SP).
Hmm fair point.
The premise of the article (at least one) is that words are defined by their dictionary definitions. That is not the case.
By "I still believe negative voting is a critical component" are you saying you think there should be downvoting, not just flagging?
If this is in fact what you are saying, I have a follow-up question.
On a platform where downvoting is allowed, consider this:
Suppose 95% of users passionately think one thing is right and only 5% of users passionately think the opposite is true.
Someone with the 5% minority view is going to get down-voted into oblivion, even if they have an excellent argument and well-presented content.
I think this will lead to unwanted censorship. Do you disagree?
I disagree that it would be censorship. People have a right to close their ears and filter what they see and hear. Censorship is when you prevent someone from saying something to people who want to hear it.
Thanks for your reply. Consider this hypothetical scenario:
Similar to the scenario above, with a bit of a twist - Steemit has now grown to 100 Million users and downvoting is allowed.
People who believe an anarcho-capitalists society is best will be downvoted into oblivion, even if they have an excellent argument. All because people with the opposite view have a cognitive bias toward the information they view as correct. When a post is downvoted a lot, fewer people see it, which I think is a form of censorship.
This is why every community needs its own currency and needs to defend its own standards based upon how it votes.
If we want steem and steemit to change the world toward a more voluntarist society, then we need to actively downvote and remove the profit opportunity from those who support statism.
This could result in group-think. This could hinder growth. So we have our selfish desire to change the world and maintain our identity as a community fighting with another selfish desire to sell out to the masses to "get rich".
The fallacy is to believe all opinions are equally valuable and that we should dilute our identity by awarding stake to those who oppose our principles. This is not censorship. This is a community with identity and values.
If we allow those who promote statism to grow via our upvotes, then we are in effect allowing censorship to grow by supporting those people. Censorship is something that only governments can do by interfering between the speaker and those who want to listen.
Steem could be corrupted just like propaganda has corrupted the masses. If that happens the voluntarists will have to start over with a new currency because the voters of Steem will implement a government that rejects property rights.
This would assume that supporters of statism can't acquire a lot of Steem Power using state power? Or that somehow states can't use propaganda and psy-ops to change the minds of some anarchists? It's a very complicated situation but I don't see who wins from political downvote wars. I think we all lose because Steemit becomes a less fun place, a much more serious place, and I can't see 100 million people being in an environment where it's constant warfare.
@r4fken statements are easy to take out of context, especially by those doing it on purpose to promote an agenda.
I will probably write another blog post where I clarify my concept of censorship.
But those ideas are forever in the blockchain and are immutable. Yes the majority decide what type of content is most visible, but steemit allows all users to have a voice whether or not it is a popular one. I would see it as censorship if @dantheman could simply click and delete content that may be questioning steemit, but I have seen quite the opposite. Some very controversial topics have seen the light of day and for the most part were discussed in a way that allowed both sides to fully share their opinions.
There is not censorship, but being able to make content very difficult to see will be important when someone inevitably decides to post child pornography, live torture or other things that an immutable decentralized blockchain would need to be able to handle due to some legal implications.
If one user doesn't want to hear another, he can mute them.
The downvote (opposite vote) is one where you disapprove with someone's opinion and cancel part of his vote or all of it based on your power. The flagging option is a feature that is used when you find abusive content which in turn lowers someone's reputation and visibility along with potential prize they would receive.
hopefully later this does not become a failed concept and really fair in the future
@dantheman
@dantheman I suppose the real question for me is -
Is Steemit your own personal anarchist society or is it meant to be more inclusive than that?
I like this community but I don't identify myself as an anarchist and I suspect that you will alienate people if you start going further down that path.
I applaud you for discussing these matters with the community but I think you need to listen very carefully when they tell you that they are not comfortable with something.
I personally don't like the concept of negative voting on a platform like this. I think it is too easy to abuse and just does not feel right to me.
The example I have used before is that of an artist selling a painting at auction.
If it sells for $100K at auction and all the money goes to the artist, then negative voting is like other people who don't like the piece being able to extract money from the artist afterwards.
To me it is more similar to robbing someone of something they already have.
Yes perception may be considered reality in some sense and morality is highly subjective but many of the parameters of these things are created by the community.
From the perception of the serial killer, murdering people and torturing them may be entirely fair and moral.
Most communities would consider it the exact opposite.
Perhaps for important matters of function, governance etc it might be useful to have some sort of polling system built into Steemit?
As it is now it is not particularly anarchistic in some ways. If it is intended to be that then it largely depends upon what type of Anarchist you are. If you are an Anarcho-Capitalist it is not quite that because, you don't really care about people who don't like your product in a market, you care about how many people DO like it and thus are potential trade partners. You may care about people that didn't like it in the sense that you may be able to refine your product and get MORE trade partners. Yet you will not let people that do not like it dictate the price other people decide to give you.
So it is not really an anarchistic society at the moment. It is ALMOST.
EDIT: I am an Anarcho-Capitalist. So take what I say with a grain of salt as it is definitely going to be influenced by that.
If it does not feel right to you, don't use it. But why do you want other people to be deprived of this option?
Because you think it will be abused? Maybe it will, maybe not. We can't be sure unless we try. If we don't try some people will be unhappy - we know this for sure. On the other hand, if we try - it might fail but there is also a chance that it will work just fine and everybody will be satisfied.
It already is being abused.
Which only proves my point: there is already a simple way to do the damage you are so afraid of.
What I propose is this: let's offer people a way to do less damage, so that they don't have to do more damage to reach their goal.
I'm not trying to be a smart-ass here: I really don't understand your logic. The damage is already easily doable and some people are doing this. So if we can't effectively prevent the damage taking place, why don't you want to offer a way to make the damage less painful for the author?
Not sure what you're getting at since if I had my way we'd have no DOWNVOTE and the FLAG would pop up three choices for which it could be used. Plagiarism, Spam, or Abuse, and possibly a way to specify FALSE FLAG. If it is a false flag perhaps it could alert the witnesses and they'd have the ability to remove it, and ding the reputation of the person doing the FALSE FLAG.
So I believe it could be virtually eliminated.
There is such a system. Stakeholders elect witnesses who decide what software to run, which in turn implements the rules of the system. We are somewhat limited by the software license which prohibits using modifications not authorized by Steemit Inc. In effect this means witnesses can refuse to adopt new versions created by Steemit Inc (retaining the previous rules), but can't adopt any different version (unless, possibly, if completely reimplemented).
In practice Steemit Inc. owns an absolute majority of the stake which means it can replace the witnesses as long as that remains the case.
I was thinking of a system that polls all the users. Witnesses already have a huge amount of power in the system given their huge earnings.
How do the earnings convey power when in order to receive the earnings one must be voted in by stakeholders? The power lies with the voters. None of the witnesses has enough SP to get there or stay there without votes from many others, and certainly not from witness earnings alone.
I understand what you are saying but that does not negate the fact that as a witness one can have a huge amount of STEEM/SP which gives you a much more powerful voice than the average person on Steemit but you are correct they are elected.
I am one of the people that actively elects people to be witnesses. I don't have much SP but I feel it is my duty to at least vote for people whom I perceive to be doing a good job even some who I disagree with sometimes:)
What I was taking about is giving everyone a say in major issues - not every issue but major things like for example the 30 day limit on payouts/upvotes. This could be tied into the wallet and linked to SP to reduce the Sybil issue.
It wouldn't be a perfect solution but it might give people at least a feeling that they have a say in what goes on.
@thecryptofiend, I agree with your idea of polling. I'm not sure it should be binding or you run into issues with what to do when participation is low (which it almost always is in these systems).
If only 3% of the SP votes at all, do you ignore the vote, or let 1.5% of SP make an important decision for everyone, or do you fail to make important decisions at all because the participation is too low? Voter's can also make contradictory decisions, especially with low participation (different subsets vote on different issues). Then what?
But the opportunity for stakeholders to at least express a view in a secure way is a good idea, and witnesses who acted against the unambiguously expressed interests of a significant portion of the stakeholders would do so at their peril.
"Fairness is all in Our Head" have to agree with this for sure "all is fair in love and war"
I'm sure everyone who has used steemit for more than a week knows that even on a decentralized social forum that majority of our experiences to us are unfair. Anything that isn't seen as a move forward or progression is fair. I wrote a hugely personal post about my mental illness and group up, hasn't even hit a dollar while fake pin up girls get thousands.
What is fair?
I liked your post and was one the people who initially upvoted it. Now I see you keep complaining about "unfairness" again and again and use the big font to draw attention. I'll give you some feedback: this makes me less and less likely to upvote you in the future.
I was merely pointing out that the idea of fair is individual based and one that is based on our perception. when people put their hearts and sole into something the fact that you upvoted it does not change the fact that a fake made up pin up girl gets thousands while the raw emotions in posts or real people go unnoticed. I have a voice. I have every right to use it innuendo. I have spent my life being told to shh as my opinion was below others. Don't do that.
My post made 60 cents while yours are making very tidy amounts. That's like someone in suburbia america talking about how it isn't actually that bad in third world countries. Because america gives them aid. It changes nothing.
Although negative voting is needed it won't produce the effect we desire or you are talking here in terms of fairness. It will comply with a definition of fairness but not to rules of personal fairness, which is impossible to achieve for everybody. Voting here is in a way just popularity contest which gives you money.
Nothing is black or white but in fact gray. Furthermore, people are not honest so they won't use negative voting in the right manner in order to not create enemies since it's easier to be by the side. If people were real and accept others opinions that would be a different story. Since everyone thinks he is smartest and prettiest we are stuck where we are thinking our opinions are more important than others and holding grudges against others.
We need love and compassion in order that world and steemit become a beautiful place not making other people think like we do or who is stronger. But that is something you can't teach person he must learn it by himself.
Competition over fairness any day.
Also I think the downvote mechanism is required in DPoS to protect the value of Steem for everyone. Unless a better system can be created, I think this works fine (although it can carry a social taboo stigma with it)
The world is so hypocrite.
The more civilised, the more hypocrite we become.
Fairness will be difficult in such a world.
Basically from this article
Are We Becoming More Robotic? Are Robots Becoming More Human?
I think steemit need more humanity touch on it. Steemit is social media to connect with another people. Some human feature like birthday alert, status, hobby etc, will make steemit member more comfortable, not boring and feel steemit is their own home .
Its will Make steemit more human iam sure steemit will succes on the long run..
Damn Dan that is a seriously high-quality piece o critically important work!!
Fair systems will never be usable for humans, because they are just wrong coded. We are greedy, we love to complain, argue, fight and pretty much destroy everything that is usefull for us. That surely makes the life more entertaining but also does'nt allow us to do what obviously would be better and more logical for everyone.
So overall I absolutly understand dans point of view and would'nd know a "better" solution either.
"Perception is Reality. Change your perception and you change your reality."
I just used this phrase last night when talking to my significant other about our son and his friend fighting, with our son feeling like we weren't taking his side... what he perceived was true to him and became his reality.
Life isn't fair.
Life isn't fair, and people are not always going to be equal. We may be created equal, but for one reason or another some people move up in the world, and some don't. I've found it mostly has to do with drive and ambition. If you want to look at the glass as half empty and complain about fairness, you will stay in the same place, stagnant and miserable.
fair has no natural equivalent. but RIGHT has. so let's make voting right!
Amen. I'm sure a lot of the "unfairness" talk are just covetous individuals.
It would be less fair if you could only upvote.
Voting makes us equal! Except for that minority that the rest of us voted into being unequal, of course! But don't worry, we voted, so it's fair :)
I don't understand the context of this post. Have there been many complaints over the fairness of steemit in the current stage? I see steemit as a private company, so it is normal that those who put in more capital in the form of work or money have a greatter say. That's natural.
@dantheman is quite important to understand that to give and to receive a Down vote is important to grow up or to take it with calm, so people should not take it personal just because they gave or received a Down vote, we have to use our power in a wise way, we can still have great talks and sharing points of view even if we differ in our perceptions, down voting is important but are we enough mature to receive a down vote, are we mature enough to not start crying or complaining with others just because someone down voted me?? Down vote is important and we most use it to flag toxic content.
Although I agree with what you said about the downvote especially in terms of readiness. You must be aware that there is a difference between downvote and flagging content. The downvote is one where you disapprove with someone's opinion and cancel part of his vote or all of it based on your power. The flagging option is a feature that is used when you find abusive content which in turn lowers someone's reputation and visibility along with potential prize they would receive.
thanks for remind me about flagging, Flags are like surfing flags if you see the danger flag it!
I just edited my post thanks.