The Elympiad

It is pretty obvious, and everyone for the most part agrees, that elections have not worked out well and are nothing more than farcical charades. Young people for the most part do not vote at all. The vast majority of those that do vote do so based on reasons that destroy a democratic process...propaganda catch phrases, the appearance of the candidates, racist attitudes etc. In other words voting is based on ignorance.





Consider that probably not more than a handfull of our 535 representatives in Washington have had a year of Calculus. Most are lawyers or have a business background, yet are in a poistion to make decisions and comments about technical matters such as economics, climate science, spending on scientific research, and other complex socio-economic matters. One might argue that this can work if the blind are smart enough to seek counsel form those in the know. This is pure folly. It is impossible to get good counsel and make wise decisions if they do not even speak the language. In any case smarter representatives will make smarter decisions.





The electorate is in general even less "smart" on average than our representatives. Even the most intelligent of voters do so based on the latest slogans and catch phrases. Let us not even begin to discuss the folly of those that get their information from Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Network and his band of unabashed professional disseminators of propaganda.





Furthermore this is the best case scenario of national elections in which voters actually are slightly informed and actually pay a little attention. Consider local elections where voters walk into a situation where they are nearly 100% unfamiliar with any candidates on the ballot, and the propositions are tangled clollections of double speak where one is required to vote no if in favor and yes if against. Affirmative Action for example. The right wingers claim it is a quota system and the left claims it pevents descrimination based on race etc. The actual wording of the law is full of double negatives and misdirections and is impossible to decipher without great study if at all.





So...waht to do about it all? Elections are a farce and must go. A clearly better alternative is to have a contest every so often, say every 6-8 years, where the winners become our new leaders.


I call this event "The Elympiad". To begin with, using the office of President for example, everyone is eligible who meets certain criteria or passes a series of tests. This is followed by a series of competitive tests that narrows the field progressivley until there are left two finalists. The first tests may be as simple as a civil service exam, and an exam to demonstrate at least one year of calculus proficiency. These may be followed by competitive economics and current events exams sequentially reducing the field.

The finalists could compete in a computer simulated white house for a few weeks with the contestant whose simulated civilation thrives best becoming the new national leader. Congressman and senators could likewise be chosen...unless we further wish to restructure our government as to eliminate these offices and go with some other topology...

While waiting in line recently to enter the courtroom to participate in a jury selection process I struck up a conversation with the man next to me in line regarding the notion of "possible". I brought up the old conundrum as to whether a monkey sitting at a typewriter long enough could possibly, at random, type out the complete works of Shakespeare. In fact I told him that that someone in the magazine Scientific American had actually calculated this precise probability under certain constraints. Thus if the definition of "possible" is- that the probability of the event occurring is greater than zero- then we must conclude that even a monkey, given enough time, could possibly produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

Upon reaching the courtroom the potential jurists were instructed to write down any questions we had regarding the instructions we were being given by both prosecuting and defense attorneys as they gave a general overview of the case. I noted the following three, which the Judge and I subsequently discussed:

-The meaning of "reasonable doubt"
-Whether one could make a decision based on one side of the story
-The legitimacy of judging testimony based on body language

Regarding the notion of "reasonable doubt" I described the practice in the scientific community of relying on the standard of "95 percent level of certainty" as determined by standard tests of statistical significance. In other words, biologists for example, will accept the result of an experiment if statistical tests show that the results have less than a 5 percent chance of being due to random events. I inquired of the judge as to whether in the current circumstance, where a man's life was at stake, would not a higher level of certainty be warranted? Say, at least 99 percent, for example? The Judge recoiled and said that he "could not put a number on it". I responded that for me, without a number, the phrase carried no information and that I could not relate to it.

This starts to illustrate the most pernicious inherently mathematical tactic used in our legal system: The "isn't it possible" question. In terms of information theory which seeks to quantify information content, the answer to this question gives zero or a negligible amount of information. Unless, of course, you think a monkey could write a Bob Dylan song.

As to the second point, the prosecutor encouraged the jurists to be willing to make up their minds upon hearing one side of the testimony, assuming the account was adequately persuasive. I am reminded of radio host Paul Harvey who has made a living with his "other side of the story" shtick. I mentioned to the Judge that anyone with a modicum of real world experience had observed this phenomenon whereby hearing the other side of the story completely changes one's viewpoint- to which he readily agreed. He then asked me if it were not possible to hear evidence so overwhelmingly conclusive as to allow one to come to a conclusion. I responded that I did not know and would have to look at each case individually, but in any case that this certainly was not true in the general case, to which he agreed.

Mathematically speaking, hearing one side of the story establishes one set of parameters and their values upon which to judge the circumstances. Clearly, hearing the other side of the tale will give a better snapshot of the true values.

My final objection was to the prosecutors exhorting us to pay attention to the witnesses tone, and emotional expressions in judging the truth of the testimony. I argued that this was "body language" and that there were no scientific studies whose results could justify this practice.

Note that lie detector tests are not admissible in courts reflecting the fact that no known algebraic sum of biological signals is known to conclusively determine truth telling. Indeed "truth" is oft times difficult to define and may be a fuzzy (as in fuzzy logic) concept. Some people delude themselves, some drugs may obscure any kind of telltale signs of falsehood telling, and some people may be good actors.

In the end, the Judge asked me if despite these conflicts whether I thought could still be a good unbiased juror in the case. I responded that because of my background in math and logic that I would probably be an ideal juror with a superior set of "decision boundaries". I further added that I did not expect to be chosen as I had observed that the prosecutor had dismissed an earlier juror for being overly "analytic". (Evidently she preferred more emotional and less analytic jurors?)

A few seconds later the prosecutor called my number and I was dismissed.

“The art of the sophist is the semblance of wisdom without the reality… Let us now go on to discuss how many kinds there are of sophistical arguments, and how many in number are the elements of which this faculty is composed, and how many branches there happen to be of this inquiry, and the other factors that contribute to this art.” (Aristotle)

In other words, Aristotle is seeking to create an ontology, a formal systematic description of the art of sophistry- a table of contents on the subject. But Aristotle knew little of mathematics especially by today’s standards. At the same time he seems to have a great intuitional sense of many mathematical topics such as fractal geometry, formal systems, decision theory, game theory etc.

One of the main trends in twentieth century mathematics has been the coming together of mathematics and logic as seen in the works of Russell and Whitehead (Principia Mathematica), Goedel (undecidability), Von Neumann (game theory), Turing (artificial intelligence), Bayes (decision theory), Thom (catastrophe and bifurcation theory), Mandelbrot (Fractal geometry) etc. Results in other areas of science such as Physics and chemistry are relevant also such as: quantum mechanics and Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Decision-making has been the focus of a great deal of scientific research, yet the jargon of our legal system remains fundamentally unchanged during this period. Most lawyers and judges nowadays go into their profession in the first place as direct result of their dislike or ineptitude in mathematics, yet mathematics in the form of decision theory as at least one example, should be as central to the legal profession as mathematics is to engineers.

This blog then has the purpose, in the spirit of Aristotle, of reducing the role of intuition and vagueness (intentional and unintentional) in the courtroom environment, and optimizing the level of justice delivered therein. Aristotle himself made an attempt to catalogue his "Sophistical Refutations". In this spirit this blog will attempt to create a similar list in light of modern mathematical and logical theory.