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Comment by Retra | Hacker News Reader

I really wish people would take corruption seriously enough to study it as a professional discipline. It is one of the most important and difficult problems in human history, and there's a lot of room for innovation in dealing with it.

>and most will have a higher perceived amount of corruption than the reality suggests (because discovered exhibits of corruption will be interesting news and thereby over-observed).

You could argue that most corruption is not reported because it is effectively legal. Like nepotism, for instance.

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Technically speaking nepotism means family but people generally use the term to mean friends and colleagues.

On one hand hiring people you know over people you don't know is bad and corrupt. On the other hand it's literally what everyone does because it's the logical, sane, smart decision to make. The #1 way to hire good people for any company is for employees to recommend friends and past co-workers.

You're missing the point - companies compete in the open market and recommendations may be signals used in the hiring process, but not in evaluating somebody's performance on job. If a hire doesn't work out, usually it parts ways with the company, with the evaluation period being meant to make this painless and it's in a company's best interest to hire the best people, otherwise it's not able to compete.

But a public institution is not subject to market forces. A public institution doesn't have to compete, won't go bankrupt, being part of government has tremendous influence on other people's lives and is always financed by other people's taxes. Now that changes the equation quite a lot.

nepotism, noun

The practice among those with power or influence of favoring relatives or friends, especially by giving them jobs.

... i think you're mistaking the original meaning with its definition.

Nepotism is favoritism granted to relatives https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepotism

: the unfair practice by a powerful person of giving jobs and other favors to relatives http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nepotism

No, I'm right. Originally it's a familial term. But modern usage includes friends.

>On the other hand it's literally what everyone does because it's the logical, sane, smart decision to make.

What you are forgetting to point out is that companies practicing nepotism have found a local efficiency maximum. That, right now, nepotism is the best way to hire the right people.

Ideally, there would be better methods to evaluate people, and the value in discovering those methods is quite clear.

I agree. My country of origin is Bulgaria, which has its own bad reputation in that matter ( corruption ). I would say what stops our country from collapsing is the EU and the democratic constitution which has a political pluralism principles inside. Even though the term politician in my country is associated with corruption there's always a refreshing fear of a ruling party shift that keeps the country going.

IMHO Communists in China haven't got any of these real worries and the country lives In sandbox with millions of people as a workforce. That being considered economic crisis like that are expected and what is even worse ( again... In my opinion ) is that things will not change if the sandbox model continues.

The key feature of democracy is not necessarily having people choose their own rules, but instead enabling peaceful power transitions.

Any place where people can still legitimately change the government through democracy is likely to have a reasonable cap on the corruption levels, but that still assumes other functioning parts of society, like an independent judiciary, free press, freedom of speech and association, etc.

Most of those things aren't the case in China, so, absent evidence, you'd have to assume China is more corrupt.

A huge chunk of legal theory is about negating conflicts of interest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest

From Judicial Disqualification, to the very core of our adversarial judicial system (Fruit of the Poisonous tree, etc. etc.), it is definitely a well studied subject in the US.

The solution is pretty simple. If someone in power has a conflict of interest, then the law should be rewritten to resolve it. Typically, the US seems to do it by introducing an adversary of some kind. (ie: The NYPD are considered 'corrupt' behind the 'Blue Wall of Silence'. So an adversary has been introduced: the Civilian Complaint Review Board. The Civilian Complaint Review Board not only reviews complaints, but has been granted judicial power to subpoena individual officers and force them to testify before court)

In fact, our very constitution was designed around this principle.

* The President enforces laws, but is not allowed to write the laws.

* The Congress writes the laws, but cannot enforce the law. Congress is further divided into two different houses (Senate and House) with differing responsibilities, as writing the law is considered the most powerful position of this country. Only when both chambers agree do laws move forward.

* When questions of enforcement come into play, the Judicial branch resolves it by interpreting the laws.

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Unfortunately, large swaths of red tape and political theory dance is expensive. So even the Federal Government cuts corners sometimes... but even more so with local governments.

When some country town can only afford one Sheriff for their entire police department (which is a huge chunk of the country btw), I'm gonna bet you that the town won't be able to afford a "Civilian Complaint Review Board" like New York City can.

A good example is St. Louis County / Ferguson right now. Their Police Department has been shown to be incompetent at best. But they can't even afford Police Cameras! They tried to buy cameras this past year, and the only way they were able to afford cameras was through funds seized from the populace (either traffic fines or other sources...). Such a source of money isn't enough to handle the ongoing storage costs of police cameras. (To say nothing about the conflicts of interest involved in a Police Force with guns who rely on parking tickets, fines, and court fees to fund key parts of their department...)

So Ferguson / St. Louis County will remain in the dark, without police cameras... at least until that city / county can afford them.

Still... Ferguson and St. Louis County are learning. They are probably going to implement civilian review boards soon. http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/ferguso...

But for a county that can't even afford police cameras properly, I bet you that the rollout of this new agency will be slow at best.

I still think a lot more research needs to go into it. Specifically in the field of computer ethics, and general AI. (I don't want judges interpreting the law, I want safe machines doing it.)

There goes common law, jury nullification and case precedent out of the window. Everything is now a literal legalist reading.

I absolutely despise the meme that's so popular here saying that the law is like code and should be totally automated. It's not. It's very fuzzy and that's a huge benefit.

You're assuming all these things like they are necessary or something? I want computers that don't have those exact problems. That's why it needs more research. So we don't have literal legal readings. We could have machines that understand context and manage it in a transparent and verifiable manner.

Judges already do this and they do it quite well. Have you ever read a court case? They even do it within the social concerns of the time. Look at gay marriage. The major problems with the courts are mandatory sentencing, plea bargains, over the top laws (like some drug laws) and access for the poor. None of these bar the last one would really benefit with technology.

They don't do it particularly well, unless you think "time since lunch at time of parole hearing" is a strong predictor of criminal recidivism.

http://www.economist.com/node/18557594

Judges and juries don't understand logic, science, or technology and instead rely solely on show-and-tell presentations from paid 'experts'[1].

It scares the shit out of me that my life would ever be in the hands of a bunch of glorified arts students in conjunction with random members of the population.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Clark

I guess I can't speak for the British system. And yeah im sure we can cite horrendous abuse and lapses of judgements all day. In general, I'm saying that judges write out their opinions and their reasoning in the open, very clearly, in the US.

There's a difference between writing down a justification for actions you've already taken and having your entire internal thought process open to public review.

I don't know what you're talking about. When a judge writes his or her findings of fact, it details his justifications for his determinations. If you want his internal thought processes, I don't think a machine can help you there. A machine can't think. It can only decide a flowchart set of rules, something that won't work in a criminal court setting. You can't go lenient on someone who deserves it, or hard one someone who doesn't, which is the whole role of "justice". This is a justice system we have in the US, not a vengeance system.

Well, I'm certainly not going to take you at your word for any of this.

Look I want strong AI too. But I'm unsure that this is going to a viable avenue to producing one. Furthermore, I'm not even sure the a strong AI will necessarily be incorruptible, I even less confident about those people that build and certify it to be so.

Well they're definitely not going to be incorruptible if you don't pay anyone to do the research necessary to make them that way. There is a huge market for corruptible AI. The way we are doing it now is no worse than completely unregulated voting machines.

I am only suggesting that there is a different approach.

Then Congress will be writing code. Not just code, but unbreakable, uninterpreted code. Do you think Congress will get it right 100% of the time?

The Judicial branch and Executive branch benefit from the "fuzziness". If Congress fails to move, the President can make a move without them. If Congress is ever unclear, then the Judicial Branch gains a touch of power as they make a landmark ruling.

In fact, the _huge_ size of laws today are attempts at making Congress's intent more clear. 3000+ Pages of "Affordable Care Act" and yet the intent remained unclear (tax vs penalty? Tax Deductions to marketplaces run by "the state". Does "the state" mean the government in general? Or does it mean "state" as in Florida?)

The famous "Tomato is a Fruit or Vegetable??" case "Nix v. Hedden" is all you need to know about Congress's inability to write clear laws... no matter how hard they try. This country has a knack of finding corner cases to the law making them horribly important in laughable ways.

In any case, "code that is law" sounds like a horrible idea. Congress barely reads laws as it is, and instead outsources the job to "the expert" lobbyists.

Part of the problem is that expert Congressmen / Congresswomen learn that they can make more money by working for private business lobbying firms than staying in Congress. So they leave Congress (and leave all the political crap behind)... and write laws and legal arguments for businesses.

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And even then, Congress gets a lot of things wrong when they are 100% clear anyway. Most judges don't like sentencing minor Marijuana smokers to jail... but when Congress writes "Minimum Sentencing Laws", guess what? The Judge is _forced_ to do so, even if the individual judge disagrees with the law.

In this case where Congress is so wrong with law, it is more beneficial to leave more power to the judge and jury. Even if you do think that Marijuana is evil and horrible, most people agree that sending someone to jail over it is a mistake. (where the jailed man will only get access to more drugs and contacts). Send drug users to the hospital, send them to get cured. Don't send them to jail where it will only get worse.

Congress would not be the first place I'd implement such a thing. I'd start with automated forum moderators and then maybe move on from there once they prove themselves better than humans. Maybe a small civil court handling parking tickets. Let's not assume too much, here.

So you'd want AIs to write the law too?

So you would have AIs not only writing the laws, but interpreting them. And you're not worried about conflicts of interest one bit? What happens when the AIs write a law stating that only AIs can have jobs? Or if an AI writes a law that says "kill all humans" ?

The law needs to be written by somebody. And Congress... despite all of its faults... is the best organization we know of at writing laws.

You're ignoring literally centuries of political theory btw. This is one of the most studied subjects in America right now. I would suggest reading "Roberts Rules of Order" for the base mechanism of how meetings are run and how to organize a group to make a decision.

The vast vast vast majority of Congressional decisions and Judicial decisions take place as rigorously as code. Its not the "interpretation" of law where mistakes are made... most commonly, it is the writing of law which causes controversy.

In any case, even the writing of laws is extremely algorithmic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert's_Rules_of_Order

Robert's Rules of Order don't necessarily match up with the Senate's rules or the House's rules... but the concepts are very similar. (In particular, there is a time limit to debate in the House, while there isn't one in the Senate. Both differ from Robert's Rules where individuals are only allowed to speak twice per meeting).

Regardless, Parlamentary Theory is extremely codified. And if you listen to CSpan for just 5 minutes, you'll notice that Congress (Specificall the House) talks in a very algorithmic manner. (Individual Representatives reserving time down to the _minute_ to talk about their arguments).

I'm not ignoring anything, you're just wildly jumping to conclusions.

I don't think I would want that. It sounds clinically nice, but I'm not sure we'd want that in practice --just imagine a Robocop force.

A change like this would likely be similar to the changes brought about when judicial discretion was ejected in favor of strict sentencing.

Computers making moral choices? No, thank you.

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