Thoughts & Ideas posts page 6

seperate issues from candidates

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voters take something like the NPAT test, a test covering all the major issues up for current debate. The results will all be added together to get an NPAT for the entire nation, and seperately for each subdivision of the nation that is having an election. Each item would be shown as a percentage of the population in agreement with that item. These results would be compared to each the NPAT of each candidate from each division, and the candidate statistically closer to the division NPAT would be elected.

Some Advantages:
This would allow (theoretically) the most appropriate candidate to be chosen by each citizen without each citizen having to wade through the mud slung by each candidate at the other.

One would simultaneously be voting for every candidate close to their personal opinion set, while voting against every candidate opposing their opinion set. In such a way, the problem of limited selection from a two party system would be eliminated, as one could vote third party as well as for their major party at the same time, and even for multiple candidates from their party at the same time.

Some problems:
As politicians already can and do lie about their positions on given issues, it would be unreasonable to expect them to stop now. Especially when their vote is much more directly tied to those positions.

There will be no mechanism to punish candidates for failing to follow through on their declarations made in the NPAT, making the above problem very bad. Some system for this would be needed. Perhaps they could be challenged by a large group of citizens if they fail to meet these positions, and have an independant panel of judges decide if they indeed failed. The group size would have to be set large enough that this wouldn’t be happening constantly, particularly by those who voted opposite the officer. Or perhaps an independant body would repeatedly, perhaps monthly, rate the officer based on their performance on each issue, and the officer would be removed from office or a new race would be ran if a certain threshold is passed in difference between performance and original declaration. This body could potentially be a randomly chosen selection of citizenry, or even the entire nation. This would perhaps create problems if major events change the environment the officer is acting in.

Socialisms: Balance Want with Need

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people want/have preferences for certain things
government could be used to attempt to provide these wants
as in communism goods, jobs, and property are owned by all and managed by government, and these are important areas where people have personal preferences, they could be doled out to those who want them
jobs: person educated generally at first, makes choices as education progresses that narrows them closer and closer to a field they are interested in. they may change directions if they don’t like where they are going, and work towards multiple areas of interest. government, through good planning, knows what jobs are generally needed, and decides how many openings there are in a given field. after education, person either takes opening in chosen field, or is put on wait for opening and works in another area of interest until an opening occurs to their liking. supply affected by demand to some degree: government changes number of positions toward fields people want, or provide other incentives in unwanted fields. person tires of job, can take opening or wait for another field.
homes: people have many ideas of ideal home and location to live. government creates homes where people want to live. can only create so many homes in given place. if can’t get desired location, can be put in closest (based on desirable criteria rather than geographical proximity) available accomodations, put on waiting list till home becomes available. various styles of living accomodations will be made in each area based on demand for each type. all homes will still be designed pragmatically, with items such as energy efficiency and usage efficiency being important considerations. all houses upgraded as technology becomes available, considering benifits for the costs involved.
solitary versus group, quiet versus noise filled, rural vs urban

voting methods: active split voting

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this would be most applicable for smaller governing bodies, such as a congress/parlaiment. It takes into consideration the common US voting method for juries of murder trials. The outcome of these votes is considered rather important, so a strict consensus vote is required. All members must vote for or against a guilty verdict. Multiple votes must be taken until all members make the same choice. Members must try to convince others to vote with them, making the voting procedure rather active.

I think a similar strict system should be in place for the more important votes on legislation. The most important decisions, perhaps ammending the constitution, would require the jury method of all or none. Run of the mill decisions that change very little would require a standard >50% majority. Other votes would be somewhere in between, based on how drastic the change would be. Many of the more important decisions might require something like a 75 – 25 percent split; >75% yeah to pass, <25% yeah to fail. If the proper consensus was not met, deliberation would continue for a while, then another vote would be taken, continuing until a yeah or nay consensus was reached. This would ensure a more agreed upon decision, and render a simple majority of seats less powerful.

Lots of ‘deals’ would undoubtedly be made to ensure minority support of majority bills, but this is already a noteable problem. There would need to be strict rules in place to decide which sort of bills deserve which sort of split, to ensure a ruling party would not be as able to simply vote all votes on a 50% split.

At the very least, many more votes should be required to achieve a 60 or 75% consensus. Amendmants should require even greater consensus, due to the extreme power they weild.

customized information/books

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book store provides customized (non-fiction) books based on customer chosen parameters. Content taken from large database of information, selected and formatted by special computer program. Customers choose things such as:
-Teaching Organization/Methods – choose from several basic types of common formatting for transmitting information based on which you feel most comfortable with or works best
-scope of information – general overview of topic or more detailed coverage of a specific part of a topic. can choose part or parts you want covered and to what extent.
Book is compiled and printed out for you. Could also be formatted as a pdf or simply a web page.

Based on my desire more generally for a method of storing information allowing people to choose level of detail without redundancy of stored data.

Network

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company server central location for all information needed by employers/ees. employees can access schedule info, pay info, etc. on internet accessible site and put in schedule requests. database holds schedule and payroll info.

frued: repressed memories

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Freud showed that some psychotic disorders could be fixed if certain ‘repressed’ memories were drawn into the ‘concious’ part of the brain.

People don’t necessarily actively try to forget things in their past. Sometimes they do, but everything in the past fades away as time goes by. New memories butt in for room amongst the old ones, and sit more towards the ‘front’ of ‘conciousness’. Current events are most commonly the most important at any given moment, so they are given prime memory real estate, while old ones are filed away.

Every even in ones past is essentially what one is in the present. If any of those past things had happened differently, the present person would be different. It may be such a slight difference as to be unnoticable, or it may be so large that it would seem impossible the two people could be the same one biologically, depending on the significance of the effects of the event on that person. The human psyche has a tendancy to want to know who it is. Who it was is very important to understanding who it is. As everything in the past has an effect on the present, an understanding of that past helps understand who that present person is. The more significant the event, the greater an effect it had on the present, and thus the more important its understanding helps understand the present.

So unearthing hidden memories of significance helps one understand who one is, allowing one to be more comfortable with oneself.

commune

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After noticing how much time I spend doing things like cooking and washing dished, I’d somewhat like to live in a commune, a group of people providing members needs efficiently. Everyone would likely live in an efficiently designed apartment like building.

People would be free to leave at anytime, join (back) in any time space is available. They may also move to other communes around the country/world anytime space is available.

In its simplest form, this would merely be a large shared living quarters. Each person would have their own private room for a bed, personal possesions, etc.
-Bathrooms could be in each room or, to be much more efficient, on each floor. They would be much more private than standard public restrooms, with rooms for each facility. Bathing rooms would be seperate from toilet rooms.
-There would be a large restaurant type kitchen servicing the whole place. Food would be purchased as used from the full-sized store of regular goods. Any irregular goods could be specially ordered and made regular if needed. The amounts being ordered would be closely monitored to ensure nothing runs out while nothing spoils.
-Community spaces would be provided for playing sports and table-games, watching tv and movies and playing video games, conversing, and other such liesure activities.
-Many commonly used items would be purchased by the entire community for their benifit. The proper amounts for the demand would be monitored. Tools for automotive work and carpentry would be available, with a garage and workshop. Cards, board games, some sporting equipment, tvs, and furniture would be purchased for the community areas. Some cleaning implements, such as vacuums, mops, and brooms would be available for use.

Cooks, dishwashers, and community area maids may be wanted to be payed for by community members to provide their services and allow others to concentrate more fully on their own lines of work. Cooks would cook to order some meals or take orders in advance to allow for better planning. Or a more 24-hour cafeteria like approach could be used, where choices of meals would be available, plus a set selection of items always there. These personnel would be paid by the system, either not bringing in money from the outside at all, or working short enough hours to still allow an outside job.

In a much more involved commune, in which many more of the needs of the community would be provided ‘in-house’, the less specialised jobs would be shared among a lot of people: cook one meal, dishwash for a bit, work on committee for calculating how much food should be ordered next for a bit. This would ensure no-one is forced into doing undesirable jobs all the time.

This article is incomplete.

Hierarchical Site DB Storage

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a prototype hierarchical site database will be made containing a description and discussion of everything I own organized by category. for now this’ll allow children to have only one parent, but it will need multiple parents in the future.

page display:
a nav box at the side of each page will have links to its parent, siblings, and children. children will be ordered by type
the content will be in a box. content may also contain links to other pages, especially children, when mentioned.
a site map will provide a hierarchical link list of all pages in database

each page will be a entry in a database. It will have:
a unique id to identify it
the id of its parent page (what links to it)
type/template defining display of page by type
style of page (style sheet for colors, etc of sections). parent inherited if blank. will be unimplemented at first
content of page

root page will be home, with links to all first level sub pages.

example for stuff
transportation page
children: car, sailboat, bicycle, foot
content: It is essential to get from point A to point B: to get products stored elsewhere, see different things and people, go to locations better suited for certain functions. One comes with feet with which to travel about. This mode of transportation is very easily accomplished, requires as little as oneself, allows careful manuevering in tight places, and can easily handle terrain other transportation types have trouble with. It is also relatively very slow and tiring for longer lengths and can only handle ground. A bicycle provides transportation with the body as a motor, allowing more speedy and efficient travel. The bicycle is a fairly simple device, lightweight and easily storable in most places. A car is a much faster mode of transportation that requires very little exertion on the users part. It allows great distances to be achieved within less time and easy transport of goods. It is also big and much more expensive to own and operate…
(this is a brief overview of transportation. children are linked to in content with a brief summary of each. Each child will go into more depth.)
template: this would probably be a “summary” or “directory” type template, just a overview of a category with summaries of each child. Its children would probably be as well. The car category might have children that are of a “product” type, giving a review/discussion of specific instances of the parent. the parent of a collection of “product” pages may contain a comparison summary that provides a conclusion as to which is best for a given situation.

Design Problem Solutions/Tutorial Database

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I spend a lot of time writing html, php, and css for my website to implement various ideas and create a certain look. I very often find myself having trouble with one particular thing. I search the web with google or search forums to try to find a solution. Sometimes it’s extremely simple, while others it creates new problems. As I am often working on one part of my site at once, these problems are often related. I would like a site that is a central repository for solutions for all of these problems to exist.

The site would probably be a wiki so as to get input from many people, have a large source of authors, and continue to be updated with new problems.

Posts would be much like a tutorial. They would explain what to do, and also why.

Navigation would be critical, allowing one to quickly find solutions to a specific problem as well as for a more generic learning how to do something type fashion. A good search system would exist like most wikis have, allowing search of the title as well as the content. Also needed is a good way to relate articles and navigate to them through relations. A good, specific category system would be important, with related articles in related categories. The articles should be organized in such a way that they could be followed in a general sequence towards a specific goal like a tutorial. As an example, many people like to create CMSs to manage their site. They go through the same or comparable problems to those who’ve already made them, and thus would benefit from the knowledge of those who’ve already been through it. The cms tutorial would guide them through the process, with the most basic articles being the main path they follow and the less important articles forming side paths. Branching off based upon decisions would also lead through different paths. CMSs are similar in many ways, but some decisions in the design process lead to certain differences in the design process; branches would allow one to design their CMS and choose the branches that apply to them.

This would become sort of a code repository, with code for anything already generically written, and branches in logic allowing for all possible different needs to be accomodated.

Though I came up with this for programming and web design, it could apply to any problems, and thus web-design and programming would only be sub-categories. Examples of where this could be used are in designing a car or planning the construction of a house. Numerous decisions are made in each, though the basic concepts would be used in every implementation: every housebuilder must look at the types of flooring available and decide which is best for the application; every car body design must choose a balance between factors such as aerodynamics, appearance, and capacity to accomodate other parts; every design must choose between a more costly or less costly path based on available resource (money, time, etc).

This seems to work best for problems of design.

Versatility of Design

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An object that can have a wider range of uses, especially potential uses, should be designed to be more versatile than one with fewer uses. It must be so in that it is more able to be changed to suit particular needs.

A house must be much more versatile in design than a car. In the house, you must be able to easily move things around to suit current needs. A house is used for a lot, and those uses can change, requiring a change in layout to better suit them. A car isn’t used for as much, and thus needn’t be as versatile. A car is used for driving primarily, and possibilities for a good setup for that are more narrow than for a house. Things can be improved and tuned for specific needs, but not so much as with a house. In a house, you may need to move a light fixture for better lighting of a certain area if you decide to do something in that area you hadn’t done before, so it is good for this to be easy to do. In a car, the lighting needs that will most likely be realized through use can be thought of beforehand and designed for; it is much less likely to find a task that needs better lighting in a certain area (if the initial design was well thought out).