[extropy-chat] Threesome as most efficient social arrangement?

[Jef Allbright]

On 11/23/05, Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> --- Jef Allbright <jef at jefallbright.net> wrote:
> > Extending to a threesome would provide the additional advantage of
> > sure decision-making due to the tie-breaking effect of a third vote.
>
> For those decisions which can only go one of two ways.  (A common
> fallacy is to pretend that most decisions are that way, when in fact
> there are often third alternatives that are usually only identified if
> people don't rush to accept the existence of only two options.)

Maybe I'm pretending to know something about information theory, but
it seems to me that all decisions can be reduced to binary form.  In
the case of the three individuals, I imagine them brainstorming a list
of possible actions and then ranking them via  a process of binary
comparisons e.g. better/worse.

Does that make sense to you?


> Rough consensus is not always the same thing as democracy.

Sorry to mislead you, I was using the word vote in a slightly abstract
sense.  Weighted ranking would be preferred in many situations, and
you won't often find me arguing for democracy, but that's another
topic.

- Jef