Branching

[psztorc]

Firstly, two things you mention are actually good, not bad: It is good to prevent Authors from choosing Voters in any way, because this decreases their ability to collude. It is also good, up to a point, to have large Ballots, as security increases with Decisions / Ballot (more cross validation, and harder coordination).

I think I actually addressed your concern about crowding on page 25 "Intelligent Decision Fees". Its funny you use the example of March, maybe you subconsciously absorbed it from that section. Also, a Voter-wide-participation-decrease is handled in the calculation of Fee1 and in several Tests (specifically at the end of the "Missing Values" section, if Voters protest uneconomical Decision-creation.

You idea might seem fine at first glance, but that is nowhere near good enough. Game theory requires that we consider every single information set, ie every possible state of knowledge of the players. I encrypt Ballots, and produce a zero-sum Votecoin pool, for example, partially so that I don't have to think about how people's m!n! vote-combinations might influence each other (as all talk is equally non-credible). I'm apprehensive by how complicated your ideas are, and about how people would strategize to avoid/not-avoid entering the more powerful A..G group, how that would change with changes in transaction fees in that or other groups. I think the attack-logic would depend on these factors and potentially make the whole thing very confusing for a very small benefit.

[asherp]

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. It sounds like I need to sit down and learn more game theory, then simulate/test the idea to see if there's any real benefit. In physics we tend to just throw shit at the wall and hope it sticks...

[zack]

The problem you describe: What if many decisions are added at the last minute, and voters are punished for not voting on them?
The solution you mention: Don't punish voters when they fall for this.
My alternative solution: Stop accepting new decisions towards the end to give voters ample time to vote.

I was studying physics until I dropped out of my undergrad last year.
Robin Hanson who invented LMSR had degrees in physics.

I have a basic understanding of "prisoner's dilemma".
What does a person read to learn game theory? What part of game theory matters for PMs?

[asherp]

Well my question is a bit more general: I feel like maximizing the number of people voting is just as important as encouraging them to vote for the truth, so it feels weird that someone who only votes on one thing should be penalized for it. Rather than vote for more things, they may just quit voting entirely.

William Spaniel's game theory channel is pretty accessible
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDIGW0ywWw9Kh9_vtwqxXA

[psztorc]

The problem you describe: What if many decisions are added at the last minute, and voters are punished for not voting on them?
The solution you mention: Don't punish voters when they fall for this.
My alternative solution: Stop accepting new decisions towards the end to give voters ample time to vote.

Zack, the true problem I'll describe is that you don't read the whitepaper carefully, and jump to all of these incorrect conclusions as a result. Perhaps, this time, I should refuse to address your question, for fear of encouraging this type of behavior any further.

Adding/removing specifications just because someone somewhere thought of something this morning, and didn't bother to see how their thought related to all of the other moving parts, is not going to create a viable end-product.

It is extremely obvious, to me, why Authors would never create a lot of Decisions last minute, and, even if they did, why Voters would have plenty of time to address all of them, and why they would be happy to do so, and why, even if they didn't have enough time to get to all of them, that wouldn't be a problem for anyone but those who added the Decisions last minute.

Perhaps "proof is left as an exercise" to anyone who wants to guess at the answer(s).

What does a person read to learn game theory?

What does a person read to learn physics?

What part of game theory matters for PMs?

What we are doing here, designing a Truth-finding mechanism, is only incidentally related to PMs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_game_theory

[zack]

It costs money to make a decision, and there is no time left to profit with. Each decision created can only increase the amount of money that voters earn. The smaller number of voters who do vote on these decisions will take all of the reward?

It is possible to make someone lose a little votecoins, but because the smoothing parameter alpha=0.1, they are bounded on how much they can lose in a single round.

probably there are still things I don't understand...

[asherp]

What we are doing here, designing a Truth-finding mechanism, is only incidentally related to PMs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_game_theory

Thanks for pointing this out. I would even call this REQUIRED READING before tackling the TruthCoin paper. It explains the theory behind what TruthCoin is doing and why you might have formalized it this way. For example, it's easy to be skeptical of the assertion that TruthCoin incentivizes people to vote for the truth, but if you point them to the section on the Revelation Principle and "truthfully implementable mechanisms" then 90% of the work is done for you and the rest is "just code". I wonder to what extent Satoshi used reverse game theory when designing bitcoin..?

[psztorc]

It costs money to make a decision, and there is no time left to profit with. Each decision created can only increase the amount of money that voters earn. The smaller number of voters who do vote on these decisions will take all of the reward?

It is possible to make someone lose a little votecoins, but because the smoothing parameter alpha=0.1, they are bounded on how much they can lose in a single round.

probably there are still things I don't understand...

Very good. Also, Voters have two weeks to submit votes (in my example timeline), regardless of how many Decisions are added or mature in the previous period (Decisions can't mature before they are added).

So Voters probably would NOT lose any votecoins, and just answer all of these questions and take the extra fees. Most likely of all, it would never happen.

Voters would not collect Trading Fees for these Decisions, of course, but that really isn't relevant because the (attacking) Authors don't collect them either AND the attacking Authors had to pay Fee1, so the problem is worse for Authors while Fee1 > Value of the median Voter's Time. (Note that, although each Voter only gets a proportional fraction of Fee1, each Author loses all of Fee1, which is the true purpose of Fee1). As all Decisions must be easily-verifiable (or face the dreaded .5 contingency), this will likely be the case. Voters, as a committed group, have all the power, they can just .5 everything and screw the Authors (the only requirement is that they feel other Voters will act the same way). If someone really did something crazy like add 400 Decisions at the last minute, that weren't used to make Markets and that no one traded on, it would become possible for Voters to coordinate in this way.

Finally, even if they did NOT coordinate in this way, and answered as many Decisions as they could, but not all of them, the protocol would still resolve the Decisions as-correctly-as-possible and, what's more, (they way I designed it right now), Fee1 would automatically increase. I'm actually not crazy about that way of setting Fee1, however. Perhaps just allowing the Votecoins to vote, with a 75% majority or something required to change, would be the simplest and best. Branches should have a little text info idea going over the specialty / rules, and these might need to be changed, which implies a changing mechanism anyway.

I'm more than open to improvements, though. As I said in "Intelligent Decision Fees", Fee1 can probably take some smart improvements.

[darkmatter7]

We should explore mini-blockchain schemes toward avoiding blockchain bloat:
http://cryptonite.info/wiki/index.php?title=Mini-blockchain_scheme

I believe that blockchain bloat MAY become a problem with the branching scheme without additional technology.  I will investigate this claim more.