SUFFERING

In my last post I wrote that I would provide you with a universal moral code of my own creation. However, I feel I have to lay down its foundations first, lest you push it down with one finger.

Let me start with the master rule, the rule that underlies all other rules:

Minimize suffering for all those capable of suffering.

This rule is similar to the silver rule: do not do onto others what you would not have them do onto you. One difference with the silver rule is that the master rule clearly states suffering, which only the silver rule implicates. The silver rule could have been written thus: do not make other people suffer, because you don't want other people to make you suffer. Another difference is that the master rule does not stress the feelings of the person following the rule, because, of course, the feelings of the person upon which is acted matter too. And we cannot expect that everybody experiences everything the same.

WHAT IS SUFFERING?

The way this rule is interpreted depends very much on the definition of suffering. When I talk about suffering I don't mean the experience of "physical" pain, or nociception. Pain can cause suffering, though one can also suffer without pain. Think of what you feel when you fail a test, or when your love relationship has ended, or when a loved one dies. For this incorporeal negative feeling I will use the word aversion to avoid confusion. To suffer is to experience aversion.

Certain mutations in the SCN9A gene cause a disorder called channelopathy-associated insensitivity to pain. The pain sensors of the mutants do not send signals to the brain when tissue damage occurs. So when these people damage themselves, they fail to notice, and often continue with their auto-mutilating behaviour. Clearly nociception is useful.

Other mutations in the same gene can cause the opposite: sensing pain when there is no tissue damage. People with paroxysmal extreme pain disorder have regularly recurring episodes of burning pain typically in their eyes, their lower jaw, and their rectum, though the pain is not limited to these locations. Simply touching things may be severely painful, so it is clear that apart from the increased suffering, this condition also diminishes people's ability to sense tissue damage.

Furthermore, pain can be experienced without the incorporeal aversive feeling, a condition called pain asymbolia. It is caused by brain damage or certain drugs. In this case, the area that produces pain does not send signals to the area that creates the aversive feelings. When these people cut themselves they feel the pain, but they are not bothered by it.

So it's clear that pain and aversion are different things. The ability to sense aversion is useful in the evolutionary sense, for the same reason nociception is useful (because pain creates aversion). Aversion is our negative motivator. It is what makes us avoid things that diminish our survival and/or reproduction.

Imagine that the part that creates aversive feelings in your brain has received too little blood, and died (hypothetical situation, I don't know whether this has happened before). First, probably, you would get an incredible smile. You feel great. Nothing can break you. Suddenly, like you have pissed off lady Fortune, your partner in love gets hit by a speeding car right before your eyes. Do you cry? Does the earth crumble beneath your feet? No. You keep on smiling. Whatever happens, you will be happy. Because the part that makes you unhappy is gone. Without the ability to suffer, love does not exist. And to me love is the most valuable thing in existence. Therefore the ability to suffer is also pretty valuable to me. Not the (internal) ability to suffer is condemnable, but the (external) events that trigger suffering.

There is a movement that promotes the elimination of suffering (i.e. the ability to suffer) using biotechnology, confusingly called abolitionism, promoted by David Pearce. Obviously I cannot agree with him. If love is destroyed, what is there left to live for? Riches? Fame? Knowledge? Perfect health? When you can't suffer, you cannot emotionally attach to any of these things. Nothing that exists has any value to you. There might as well be nothing at all.

WHO SUFFERS?

The master rule could have been shorter, simply: minimize suffering. But many crimes are committed because people do not consider the feelings of other people outside their own family or gang. The addition: for all those capable of suffering, does demand an explanation. Who exactly are capable of suffering?

Some people only act morally to members within their own group (e.g. Nazis, strict Muslims). Other people apply their rules to all visible animal life (e.g. Jainists), and some even include non-living things like rocks (various shamanistic religions). It is obvious that all humans can suffer, and that no non-living thing can. But the grey area of living things that are not human?

Humans can speak about their feelings, which allows some indirect measurement of suffering. Non-human animals cannot, though of course there's no reason to assume that the inability to communicate with us reflects the inability to suffer. We cannot draw a clear line between species that can suffer and species that cannot. What we can do, is look at characteristics that greatly influence the ability to suffer.

First there's memory. When you have an extremely short memory, lasting only seconds, you do not have much ability to suffer. You might sense some aversion for a moment, and then it's gone. However, if painful memories last forever, one negative event may cause infinite suffering. Well, not literally infinite, because a creature dies at a certain moment. So life span is also important. If negative events are remembered indefinitely, then a creature that lives only 200 days can suffer much less than a creature that lives 200 years. In short, the better the memory, and the longer the life span, the stronger the ability to suffer.

Secondly, there's imagination. Memories may be accessed when encountering the thing that caused the negative experience in the first place. For example, you got attacked by geese when you were young, and experience distress each time you see a goose. But when you can imagine yourself encountering geese, you will also suffer. Or consider imagining your partner in love getting killed. That triggers suffering even though there's no suffering-inducing precedent. Therefore, the better an organism is at imagining things (that may happen in this reality), the more it is capable of suffering.

Intelligence (which includes the abilities to memorize and imagine) is correlated with brain size, but only when you compare it to the size of the body. Larger creatures have more motor neurons and sensory neurons, and so need larger brains to process all the outgoing and ingoing signals. Therefore, absolute brain size does not correlate with intelligent abilities. But if one compared the brain size for similarly big animals, one would see that those with larger brains are the smarter ones, those better at remembering and those better imagining. One can calculate the ratio between the actual brain mass, and the predicted brain mass for animals of a given size, as a strong indicator of the ability to memorize and imagine. This ratio is called the encephalization quotient (EQ). The higher the EQ, the higher the intelligent abilities, and the higher the capacity to suffer. 

So both brain size corrected for body size, and life expectancy (average life span of species) are strong indicators for the ability to suffer. Knowing these parameters, one can calculate a suffer-value. A high suffer value indicates strong ability to suffer, and a low value indicates a weak ability. When calculating this suffer-value for all animal species, one can make good decisions to minimize total suffering. Below I calculated a suffer-values using EQ and LE information from wikipedia. I used the following formula: suffer-value = EQ * EQ * LE. I decided to let the EQ count twice, because the EQ matters in both areas of memory and imagination, and life span only in memory. Note that this is only an example of how such a suffer-value could be calculated. Perhaps there are better ways.

EQ:

Human - 7,6

Bottlenose Dolphin -  4,1

Chimpanzee - 2,3

Dog - 1,2

House mouse - 0,5

Life Expectancy (LE; in protected environments):

Human - 70 years

Bottlenose Dolphin - 45 years

Chimpanzee - 55 years

Dog - 12 years

House mouse - 3 years

Example suffer-values (EQ * EQ * life expectancy; rounded to nearest integer):

Human - 4043

Bottlenose Dolphin - 756

Chimpanzee - 291

Dog - 17

House mouse -1

  

The suffer-value isn't perfect, and that's because the EQ isn't perfect. Firstly, the EQ does not account for brain surface increase by brain folding. It would be better if brain surface instead of brain mass was used in these calculations, though that is more difficult to measure. Additionally, the size of the cerebral cortex is better correlated with intelligence than the rest of the brain. Some species might have a bigger cerebellum for their size, but this makes them more dexterous and agile, not more intelligent. And when we do only use the size of the cerebrum, we cannot create an EQ for invertebrates because they don't have a cerebrum.

With these suffer-values, or with better ones created differently, one can make moral calculations. For instance, we can measure whether it is allright to use laboratory animals. From the values above it is clear that life-long suffering in multiple mice to save even one human from life-long suffering is good moral judgement. This means using laboratory animals to test cures for human diseases is usually fine (though of course suffering should be limited when possible). Less obvious is the routine use of laboratory animals to test new cosmetics, because most people do not suffer greatly from a lack of new products. Calculations can also be made when only humans are concerned. Consider for instance a situation where a Muslim fanatic is on his way to blow up a building with hundreds of people, and policemen have to decide whether or not to shoot him. Shooting him only hurts his friends, and not shooting him hurts his friends plus thousands of relatives of the people that die from the bomb explosion, and even more people out of fear for such attacks. In this case, shooting the Muslim fanatic is the right thing to do.

This last thing is important: the consequences of an action determine whether it is good or evil (consequentialism) rather than some actions being intrinsically evil, and others intrinsically good (moral absolutism). You cannot say "all killing is evil", simply because it depends on the context whether killing is good or evil. Furthermore, good and evil should also not be regarded as absolute. Torturing a house fly for 1 day is far less evil than torturing 1 human being for 10 years.

Also see the image above. Consider a system with a certain amount of beings capable of suffering. Its current suffering level is at the middle of the spectrum (it actually does not matter because we do not care about absolute amounts of suffering). By doing something that decreases the amount of suffering in the system we move to the right, indicating that we do good (red arrow in the middle). By doing something that increases the amount of suffering we move to the left, indicating that we do evil. The length of the arrow indicates how good or evil we act.

After the change of the suffering level, the new level becomes the new neutral point, as is shown in the image. This does not implicate that there is no difference between a high-suffering level or low-suffering level, or that it does not matter whether the level is high or low. No, the level of suffering in a system should be as low as possible. What I try to show with the image is that the same actions, with the same lengths of arrows, are equally good or evil, it does not matter what the current absolute suffering value is. Torturing 1 person for 10 days is equally evil in hell as it is in paradise. The image also shows that one cannot compensate for evil actions. Torturing 2 people is evil no matter how many people you save in the future (or have saved in the past). On the other hand, torturing 2 people in order to save 10 people is good.

This is all for now, in the next post I will come to the universal moral rules.

FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION

The aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks has made me realize that there are (at least) two wrong ways of dealing with freedom of expression:

1. Expressing thoughts and feelings whatever the means or consequences.

- The Kouachi brothers did not like certain drawings, and so they felt they had to kill the people who drew them.

- Certain people sent death threats to Peter R. de Vries, a famous Dutch investigative journalist, because he allegedly sympathised with the terrorist acts (he did not).

- The French comedian and idiot Dieudonné has been arrested after sympathizing with Amedy Coulibaly for shooting several Jewish people. He has also received punishments before for 'insulting people of Jewish origin'.

- Certain people are destroying mosques, or attacking random Muslims or other 'foreigners' in response to the shootings.

The first problem with this stance is hypocrisy. Either all people are allowed to express themselves (e.g. cartoonists and Muslim fundamentalists), or nobody. The second problem is that of violence. All people rather live in a system where violation of everybody's property (including their bodies) is prohibited, than a system where such violation is allowed.

2. Not expressing thoughts and feelings that may be disliked by other people.

- The moderate Muslims, and other politically correct people do not want people to picture the prophet Muhammed, or criticize any part of Islam, because people might be offended.

Usually these people are extremely hypocritical. Only certain groups have the right to be offended, others do not. But if you could make it fair - nobody is allowed to express themselves if that results in emotional disapproval - then it's still awful.

WHEN YOU CANNOT EXPRESS YOURSELF

Corruption greatly increases. When you cannot complain about how certain police officers misuse their power, they never get put to justice. Same goes for judges, and for ministers. The greater the power, the more important it is that people speak out about them.

Science ceases to exist. To criticize new or existing ideas is central to scientific progress. When criticism isn't allowed, science turns into religion. Even new ideas that complement old ones are not accepted by all, and so will not be allowed.

Art ceases to exist. Each piece of art, whether a book, or a song, or a painting, is bound to be disliked by someone. All museums, radio stations, and book stores would be closed. People would only be able to express their feelings and creativity in the secrecy of their own home.

Conflicts increase. In contrast with what the politically correct people think, limiting expression will not bring people closer together. People need to talk about their problems. When the thoughts and feelings are never vented, people will become dishonest time-bombs. And the explosion will be violent, not respectful.

CONCLUSION

Expressing your thoughts and feelings is important, and so it is obvious that everybody should have a certain degree of freedom to do so. But it is also clear that some restrictions are necessary.

It is the rest of morality that determines the boundaries of the freedom of expression. And there we have a problem, because different people follow different moral codes. In my opinion it is not hard to come up with one universal moral code, because humans (and even other non-human animals) share many characteristics that lie at the basis of happiness and suffering. In the next post I will show you my attempt to create this universal moral code.

EDUCATION FOR THE FUTURE

The Dutch government started a campaign to improve the Dutch education system: "onderwijs2032". It's a nice chance to write down some ideas that were crawling around in the back of my head, and it's also nice to know that some of them might be actually used. Or at least considered to be used.

The text below is mainly about the secondary education system VWO (preparatory scientific education), except for the last paragraph, which is about Dutch education in general.

LONGER CLASSES

In the current system, high school students get 1-hour classes and move from classroom to classroom up to 8 times a day. This is inefficient, as time is wasted by walking, installing yourself and your books at your seat, and trying to get into the right mindset. I would suggest to have only 2 subjects per day. This allows students to dig deeper into the subject, and gives teachers more freedom to switch between passive and active teaching methods.

Additionally, students usually receive an unreasonable high amount of assignments for the next day, which might be reduced with only 2 subjects per day. I have noticed that teachers overestimate the amount of time students have after school, or underestimate the time required for the assignments they give the students. Or perhaps they know it's too much, but have to give them so much in order to reach certain 'teaching' quota. Whatever the reason, the 8-fold work load causes over-working and sleep deprivation, or a lack of understanding for courses entirely revolved around doing assignments. I have noticed both happening to me and my former fellow students. For this reason I think it is valuable to only have 2 subjects each day, to reduce workload after school.

And if this isn't enough, there should be some rule limiting the mandatory home work. Children should not have to work for more than 8 hours per day on school assignments. Time after school should be reserved for people that are slow, to catch up. Working 12 hours each day should not be the baseline.

NO CULTURAL CLASSES

I do not despise culture. I am a great admirer of painted art, of stone reliefs and statues, and various music styles. And of course literature. However, I do not think that the cultural classes provided in the VWO contribute to a more cultural nation.

Musicians need to learn how to play, sure. Though this usually happens at special private musical schools, or at home, not at the high school. Visual artists are primarily trained at home, usually by themselves. And if they need outside help there is a lot of that on Youtube for free. Nevertheless, I would keep one or two classrooms available for creative purposes, for people that are short in means. In these classrooms children can try out different things, under supervision. It should not be mandatory, and after regular school hours. Apart from this there should be no more cultural courses (the Dutch names: drama, muziek, beeldende vorming, CKV, KCV). Writing stories or poetry should remain part of the language subjects, as it directly improves proficiency in those languages.

The only problem I can see is that a number of teachers will become jobless. But this cannot be a reason to continue with the time wasting classes. Instead, provide these people with government-funded re-schooling.

GYMNASTICS

Personally, I hated Gymnastics courses. I do not care one iota about soccer or basket ball or american football or whatever the sports teachers demanded us to do. Why would you need to learn these sports? There is no reason. The only reason why a sports course is valuable is because it demands physical exercise, and that is beneficial for your health. So let the children exercise, but let them choose what to do.

LANGUAGES

Dutch and English are the only languages that students need to be fluent in. Other languages like German, French, and Spanish are already a waste of time, and become increasingly wasteful. Most people either do not come into contact with foreigners, and most that do speak English with them. Some people might benefit from learning other foreign languages, sure, but one should look at the big picture. If it's a waste for most, than it's a waste. The few people that want to migrate, or study languages at the university can study a related language in their spare time.

Having said that, I do have an idea to make people generally more language-compatible. Latin and Ancient Greek are studied by a part of the students that are exceptionally good at learning, and I think learning about those languages is valuable. Only to a certain degree, though. Why are these languages handy? Firstly, because scientific terminology is usually derived from Latin or Ancient Greek in a fairly straight-forward manner. Secondly, knowledge of a mother language helps you learn daughter languages. Instead of Latin of Greek I therefore propose the class 'History of Language'. It will contain elements of Latin and Ancient Greek, but also various medieval languages that form the links between the modern languages and the classical (middle Dutch, middle English, Old Norse, Breton, Gothic, Yiddish). Also teach them about the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European language, the mother language to Latin, Ancient Greek, and Sanskrit. Make the students learn words and concepts, but do not try to make them fluent in those dead languages. The students have more important things to do.

ICT

Learning to work with computers is obvious, and many have already stated that children should also learn programming languages. I couldn't agree more. And put the focus on the internet. A great deal of our lives are already online, and that can only increase with time.

NATURE / SOCIETY

Current high school students have to decide between different profiles: culture and society, nature and health, economy and society, and nature and technique. The nature profiles are scientific, and the society profiles are less so. The people that want to become important decision makers would choose a society path, while I think that surely decision makers should have a good scientific understanding. See a RELATED POST. And I do not think that scientific people should have a reduced understanding of society. For they might also become advisors, or perhaps aspire to found a (technological) company. Furthermore, children at that age usually do not know that they want, or, because their brains are still very much developing, their desires might change in the course of some years. You should keep their options open; do not restrict them at that stage. Remove the profiles.

CLASS LIST

I propose that in the future VWO students have the following classses:

- Dutch Language

- English Language

- History of Language
- ICT

- Biology

- Chemistry

- Physics

- Mathematics

- History

- Geography

- Philosophy

I assume in this list that the 'nature' subjects: biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics are designed so that students have a clear idea about the practicability. Especially physics and mathematics can sometimes become quite 'academic', very disconnected with reality. Some courses ('Algemene natuurwetenschappen' and 'Natuur, leven en technologie') are designed to link the subjects with applications, but I do not like the idea of additional courses. With different courses you have different teachers, different classrooms, different books. Such a separate course may have been handy to test for it's usefulness. If that test succeeded, I suggest to integrate it with the main courses.

This list is compatible with the 2-course-a-day idea. Philosophy and ICT are smaller courses, as perhaps History of language is too. 8 full courses + 3 small courses = more or less 10 full courses.

NO RELIGION

Finally I want to address the obvious flaw in our education system in general: the presence of religious teachings. I wholeheartedly advocate the mandatory secularization of all religious educational institutions. It's the 21st century for goodness' sake!

Let me be clear: I want children to have free, inquiring, critical minds. These minds are the most adaptive because they are the most in touch with reality, and so these have the highest chance of succeeding in life. In general religious teachings increase susceptibility to quackery and aversion towards the scientific.

People are allowed to believe whatever they want. That's the whole point, because religious primary schools do not promote freedom of thinking in children, but limit them to the religious affiliation of their parents. Parents are also allowed to teach their children whatever they want. And are allowed to send them to the church, mosque, or whatever brainwashing place they want to send them. But please offer them some freedom, and provide secular primary education to all. Think about integration. Think about blunting of strong ideologies. When the children make contact with people outside of their parents religious circle, they will become better people. More tolerant.

Something about the law: the Dutch law is supposed to defend religious schools. I dare to disagree. The article 23 of the constitution clearly speaks about equal standards, about good education for all. Whether special or public education. The 'inspectie van het onderwijs' checks whether schools provide good education, and may punish the school when the national standard is not met. Still, religious subjects are not banned by this authority. Obviously, teaching children that angels and devils exist, or that people after their death will go to a place of fire and eternal suffering, is on equal footing with teaching them that lightning is created by a dwarven-forged hammer, that age-related death is inflicted by a bearded man with a scythe, and that newborns are delivered by storks. Yes, everybody is allowed to create an educational institutions. But that does not mean there's unlimited freedom. It never did. Religious education fails the quality criteria, and should not be allowed to exist any longer.

Secondly, article 6 of the constitution clearly demands freedom of religion, beliefs, convictions. To preserve this freedom, we cannot allow parents to send their children to a religious school. Christian parents send their children to a Christian school. Muslims send their offspring to a Islamic school. Et cetera. It's never a choice of the children. And that's because they cannot make that choice when they are 4 years old.

Finally I want to state that if it is morality you are concerned for, think about all the cases of immorality by the most religious people around. The protestant parents denying their children medical access, Catholic priests raping young boys, the civil war in Israel, the assault on the world trade centre and other locations in the western world, et cetera. These immoral acts do not exist despite the religious belief, but because of it. Morality is a subject of  philosophy and neurology. Teach children some basic elements of these scientific subjects. Give them thought games, so that moral rules are based on calculations of the children themselves, and not because the teacher says so. And show them that the world is not divided in good versus evil. And that death is not a punishment to the person that dies, but to the friends and family of that person. Things like that. Give them the tools so that they may make good moral decisions themselves in the future.

For the sake of the children I demand secularization.

BABY FROM THE LAB

 EXTRACORPOREAL PREGNANCY

Artificial Wombs

In the near future women will be delivered from the burden of pregnancy. We will grow our babies entirely in the lab, in some kind of artificial womb. We are becoming increasingly proficient at keeping premature babies alive, the earliest at 21 weeks and 5 days, as opposed to the regular 37 weeks (ref). We have already grown a number of different organs by growing (stem) cells over a scaffold. Probably the biggest problem technically is to get the dosage and timing of growth regulators exactly right. But to find out we need to overcome a bigger hurdle, which is explaining to religious people that the world is not going to end if we grow people outside of the womb.

The option of getting a child from an artificial womb, as opposed to the traditional way, has great advantages. Pregnancies are very demanding, causing all manners of severe physical discomfort and often cause ugly deformations. These are common symptoms of a pregnancy according to the wiki page: tiredness, constipation, pelvic girdle pain, back pain, Braxton Hicks contractions, edema, increased urinary frequency, urinary tract infection, varicose veins, haemorrhoids, regurgitation, heartburn, nausea, and stretch marks. And that's only the regular stuff. There is also a chance of all manners of dangerous and painful complications. In rare occasions childbirth can even lead to the death of the mother.

Incubator

For people that cannot get children through traditional means this is also a solution. Think about sterility due to genetic defects, or due to injury, or age-related disease. Or because both parents are of the same sex. Of course children can be adopted, but I would only choose adoption if the child has very recently exited the womb of the biological mother. Children that are older often have behavioural problems due to mistreatment by their previous parents, or due to the changing of parents. And sometimes the original parents try to get 'their' children back, sometimes even successfully (ref). And there's always the psychological thing about adopted children: "why did my mommy give me away? What didn't she like about me?" I think it's pretty handy if we can create children without stains or ties.

Also important is the fact that inside the artificial womb, the baby can be monitored 24/7. If anything bad happens we can respond quickly. We can design the artificial womb so that the baby is very accessible to doctors. And if the baby sustains irreversible damage, we will notice that, and can easily abort the pregnancy without spending a lot of time and money to find out at birth that the child has only half a brain. We also reduce the possibility that the mother becomes too attached to the unfinished person, and decides to keep it.

No longer will the mother's diet be a problem for the child. Normally if the mother consumes a lot of alcohol, the baby will suffer from a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which includes serious brain defects (ref). Malnutrition might also cause negative epigenetic changes in the baby (ref).

We know that the unborn child can learn things, like language basics, and taste preference. With the artificial wombs you can highly regulate what you want the child to learn. This can be done automatically, and with involvement of the parents.

If these advantages weren't enough, there are even more things that will greatly improve our future society. 

EUGENICS

Let's first get the nasty things out of the way. Eugenics has a very bad name, mainly due to practices starting in the early 1900s to 1945. People at that time had extremely simplistic ideas about heredity, and even about modern society. People thought, for instance, that criminal behaviour and poverty were both strongly genetically determined. If you just prevent criminals and poor people to reproduce, you create a 'race' with only lawful, rich people. Everybody happy, <ahem>. And don't think that the 'evil' German Nazis were the only ones involved in this. It was a common practice in the whole of the civilized world. Civilized indeed. People that were thought to carry genes that benefited society were encouraged to reproduce, and people with 'bad blood' were discouraged (this sometimes included sterilization, incarceration, or murder). 

Transhumanism Logo

The principle of eugenics, the belief and practice of improving the human species genetically, is not per definition bad. If you made people more intelligent and rational, you would prevent a lot of conflicts. Technological improvements will also go much faster, allowing for a generally higher standard of living. The bad aspect of traditional eugenics is allowing some people to have children, and others not. But with artificial production of children, we can improve the genetics of our species, ànd allow people with defects to have children. For being a parent is not sharing half of your DNA with your child. Being a parent is to provide resources (food, shelter), to teach it to deal with the world, and -most importantly- to show it your love. The degree of genetic similarity between parent and child does not matter.

I certainly do not advocate sterilization of certain people that happen to have genetic defects. No, that would be unfair (they are punished without having committed a crime) and unequal (people ought to have equal rights).

When we have created human artificial breeding centres around the world, we ought to sterilize all human beings.

GENOME BUILDING

Scientists are able to synthesize chromosomes artificially, though it's difficult to create long chromosomes like those of humans. I expect a quick evolution of DNA synthesizing techniques, because it's so useful for molecular biologists. Think about how fast sequencing techniques have changed. When synthesizing large chromosomes becomes commonplace, genetic manipulation will be so much faster and easier.

Human Chromosomes

Each human being has two sets of chromosomes in their somatic cells, and therefore two copies of each (autosomal) gene. These copies are called alleles, and are rarely completely the same. One human being only has two (different) alleles of a specific gene, but in a population many different alleles exist. Differences between alleles may have (almost) no effect on a person's phenotype. Some alleles, however, have a significant negative effect. If there's an error in a critical component of a gene's promoter, the protein might not be produced. Changes in the coding region might alter the shape of the gene product into a dysfunctional protein, or even a highly toxic one. Variants that improve the functioning of a gene are also possible. For example, the allele CCR5-Δ32 provides 100% protection against HIV-1. Some MSTN alleles strongly increase muscularity, and consequently increase physical strength.

Sorting out all variants of all genes is an extremely laborious task. We possess about 25.000 (protein-coding) genes, and hundreds or thousands of alleles can exist per gene. Some differences between alleles may not matter, but some do. Therefore we need a good computer with software that chooses among alleles, and assembles the genomes.

Some alleles give 100% chance of a specific disease. Such alleles need to be absent from all artificial genomes. However, most alleles will only provide a certain chance of getting a certain disease (or certain benefits). For example, oncogenes increase the likelihood of getting cancer. Cancer requires X specific mutations in one particular cell, but with 1 oncogene that number becomes X-1. Other alleles may even be less clearly associated with a disease, just because we do not yet know all the details of every process in our bodies. That's why we need the program to work with chances of 'inheritance'.

Piece of genetic code

We can study a group of humans with the same disease and a group of otherwise similar humans without that disease, and inspect the genetic code. One particular variation in a gene might be present in 80% of those diseased people, and in 30% of non-diseased people. If this difference is significant, the computer should decrease the chance of selecting that particular allele. But because it's not 100%/ 0%, that chance should not be 0. That's because a correlation is not the same as a causal relation. And we do not want to remove all variability from our genomes. We wouldn't want to create identical clones.

Studies for positive traits can be performed too. You can do IQ tests, for instance, and link the result of those tests to the genetic variation. The higher the linkage between a particular sequence and a positive result on the test, the higher the chance should be of getting that piece into the artificial genome.

After we have tested lots of people for all manners of traits, we will probably find that some alleles have a positive effect on one trait, and a negative effect on another. We need to provide some mechanism for the computer to choose which trait is preferred over which other. For this I can imagine we give our future parents a questionnaire with questions about their future child. Each question compares two traits, and the parents have to decide which they deem more important. When they're done we can give that information to the computer, and the computer can do its magic.

Perhaps we can even allow a neutral option, which the computer interprets as choosing the one or the other at random.


BIRTH CONTROL

Did I mention mandatory sterilization somewhere? Yes I did. Well, in the first of the solutions you do have two options. You either choose to get medical care from your government with sterilization, or no sterilization and no medical care. That'll make most of the people enthusiastic about sterilization :P. Or perhaps not. It'll only work in developed, western countries. And only when you've educated the people about it. And when the choice has been made democratically. Especially Islamic countries will be strongly opposed no matter what you'll tell them. Every time you produce a vaccine against some dreadful disease for free, ignorant Muslims see it as part of some grand conspiracy by Amereeka and other nations to sterilize them. Perhaps it's better if we design a virus that sterilizes everybody. The 'pathogen' spreads, all will get mild flu-like symptoms, and only after a while will they find out that they cannot get kids anymore.

Of course, we should only do this when we already have birth centres around the world. And when the world is ready for such an intervention. We do not want to cause a third world war, or create total anarchy.

Oh, God why on earth do you want to sterilize everybody? Are you thinking this? Well, the answer is that I think it's very beneficial to society, and the individual, that the size of the population is highly controlled. Big fluctuations cause problems with supply and demand. If  the population size shrinks, there aren't enough teachers, and doctors, etc. If the population explodes, society suffers from unemployment and resource shortages. If the population size is constant, or if the growth rate is constant,  we can much better anticipate what the resource demand and worker supply is going to be. We can adjust the number of houses we build, and we can provide better vocational counselling.

There are other advantages too. Crime often stems from some trauma during childhood. Raising a child is very important and should not be taken lightly. Therefore, I propose we get mandatory parenting courses. The first course and exam are free. If you fail the exam, you have to pay for subsequent courses and exams. This will prevent some accidents for uneducated but otherwise good parents, and prevents bad people from abusing their children. Not only should we get tests, we also should check whether the parents can support their children. Do they have a job? Own a house? If either of these questions is 'no', they should not be allowed to get a child until they do. Again, this is to ensure child welfare. Thirdly, we should check for their criminal background. Some past offences like (child) rape and murder are not very compatible with proper parenting, in my opinion. Such people are also excluded.

Of course I'm not saying we will prevent all child-abuse this way. But it will help a lot. I do want that the procedure is standardized, and all decisions accessible, so that we don't create powerful bureaucrats.


FINAL REMARKS

First, I want to say that without the sterilization part, the artificial human breeding is still a good idea. We'll get healthier and smarter people, which is a big thing already. And with proper education human population growth is already reduced a lot. And before we can control human population growth, we need societies that are designed to minimize corruption. Baby breeding should not become a big money-making business. The current world is not ready for it yet.

TECHNOCRATIC DEMOCRACY

Today I wanted to expand on the idea of mine for a new political system. I want to emphasize the ruling power this time.

I believe that knowledgeable, problem-solving people should rule a country. The minister of health should have studied medicine. The minister of economics should have a master's degree in the economic field, at least. The minister of foreign affairs might be a doctor in history, having studied international relations. Politicians don't have to be good at talking, but at solving problems. That's something the Romans got wrong, but we're still using a system heavily based on theirs. My system reduces the focus on eloquence because political parties are not directly selected. We need to select for good ideas, not good one-liners.

To recapitulate previous political posts, in my system, people first select 10 statements they find actual and important, from a list of statements provided by the parties that want to participate in the elections. Those 10 that are deemed most important by the public are used in the actual elections, where people choose 'AGREE', 'DISAGREE', or 'INDIFFERENT' for each of the 10 statements. The political parties officially list their opinions on those statements beforehand (also agree/disagree/indifferent), and the people's result is compared with the results of the political parties, resulting in many votes for parties that share the opinion of the public, and a small amount of votes for the parties with fringe views.

Each political party is supposed to provide experts for the political positions they have won during the elections. They can choose anyone that has the right qualifications. Experts from different parties, but in the same department can have valuable discussions on matters within their expertise. This ensures that the government is not only democratic, but also wise. Discussions between wise people are valuable. Discussions between ignorant people often miss the point. Uninformed people tend to be much stronger attached to a certain (simplistic) political ideal, and tend to be very chauvinistic. They want to win, or to make the other lose, instead of realizing that it's not about winning or losing, but about improving the nation, or even the world.

For example, many (ignorant) environmentalist politicians are against nuclear energy. Sure, nuclear reactors produce dangerous waste that 'decays' very slowly. But we can store this safely underground, with no ill effects whatsoever. With proper maintenance, nuclear reactors are also very safe. Burning fossil fuels is causing big problems, and needs to be stopped as soon as possible. We can replace coal plants by solar panels and wind turbines, but to get a stable and reliable supply, we also need something like nuclear power plants. So environmentalists should actually be in favor of nuclear energy, not against it. They aren't because they are fundamentally opposed to nuclear power, instead of determining what is best for the environment.

Another example is foreign aid. Many (ignorant) socialists are very much in favor of sending as much resources to foreign countries to help people in need. The foundation of my morality is that suffering is bad. So trying to reduce the suffering of humans anywhere is a good thing. In general. But specific aid projects might actually increase suffering. Consider the following example calculation. 

There's a tribe with 1000 people. These people can only produce food for 1000 people. After reproduction there are 2000 people, so 1000 people will die of food shortage. If you give these people food for 1000 more people, the people will first experience a complete reduction of starvation. The 2000 people can now all reproduce, resulting in 4000 people. However, after the aid they still only produce food for 1000 people, causing 3000 people to die of starvation. So you spent a lot of money on food, and the end result is 3 times more suffering.

The problem with such an aid project is that the politicians did not see the underlying problem. The tribe did not have a food shortage. It has a problem scaling up the food production methods. Or perhaps there are too many criminals stealing from farmers. And obviously there's also problem in birth control. Those problems need to be dealt with. The same thing is sending aid to people in Syria. By sending such aid you prolong the war, and prolong suffering. Blocking weapons trade to that country (whether the dictatorial government or the terrorist rebellions) should be the first thing on the list. But no. Stopping arms trade does not make them fuzzy inside as giving food and medical supplies does.

Such decisions are made by either short-sighted and ignorant people, or people that do not care about how the money is being spent, because they are not held responsible for their actions. Both areas should improve. We should have more experts in the governments, and we should always hold the individual members of a government responsible for their own actions. It should always be very clear who signed what.

Why can't we just select the best experts for the positions available? Why go through the trouble of selecting parties first? Let me answer that question with a question: who selects the experts? Those selectors need also be selected. You can't just appoint one random person to select the experts. That puts far too much power in the hands of that person. Or even if it's one office or agency. But by allowing the different parties to select the experts themselves, you get a democratic, mixed set of experts.

We do need some rules to make sure that the parties don't hire idiots or laymen. We do need experts. So we might require them to possess doctor degrees, and relevant working experience. Perhaps the candidate has authored a number of scientific papers. If this selection procedure is both standardized and transparent not much corruption is possible in this step. Because each party selects its own experts, the effect of altering the selection procedure in favor of some private benefit is severely reduced.

Past achievements are great, but a scientific job is not the same as a political job. So the executive politicians should be checked by each other, which is possible because they are from different parties. Motions of no confidence can be used to remove politicians that are not doing their job correctly. But the people can also be involved. If you make the decision making process as transparent as possible, and organize a platform where people can comment on those decisions, it would make the system even more democratic. Governments should have their own internet forum, and people should log on using their digital ID (so it's not anonymous). This prevents trolling and spamming, and makes it possible to use people's input to assist in policy-making (even if only slightly).

Such a platform could be great not only for criticizing current policy, but also for people to feel more connected to the government, to learn more about important political matters, and perhaps to generate new ideas. On the idea section of the government forum people could 'like' / '+' good ideas and comment on them to make them better. The endorsement will have to be publicly viewable, so that people are less inclined to randomly endorse things.

Less performers, and more brains. Politicians that talk and talk and talk and talk are not valuable. Politicians that throw shoes are not valuable. Instead of insulting each other when there's a problem, or having endless yes-no arguments, they should acquire evidence to prove their point. They should work like scientists. Not like actors. They should work together to solve apparent problems. Not to prove their points or to forward some impossible utopia. We should build ourselves a technocratic democracy.

ELECTIONS PART 2

My second post about politics, following up on the idea of a new elections system. Click HERE to read the first article. I want to address some potential problems related to the new system, and explain some of the details better.

 DEFINING STATEMENTS

I mentioned in the previous article that before the pre-elections, each party must write down 10 statements that basically define their political program. Statements should always be executable. "Soft drugs are bad for your health" is not a good statement because it isn't executable. "Possession of soft drugs should be made punishable" is a good statement. The (properly worded) statements are then combined into one list, which is used in the pre-elections. In the pre-elections everybody chooses 10 statements that they think are the most actual and important.

Most problematic is the list that is created and used in the pre-elections. One issue is that one subject will be represented by multiple statements. It can be expected that the more important a subject is, the more statements enter the list. Votes could be spread among statements on the same subject, in a way that would make those subjects seem less important. Perhaps enough not to be selected for the final elections. See the next example:

Assume that there are only 2 statements, and 1600 people voting.

Statement 1: "the government should invest more in renewable energy sources"

Statement 2: "soft drugs should be completely legalized"

Assume that statement 1 is more important, and that the voting result will be:

Statement 1: 1000 votes

Statement 2: 600 votes

Now assume that there are 3 statements, 2 of them are very similar. The rest is the same.

Statement 1 "the government should invest more in renewable energy sources"

Statement 2 "subsidization of renewable energy should increase"

Statement 3 "soft drugs should be completely legalized"

The result could now be:

Statement 1: 550 votes

Statement 2: 450 votes

Statement 3: 600 votes. 

Apart from a 'spreading effect', it is also possible that the first subject is so important that the 2 statements about 1 subject will 'steal' all the votes away from the second subject. Because people will be able to choose 10 actual, important statements, it is possible that they choose multiple on the same subject. I don't think this is what we want. We want to know the opinion of the public on as many of subjects as possible, so we cannot keep multiple statements on the same subject if they are too much alike.

Statements that are 100% the same can be combined automatically, but other statements must be combined by hand. Preferably a team of politics experts is assembled by the incumbent government. First the team removes all statements that are not executable. Probably none of the statements are wrongly formulated, as parties want to have the most influence. Secondly the team combines all statements that are about the same thing. The trick is to make a new statement that incorporates all elements of those statements, without being too vague. Additionally, the new statements should be formulated as yes/no questions, to make them more neutral. Instead of "the government should legalize this" it should be "should the government legalize this?" If you do not formulate it as a question, people that are opposed to the statement will not be willing to choose it (I think), even though they are only choosing it so that they can later express their opinion on it. Both the original list and the adjusted list should be made public. On the original list there should be 10*X statements, where the X is the amount of parties. After the adjustments by the team there are most likely much less statements, presumably 20-50 (my guess). There should be an option for the eligible parties to file complaints if they think the list is not acceptable. Perhaps the team can be replaced if the majority of the parties thinks that the team is not impartial.

RISE OF THE UNDERDOG

When you no longer vote for parties, popularity no longer matters (that much). In the current system popular parties will get more votes than the other parties simply because they are already popular. In the new system, smaller, less popular parties will have a higher chance of getting into the government than with the current system, if their opinions are shared by the general public. I suppose that this is good, as I (and I assume more people) want politics to be about good decisions, not good looks.

On the other hand, the current voting system serves as a mechanism to punish parties that do not do what the public wants. But if you do not vote for parties, each party with popular opinions will get votes each time. Of course, we do have a way to punish those that do their job badly. Any member of the house of representatives can file a motion of no confidence to a minister that failed at his job. If the majority of the house agrees, the subject is encouraged to resign. Perhaps also such a system could be constructed to allow the general public to show their lack of confidence in the government. If the majority of the electorate wants a minister, or perhaps the entire government, to resign, they should be able to force them. Everybody could use his or her digital identity to log on to the governmental website that has the option to vote for nonconfidence in a minister or in the entire government. At any time. Of course there have to be moments for counting and resetting the counter, which could be every 3 months, or perhaps every year. If such a thing occurred, it should trigger new elections.

EXAMPLE CALCULATION

Finally, I want to give you an example of how party members get their seats in the house of representatives through the new voting system. I will skip the process of the pre-elections now, and assume that there are 3 statements/questions chosen (normally this would be 10 questions).

These are the fictional results after a voting by 3500 people:
Question 1: 900 yes, 2000 no, 600 indifferent

Question 2: 300 yes, 2800 no, 400 indifferent
Question 3: 2200 yes, 1100 no, 200 indifferent

These are the opinions of the 3 parties which they have officially written down before the election. The number after that is how many votes they got, based on the voting result above.

Party 1: indifferent, yes, yes = 600 + 300 + 2200 = 3100
Party 2: yes, yes, no = 900 + 300 + 1100 = 2300
Party 3: no, no, no = 2000 + 2800 + 1100 = 5900

The number of seats in the house of representatives = total number of votes of all parties combined / 150 = 11300/150. The number of seats per party = number of votes/ (11300/150)

Party 1 will receive 41 seats
Party 2 will receive 30 seats

Party 3 will receive 78 seats

1 seat remains because of rounding, and will be allocated normally:
3100/42=73,81
2300/31=74,19
5900/79=74,68 -> highest average

Final result:

Party 3: 79 seats
Party 1: 41 seats
Party 2: 30 seats

Party 3 has enough votes to form the coalition on its own. Party 1 and 2 will form the opposition.

What do you think? Are you convinced by my idea? If not, why? Help improve the system. Democracy must be actively maintained, and our democracy can certainly be improved. We can increase freedom and justice in our world through reason. 

REASON IS PROGRESS

FUNDING RESEARCH

The need to find an academic job position has made me more critical of the system that finances research in the Netherlands. Because of the financial crisis, jobs are bound to be scarce. The low amount of funds limits the selection of available research projects to those of top priority only. Excellent research with most benefits to Dutch citizens and the world in general. Well, that's how it should be.

Certainly much is asked of the graduates, often very specific experience is required. Even though such techniques and protocols are easily picked up by people with related experience. Such positions are called 'studentships' for a reason. But ok, if you have hundreds of applicants, you can and should choose the ones that match the best with the position. I suppose I would have done the same thing.

I do not doubt the skills of the researchers, I'm sure that excellent research is conducted in most cases. But I am convinced that a lot of projects miss the focus that make them truly useful.

What research do you think is useful? It is a good question to ask, since it is your money that is being spent. Most of the money for research comes from tax and from charity funds. I think it is only fair that research projects should aim to do something in return for the people. Most people agree medical research is useful, especially research on common diseases like cancer. Physics and mathematics pave the way for future technologies. And many people are interested in answers to big questions like "what is everything composed of?" and "how did the universe came to be?". Of course, there are also practical technological projects that result more directly in tangible technological advancements. Of economic research I cannot say much, because I haven't read much about it. Though I think the way economists predicted and solved the economic crisis speaks for itself. On the other hand, it might be that the field of economics is on the verge of changing from divination to science. The field of history is useful I think, in general. Historical research does not lead to new technologies, but we certainly can learn from the past. Wise men learn from other people's mistakes. The only field of 'research' that I consider utterly useless is the field of theology. Theology is just plain hogwash and poppycock. To name it a science is an insult. Religion has nothing to do with science. Religion is antiscience.

Theology is not the subject of this rant. While every cent spent on it is utterly wasted, it is not the big sink of most funding money. Much more money is wasted in the field of medicine. I will explain this using two examples of research projects. The first is a project that touches both the fields of history and medicine (1). It is about the role of family in survival since 1812. The aim of the project is to find both genetic and socio-economic factors that play a role in early child deaths, and exceptional longevity. Maybe you will think that this is valuable. That this might help reduce child deaths, and extend our lives. But then you would be quite naive.

Firstly, we cannot be sure of all factors that influence longevity, because only a small fraction of it is documented. We know where people lived and when they died. We might find out what jobs they had, and for isolated cases what diseases they suffered from. But we do not know the exact diet of all the studied individuals. We do not know about accidents, infections, poisoning. Because we do not know the details we cannot distinguish between effects of the environment and of the genes, both are expected to be similar for individuals of the same family. Conversely, family members are not clones, and only some members might suffer from rare diseases when two defective recessive alleles of the same locus happen to converge. New mutations can also occur and can also die out quickly if they are detrimental enough. Correlations that are made will not be very valuable, because of so many unknown factors. Because these factors are not accounted for, randomness increases, plausibly removing the possibility of making correlations at all. Secondly, we know what kills people. I think you agree that if correlations arise between short lifespan and a polluting factory, or the presence of some infection, it will be hardly surprising. Perhaps you are not so sure about ageing, but I can tell you that it is not some vague, unknown process. A magical drain of energy that culminates in the appearance of the grim reaper happens only in fairy stories. In real life, our bodies get damaged in multiple ways, which appears as well known diseases: atherosclerosis, alzheimers, cancer, various heart diseases, susceptibility to infections, etc. When the body sustains too much damage it dies. There are two positions on this project for a period of four years, so probably about 400.000 euros are transmutated into vague correlations that at most tell us what we already know. Nowadays ageing is popular, which is definitely a good thing, but the projects that aim to investigate it are poorly designed.

The second example is a project aimed at understanding the development of a certain disease that has its origin in defective mitochondria (which are the power plants of the cell) (2). It is an example of many current research projects, where the development rather than the source of the pathology is the subject of the research. In this particular case, the mitochondrial genes ought to be the subject of the research. The mitochondria are like small cells within the cell (they were once bacteria), and possess their own DNA. The main DNA of the cell is located in a protective shelter called the nucleus, protected from damaging molecules. The mitochondrial DNA is at the worst place that DNA could be, at the position where damaging molecules are produced. Therefore it tends to accumulate mutations much more quickly than the DNA in the nucleus. If we could transfer this DNA to the nucleus, it will both solve problems caused by current mutations, and prevent accumulation of new mutations. There is some work to be done in recoding the genes so that they function from out of the nucleus, but that's where such research projects are for. The transfer of the recoded mitochondrial genes to the nucleus will be both a cure for people that suffer from mitochondrial diseases, and a preventive measure to counter future mitochondrial problems. If you want to read more about this, you should visit this website (3).

We shouldn't want to find out every detail of every disease, but rather focus on curing those diseases. If a computer's RAM gets damaged, we should not investigate how exactly the operating system (OS) gets corrupted when you continue to use the computer. How exactly one error will lead to another, what all the possible routes towards a complete defective OS are. We simply replace the damaged RAM module. And if it is necessary replace damaged parts of the OS, or reinstall the OS altogether. All this research into the exact development of the diseases will not help cure the diseases, but will actually help the diseases survive. Such distracting research 'steals' funding away from really important research that is neccessary for curing important diseases.

If we want to remove important age-related diseases like cancer and alzheimers, we truly need to focus on curing diseases rather than simply discovering things. Currently, that focus is lacking in many labs.

References:

1: https://www.academictransfer.com/employer/RUN/vacancy/22055/lang/nl/

2: https://www.academictransfer.com/employer/UMCR/vacancy/17698/lang/en/

3: http://sens.org/research/introduction-to-sens-research/mitochondrial-mutations

ELECTIONS

Today local elections in the Netherlands. And I'm voting blank.

I don't think that the Dutch elections system is much worse than of other countries, I suppose other countries have similar systems. At least we do not have only 2 parties to choose from like in the US. In these local elections I can choose among 6, and in the national elections usually between 10 and 20. I have never voted for the same party more than once, because every time I compared the parties' actualized viewpoints, a different party emerged as being the least unlike me. This is not a coincidence.

Imagine that there are 10 important issues about which the political parties have different opinions. Let's say that these issues are defined as clear statements, and that there can be 3 possible opinions per issue. You either support the statement, oppose the statement, or are indifferent to the statement. This means that there are 3^10=59049 combinations. No system based on choosing political parties will ever support so many views, because the amount of parties will be at least a few thousand times smaller.

In the current system most people do not choose parties because of their specific plans and opinions. Most people choose a party because of the general flavor/ political color of the party, and support that party like football hooligans support their team. Or perhaps they support a politician that's charismatic and eloquent. Never mind the rationality behind his ideas, sometimes there is none. What matters is how good he is at selling his story. The fact that we still have religious parties indicates that rationality does not matter. Only (stupid) popularity.

We could have a different system where you choose agree/disagree/indifferent on 10 important statements. Think of it as a referendum as a way to elect parties. Beforehand, the parties should determine their view on those 10 important issues. They cannot change this later. If the opinion of the public agrees with the opinion of the parties, then they receive points for this. For example, if the party agrees on statement 1, and many people also agree with statement 1, that party will receive a lot of points. If few people agree, that party will receive a low amount of points. The amount of points will be used in a similar manner to votes in determining which party gets into the house of  representatives. Not only will the results of the voting be used to determine the winning parties, the results can also be used as a political guide for the government. I don't think the results should be binding, because people do not always know what is best for them. However, the politicians should always try to make most use out of this information, and through the media pressure can be put on those that do not listen to the people enough.

In the Netherlands we have a digital identity (digid), which is used to log in on government websites. Instead of using pencil and paper to vote, and counting the votes manually afterwards, we could use a computer program. The program will ensure that only once a single identity can vote, and will calculate the results automatically. In this way, voting becomes much easier and cheaper. Additionally, during the reign of the elected government, the government can ask people from time to time to vote for particular issues, if they want to know the public opinion. This exists in the form of small surveys, but such subsets of the population do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the whole population.

When people no longer vote for parties, the parties no longer have to advertise so much. Again, this will save a lot of money, and will keep the streets much cleaner. Posters and fliers are purely pollution if you ask me, considering that most of this stuff is not removed by the members of the party after the elections. I never understood what the parties could gain with all of those posters and fliers. They contain no information at all, they only show the party name, and some vague slogan, or the face of a party member. Instead of wasteful advertisement, people could be informed by the ministry of education, culture and science about the 10 issues, so that the people can make deliberate choices. Perhaps a single booklet that is sent to all households in the Netherlands, and a television program on a national channel that most will see.

The only real problem with this new system, is that a neutral party should determine the 10 statements. But of course, nobody is truly neutral. And the most neutral people will have no proof of being that neutral. I think pre-elections can solve this problem. Every political party that is going to participate in elections can write down 10 important statements. All of these statements are combined into one list, from which every voter chooses the 10 most important during the pre-elections. The order of the statements should be randomized for every person, so that the order does not affect the outcome. Such pre-elections can be easily held using the digital ID system online. The outcome of the pre-elections will be 10 statements that are used in the actual elections.

At this point, I don't see any major problem with this system, apart from the fact that some people do not have computers or are not familiar with using them. For these people special voting computers could be used, or perhaps even the old pencil and paper voting method. If it is only a small subset of the population, I think it is feasible. The time every person spends on voting will be longer, but the amount of people coming to these booths will be much lower. When this new system is incorporated (if at all), there won't be many people that do not know how to use a computer.

It is a big step to change the elections system like this, so intermediate steps are desirable. One possibility is to let people vote on statements using their digital ID, but not use these results in the elections. The results can then be used as guide only. Another possibility is to hold small scale (local) trial-elections, and scale up if the system seems to work.

If we truly want democracy, we cannot continue to vote for representatives alone. We need to vote on actual important issues, so that the government can see what the public wants, and can act accordingly. Otherwise it will always remain a polarized battle of political football teams.