[HN Gopher] A UK college student explaining congressional proced...
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A UK college student explaining congressional procedure to
Washington
Author : andytratt
Score : 178 points
Date : 2024-03-08 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.politico.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.politico.com)
| dakial1 wrote:
| Awesome to see this kind of use for the internet. People who are
| really passionate of a subject and can help educate other people
| on it. And if you think about it, this is what the internet,
| reddit, Twitter etc were at the beginning and this is what HN is
| today (hoping the barbarians don't reach us)
| tetris11 wrote:
| It's not barbarians, its just sheer quantity. We are all snot-
| nosed loud and unexperienced brats in at least one topic, don't
| forget that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you want to just stop at one, or the minimum, well, I
| guess that's fine. But some prefer to express themselves with
| more than the minimum. Do you want to just do the minimum?
| dylan604 wrote:
| > And if you think about it, this is what the internet, reddit,
| Twitter etc were at the beginning
|
| I would agree with you if you stopped at internet. By the time
| reddit and twitter came around, we'd already seen the trend of
| where things were going. they just took the knob and turned
| them to 11
| anotherhue wrote:
| What an incredible skill, I hope he can find a way to put it to
| use, versus getting lost in the mire of early career corporate
| climbing.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| In 5 years this will be an LLM bot. But since it's been going a
| while we can't claim that.
| darth_avocado wrote:
| I am willing to bet that this already is an AI model. A recall
| of less than a min with proof is not humanely possible.
| MarkusQ wrote:
| Two words for you: Jon Skeet.
| https://stackoverflow.blog/2018/01/15/thanks-million-jon-
| ske...
| dylan604 wrote:
| I find it kind of sad for you that you have not yet met a
| savant. Spending time with someone that has more than
| encyclopedic knowledge is very interesting, and even
| sometimes creepy. But that can be said about any super human
| ability regardless of the form it takes.
| sublinear wrote:
| We finally found a category of use cases for LLMs that have
| strong user acceptance: wading through endless bureaucracy.
|
| Even the impact of hallucination is minimal because the humans do
| that all the time!
| dmd wrote:
| What does this have to do with LLMs?
| azemetre wrote:
| IME LLMs are decent at summarizing text, I can see how it can
| help summarize various processes that must be done. I am
| unsure how it summarizes truly novel things tho, I would
| assume it might hallucinate more but haven't experimented
| much.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised to see an account that used an LLM to
| do this very thing for any concept
| the8472 wrote:
| Their bureaucracy-navigators will be no match for our
| bureaucracy-generators.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's my prediction. I have fed some extremely tedious
| enterprise contracts into ChatGPT and got a nice summary and
| answers for my questions. It wasn't perfect but with some
| tuning I think this will work really well.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| This Twitter account, and the DC scene reaction to it, is
| actually a condemnation of our current state of American national
| politics and government.
|
| People are acting like this guy is some sort of savant. But we're
| talking about knowledge that a 20 year old UK college student
| picked up in his spare time by watching TV and reading a few
| books. It's not rocket science! Congressional procedure is not
| even remotely as complex as what you need to know to build an
| average office building, something that is being done all over
| the U.S. every day to a very high level of competence.
|
| The commentary on this Twitter account (including this article)
| says way more about the people commenting on it. Specifically it
| reveals how few national politicians, consultants, staffers,
| reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-seeming work like reading
| a procedural manual and some history. All of which is freely
| available to anyone.
| namdnay wrote:
| No one ever got elected to higher office for putting their head
| down and doing a good job
|
| It's kind of similar to office politics in a way, you have to
| spend most of your effort on visibility
| boznz wrote:
| ..and for every person who does put their head down and do a
| good job, there is a politician behind them taking the
| credit.
| slyall wrote:
| Some politicians will know a lot more about procedure.
| Especially if they want to go for a leadership position.
|
| People like Lyndon Johnson knew Senate rules backward. If you
| could win or lose a critical vote based on some obscure rule
| last used 30 years ago it was worth learning them.
| astrea wrote:
| I agree, it's quite the scathing indictment. This is nothing to
| be proud or excited about. Unfortunately, if there's one thing
| politicians lack, it's shame. Also, what does that say about
| Georgetown's program?
| mistermann wrote:
| > Specifically it reveals how few national politicians,
| consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-
| seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some history.
|
| I think Hanlon's Razor is thrown around far too casually in
| this era/culture....I find it very hard to believe that all of
| this is mere accidental incompetence.
| romwell wrote:
| > _People are acting like this guy is some sort of savant._
|
| And we have an extensive record that shows that _he is_ one.
|
| > _Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex as
| what you need to know to build an average office building_
|
| [Citation needed].
|
| Unless you're both a congressman and a construction worker,
| this is just an unqualified (i.e., worthless) opinion.
|
| In contrast, the opinion that this guy is some sort of savant
| is that of professional staff on the Hill (named in the
| article), and is, by definition, qualified.
|
| > _But we 're talking about knowledge that a 20 year old UK
| college student picked up in his spare time by watching TV and
| reading a few books_
|
| You just described every historian which learns from primary
| sources.
|
| And "watching TV" is a very peculiar way to describe "watching
| live broadcasts of Congressional hearings and pouring through
| the archives".
|
| > _Specifically it reveals how few national politicians,
| consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-
| seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some
| history._
|
| "I refuse to acknowledge that a 20 year old can be exceptional,
| so I baselessly assert that literally everyone in the field
| must be stupid and inept instead"
|
| > _The commentary on this Twitter account (including this
| article) says way more about the people commenting on it._
|
| Indeed it does. And to a larger extent than you seem to be
| aware of.
| pdonis wrote:
| _> the opinion that this guy is some sort of savant is that
| of professional staff on the Hill (named in the article), and
| is, by definition, qualified._
|
| "Qualified" based on their personal experience with what is
| apparently common practice for Congress and its staffers,
| yes. But that just means that the common practice for
| Congress and its staffers involves an appalling level of
| ignorance about the rules and procedures of the very
| institution they are working for.
|
| To run with the construction analogy, it's as if a bunch of
| structural engineers were calling a college student on
| Twitter who isn't even majoring in engineering a "savant" for
| having and sharing detailed knowledge of how to do load
| calculations to determine what size I-beams are required for
| a bridge or a building, based on reading the reference works
| that describe the details of those calculations. Yes, it
| would be impressive that a college student not majoring in
| engineering could gain such a detailed knowledge of
| structural engineering calculations in their spare time. But
| it would emphatically _not_ be impressive for the people who
| are supposed to already _have_ all that knowledge to be
| calling the college student a "savant".
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| > > Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex
| as what you need to know to build an average office building
|
| > [Citation needed].
|
| We can just compare the books, per the article the
| Congressional procedures are 1000 pages and the International
| Building code is 832 pages
| https://shop.iccsafe.org/2021-international-building-
| coder.h.... So at first glance building seems easier. But
| then when you crack it open, you also need to read up on gas,
| mechanical, plumbing, fire, and energy efficiency, so there
| is an extra 200+186+270+692+302=1650 pages. So I think it is
| true - a Congressperson only needs one book, but to build an
| office building you need 6 books (and probably 6 people, each
| specialized in a book). Now building a residential house,
| that is the IRC which is roughly comparable in page count to
| Congress, and you do see house flipping businesses run by a
| single well-versed entrepreneur.
| vr46 wrote:
| As a fellow Brit with an American Studies degree, I follow US
| news and events to this day with a detached eye that really
| helps understand it, which I cannot possibly do with the UK, at
| least not politics, and having formally studied US history,
| culture, politics, foreign policy, means I know more about it
| than any of my American friends - so far - and I expect the
| converse to be true about Americans studying the UK.
|
| This guy, however, is un-fucking-believable, because he's doing
| this for FUN and he possesses an amazing power that few people
| have - TO READ THE FINE MANUAL.
|
| Simply awesome.
| ttepasse wrote:
| It's fascinating how distance encourages both absurd
| curiosity ("How does that work?") and some form of detachment
| ("At least it isn't personal to me.").
|
| As a German I started following British politics in the
| Brexit years, first for the fun of an utterly funny
| parliamentary culture ("ORDAAAAH!") - then a few months later
| I found myself looking into Erskine May. But I'll be never on
| that guys level, too easily satisfied after a small-ish dose
| of something different.
| chatmasta wrote:
| I'm American in the UK for the past seven years, and this
| resonates with me. It's nice to be outside the daily fray
| and constant social commentary in the US, but still have
| the ability to watch and participate when I feel like it.
| The funny thing is, I don't care about UK politics at
| all... I enjoy learning the procedures but I don't follow
| the drama.
|
| Another point from the article that resonated with me:
|
| > Another advantage of his geographic distance: Congress
| generally gavels in around 10 a.m., perfect timing for
| Surdy, whose classes are just coming to an end at 3 p.m. in
| the UK.
|
| I absolutely love the UK timezone. It's my favorite part
| about living here. I work remotely for a global company,
| and by sitting in the UK, I get significant overlap with
| people from California all the way through Japan. It's
| particularly nice for me as a night owl, because I don't
| mind evening meetings and chats. But I would hate to wake
| up at 530am like some on the West coast need to do.
|
| Sometimes living in the UK really feels like having a head
| start on the US... I like to say that I'm geographically
| GMT, but biologically EST :)
| nostrademons wrote:
| I've noticed this in a lot of fields. The people best at
| making money are often those who have no emotional
| attachment to it, and treat it just like a number to be
| maximized. Oftentimes the best surgeons are the ones who
| don't really care about patients as people (witness the Dr.
| House trope, or McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy) but rather as
| bodies to be patched up.
|
| Personally I think my big-company employer is deeply
| dysfunctional, but I (unfortunately) seem to be relatively
| good at operating within it, wracking up launches and
| promos for myself and my team. I suspect this is because I
| don't try to pretend it's something that it's not: I _know_
| that I 'm in a fucked up system and nothing I do has any
| meaning long-term and don't pretend otherwise, which lets
| me look at things as they actually are and determine my
| best course of action rationally. A lot of other people are
| blinded by the halo effect and try to operate within the
| company _as they think it should be_ , which is self-
| defeating because that's not reality.
|
| It might be the same for Americans trying to navigate the
| American political system. We're so blinded by the myths
| and propaganda that we've been fed since childhood that we
| can't see how the system actually operates.
| maweaver wrote:
| > "When was the last time a ruling of the chair was overturned
| on appeal in the House?"
|
| > Less than a minute later, the mysterious account responded
| with an answer -- 1938 -- and a decades-old edition of the
| Congressional Record to prove it.
|
| It's not so much that he knows procedures well, it appears that
| he has some sort of didactic memory that he has focused on this
| topic. He would have had to basically already memorized this
| fact obscure enough that a congressional scholar was tweeting
| for an answer.
| nolongerthere wrote:
| Or perhaps really well trained AI? Until they named him I was
| expecting that to be the answer. That's exactly the type of
| question a well trained LLM could answer, the proof is what
| gives it away as not AI, as most AIs I know are unable to
| offer up any sort of evidence to back up any claims they make
| bec they don't actually know what they're saying or why they
| "believe" something.
| happypumpkin wrote:
| And fwiw both GPT-4 and Claude 3 Opus failed to give me the
| correct answer.
| chatmasta wrote:
| Or he knows how to use the resources available for finding
| the answer to this question, which is a more useful skill
| than memorizing facts anyway. The embarrassing part is that
| congressional aides don't have the same skill. I wonder if
| they'll stop tagging him in questions now that they know he's
| just a college student from the UK. Hopefully someone
| recognizes his talent and hires him as a staffer (there are
| plenty of Brits working in US government).
| nescioquid wrote:
| De rigueur:
|
| [2011] https://www.theonion.com/congress-forgets-how-to-pass-a-
| law-...
|
| [2011] https://www.theonion.com/twitter-messages-show-
| congressmen-d...
| FactKnower69 wrote:
| Imagine if his fixation was on some natural science like
| chemistry or math instead of the completely arbitrary procedures
| of one of the most ineffectual and hated groups of politicians to
| ever burden the world. Such a waste
| throw__away7391 wrote:
| I think everyone is entitled to choose what they do with their
| own life/time.
| waltbosz wrote:
| I had this idea to create some sort of gamified RPG battle log
| format for government procedure. Members of government would be
| characters in the battle, actions like amendments/comments/votes
| would be attacks/spells/defensive moves (not respectively).
| Monsters would be the bills/resolutions/etc.
|
| Then you could playback a session of congress/etc as a battle.
|
| The purpose would be to mystify the procedure and analogize it to
| something people are more familiar with.
| NoToP wrote:
| I've had a similar idea for a card game like yugioh but all the
| cards represent court instruments like affidavits and subpoenas
| and instead of mana points actions in game are measured in
| money.
| HPsquared wrote:
| There are some games that attempt to simulate the political
| process. "Democracy 4" for instance. PC game, not tabletop, but
| might be a source of inspiration.
| gopher_space wrote:
| If we had version control for the law and a linter for the
| constitution, how would that change the political landscape?
| How would you feel about people arguing against codifying their
| values?
|
| I don't think our legal or political processes can survive the
| rigor coming their way.
| satiric wrote:
| This is a great idea; but surely you meant to say "demystify",
| not "mystify"? I'm not sure government procedures need to be
| any more opaque...
| jl6 wrote:
| Always great to see someone who's found their passion. This guy
| proves that it can be truly _anything_.
| animal_spirits wrote:
| This makes me think of the fun people get with sports, tons of
| information over a long history with lots of stories. Imagine how
| many people we can get into politics with a fantasy congress! It
| would be like fantasy sports but you choose your representatives.
| ekglimmer wrote:
| For a second I missed the irony here, genuinely thought to
| myself 'wow that would be awesome'. Just joined my first
| fantasy league so I am gung-ho on fantasy now, apologies.
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| I'm still missing the irony here.
| throwaway0665 wrote:
| You "supposedly" already choose your representatives.
| jbjbjbjb wrote:
| Maybe the bar is just set super low? The guy started following US
| politics in 2020 and now he's a savant.
|
| And isn't this just normal twitter use? I know I've woken up and
| entered a debate on Twitter and then misspent a morning
| researching and going back and forth on Twitter.
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