The examples used don’t really seem to fit with that though. Blind signatures are things many/most people haven’t heard of, and not how things are done; I freely admit I had never heard of them before the example. Your HR department probably shouldn’t be expected to be aware of all the various things they could do, as they are ordinary people. Even if they knew what blind signatures were, that doesn’t mean it is obvious they should use them, or how to do so even if they thought they should (which you admit). After reading the Wikipedia article, that doesn’t seem like an ordinary level of precaution for surveys. (Maybe it should be, but then you need to make that argument, so it isn’t a good example for this purpose, in my opinion.)
I also don’t blame you for not just trusting the word of the HR department that it is anonymous. But fundamentally speaking, wouldn’t you (probably) only have their word that they were using Chaumian blind signatures anyway? You probably wouldn’t be implementing the solution personally, so you’d have to trust someone on that score. Even if you did, then the others would probably just have to trust you then. The HR department could be much sneakier about connecting your session to your identity (which they would obviously claim is necessary to prevent multiple voting), but would that be better? It wouldn’t make their claim that you will be kept anonymous any more trustworthy.
Technically, you have to trust that the math is as people say it is even if you do it yourself. And the operating system. And the compiler. Even with physical processes, you have to count on things like them not having strategically placed cameras (and that they won’t violate the physical integrity of the process.).
Math is not a true replacement for trust. There is no method to avoid having to trust people (that’s even vaguely worth considering). You just have to hope to pick well, and hopefully sway things to be a bit more trustworthy.
Interestingly, you admit that in your reply, but it doesn’t seem to have the effect it seems like it should.
A better example to match your points could be fans of a sports team. They pay a lot of attention to their team, and should be experts in a sense. When asked how good their team is, they will usually say the best (or the worst). When asked why, they usually have arguments that technically should be considered noticeably significant evidence in that direction, but are vastly weaker than they should be able to come up if it were true. Which is obvious, since there are far more teams said to be the best (or worst) than could actually be the case. In that circumstance, you should be fairly demanding of the evidence.
In other situations though, it seems like a standard that is really easy to have be much stronger against positions you don’t like than ones you do, and you likely wouldn’t even notice. It is hard to hold arguments you disdain to the same standards as ones you like, even if you are putting in a lot of effort to do so, though in some people it is actually reversed in direction, as they worry too much.
If the cryptography example is too distracting, we could instead imagine a non-cryptographic means to the same end, e.g. printing the surveys on leaflets which the employees stuff into envelopes and drop into a raffle tumbler.
The point remains, however, because (just as with the blinded signatures) this method of conducting a survey is very much outside-the-norm, and it would be a drastic world-modeling failure to assume that the HR department actually considered the raffle-tumbler method but decided against it because they secretly do want to deanonymize the surveys. Much more likely is that they simply never considered the option.
But if employees did start adopting the rule “don’t trust the anonymity of surveys that aren’t conducted via raffle tumbler”, even though this is epistemically irrational at first, it would eventually compel HR departments to start using the tumbler method, whereupon the odd surveys that still are being conducted by email will stick out, and it would now be rational to mistrust them. In short, the Adversarial Argument is “irrational” but creates the conditions for its own rationality, which is why I describe it as an “acausal negotiation tactic”.
That sort of strategy only works if you can get everyone to coordinate around it, and if you can do that, you could probably just get them to coordinate on doing the right things. I don’t know if HR would listen to you if you brought your concerns directly to them, but they probably aren’t harder to persuade on that sort of thing than convincing the rest of your fellows to defy HR. (Which is just a guess.) In cases where you can’t get others to coordinate on it, you are just defecting against the group, to your own personal loss. This doesn’t seem like a good strategy.
In more limited settings, you might be able to convince your friends to debate things in your preferred style, though this depends on them in particular. As a boss, you might be able to set up a culture where people are expected to make strong arguments in formal settings. Beyond these, I don’t really think it is practical. (They don’t generalize -for instance, as a parent, your child will be incapable of making strong arguments for an extremely long time.)
The examples used don’t really seem to fit with that though. Blind signatures are things many/most people haven’t heard of, and not how things are done; I freely admit I had never heard of them before the example. Your HR department probably shouldn’t be expected to be aware of all the various things they could do, as they are ordinary people. Even if they knew what blind signatures were, that doesn’t mean it is obvious they should use them, or how to do so even if they thought they should (which you admit). After reading the Wikipedia article, that doesn’t seem like an ordinary level of precaution for surveys. (Maybe it should be, but then you need to make that argument, so it isn’t a good example for this purpose, in my opinion.)
I also don’t blame you for not just trusting the word of the HR department that it is anonymous. But fundamentally speaking, wouldn’t you (probably) only have their word that they were using Chaumian blind signatures anyway? You probably wouldn’t be implementing the solution personally, so you’d have to trust someone on that score. Even if you did, then the others would probably just have to trust you then. The HR department could be much sneakier about connecting your session to your identity (which they would obviously claim is necessary to prevent multiple voting), but would that be better? It wouldn’t make their claim that you will be kept anonymous any more trustworthy.
Technically, you have to trust that the math is as people say it is even if you do it yourself. And the operating system. And the compiler. Even with physical processes, you have to count on things like them not having strategically placed cameras (and that they won’t violate the physical integrity of the process.).
Math is not a true replacement for trust. There is no method to avoid having to trust people (that’s even vaguely worth considering). You just have to hope to pick well, and hopefully sway things to be a bit more trustworthy.
Interestingly, you admit that in your reply, but it doesn’t seem to have the effect it seems like it should.
A better example to match your points could be fans of a sports team. They pay a lot of attention to their team, and should be experts in a sense. When asked how good their team is, they will usually say the best (or the worst). When asked why, they usually have arguments that technically should be considered noticeably significant evidence in that direction, but are vastly weaker than they should be able to come up if it were true. Which is obvious, since there are far more teams said to be the best (or worst) than could actually be the case. In that circumstance, you should be fairly demanding of the evidence.
In other situations though, it seems like a standard that is really easy to have be much stronger against positions you don’t like than ones you do, and you likely wouldn’t even notice. It is hard to hold arguments you disdain to the same standards as ones you like, even if you are putting in a lot of effort to do so, though in some people it is actually reversed in direction, as they worry too much.
If the cryptography example is too distracting, we could instead imagine a non-cryptographic means to the same end, e.g. printing the surveys on leaflets which the employees stuff into envelopes and drop into a raffle tumbler.
The point remains, however, because (just as with the blinded signatures) this method of conducting a survey is very much outside-the-norm, and it would be a drastic world-modeling failure to assume that the HR department actually considered the raffle-tumbler method but decided against it because they secretly do want to deanonymize the surveys. Much more likely is that they simply never considered the option.
But if employees did start adopting the rule “don’t trust the anonymity of surveys that aren’t conducted via raffle tumbler”, even though this is epistemically irrational at first, it would eventually compel HR departments to start using the tumbler method, whereupon the odd surveys that still are being conducted by email will stick out, and it would now be rational to mistrust them. In short, the Adversarial Argument is “irrational” but creates the conditions for its own rationality, which is why I describe it as an “acausal negotiation tactic”.
That sort of strategy only works if you can get everyone to coordinate around it, and if you can do that, you could probably just get them to coordinate on doing the right things. I don’t know if HR would listen to you if you brought your concerns directly to them, but they probably aren’t harder to persuade on that sort of thing than convincing the rest of your fellows to defy HR. (Which is just a guess.) In cases where you can’t get others to coordinate on it, you are just defecting against the group, to your own personal loss. This doesn’t seem like a good strategy.
In more limited settings, you might be able to convince your friends to debate things in your preferred style, though this depends on them in particular. As a boss, you might be able to set up a culture where people are expected to make strong arguments in formal settings. Beyond these, I don’t really think it is practical. (They don’t generalize -for instance, as a parent, your child will be incapable of making strong arguments for an extremely long time.)