In fact, we have good reasons to believe thatdemocraticdecisionsoutperform other kinds, in large part due to the collective intelligence properties we mentioned in previous sections. If the question of the Twitter purchase had been put to the membership or a representatively-sampled assembly of members, what would the outcome have been?
Uh do we? My sense is that democracies are often slow and that EA expert consensus has lead rather than followed the democractic consensus over time. I might instead say “democractic decisions avoid awful outcomes”. I’m not a big reader of papers, but my sense is that democracies avoid wars and famines but also waste a lot of time debating tax policy. I might suggest that EA should feel obliged to explain things to members but that members shouldn’t vote.
Consensus building tools gather the views of many people, identify cruxes, and help build consensus. Pol.is, forinstance, has seen significant success when implemented in Taiwan, even on deeply polarised issues. EA could easily employ tools such as these to discover what the membership really believes about certain issues, create better-informed consensus on key issues, and rigorously update our views. Indeed, certain community members have already started doing this.
This on the other hand I do agree with—we could easily have a better sense of what the community thinks, what research could be done etc etc. I guess I’ve run more polis polls than anyone else, but it’s clunks and doesn’t present a clear “what next”.
I talked to the builders of pol.is over the weekend about this, because we were at a conference on collective decisionmaking and Vitalik Buterin funded my dev agency to try and build pol.is for manifold markets and forum magnun (if the forum team accept). So early days but we could see easier use here.
On Democratic Proposals—I think that more “Decision making based on democratic principles” is a good way of managing situations where power is distributed. In general, I think of democracy as “how to distribute power among a bunch of people”.
I’m much less convinced about it as a straightforward tool of better decision making.
I think things like Deliberative Democracy are interesting, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen many successes.
I know of very little use of these methods in startups, hedge funds, and other organizations that are generally incentivized to use the best decision making techniques.
To be clear, I’d still be interested in more experimentation around Deliberative Democracy methods for decision quality, it’s just that the area still seems very young and experimental to me.
Hi Ozzie, while I agree it’s true that there aren’t many high-performing organizations which use democratic decision making. I believe Bridgwater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, does use such a system. They use a tool called the dot collector to gather real time input from a wide base of employees and use that to come up with a ‘believability weighted majority’. The founder of the company Ray Dalio has said that he will generally defer to this vote even when he himself does not agree with the result. https://www.principles.com/principles/3290232e-6bca-4585-a4f6-66874aefce30/
So not as democratic as 1 person 1 vote but far more egalitarian than the average company (or EA for that matter).
Without wanting to play this entire post out in miniature, you’re telling me something I think probably isn’t true and then suggesting I read an entire book. I doubt I’m gonna do that.
You generally read books to understand a thesis in more detail. If there would be a few examples of notable organizations that used democratic decision-making to great effect and someone would want to learn from that, reading a book that gives more details is a great idea. Reading a book to see whether or not a thesis deserves more attention on the other hand makes less sense.
Just a small point here—quite a few of the links/citations in this post are to academic texts which are very expensive [1] (or cumulatively expensive, if you want to read more than a couple) unless you have access through a university/institution. While blogposts/google docs may have less rigour and review than academic papers, their comparative advantage is the speed with which they can be produced and iterated on.
If anything, developing some of the critiques above in more accessible blogposts would probably give more ‘social proof’ that EA views are more heterodox than it might seem at first (David Thorstad’s blog is a great example you link in this post). Though I do accept that current community culture may mean many people are, sadly but understandably, reluctant to do so openly.
This is just my impression after a quick first read, and could be unrepresentative. I definitely intend to read this post again in a lot more detail, and thanks again for the effort that you put into this.
Uh do we? My sense is that democracies are often slow and that EA expert consensus has lead rather than followed the democractic consensus over time. I might instead say “democractic decisions avoid awful outcomes”. I’m not a big reader of papers, but my sense is that democracies avoid wars and famines but also waste a lot of time debating tax policy. I might suggest that EA should feel obliged to explain things to members but that members shouldn’t vote.
This on the other hand I do agree with—we could easily have a better sense of what the community thinks, what research could be done etc etc. I guess I’ve run more polis polls than anyone else, but it’s clunks and doesn’t present a clear “what next”.
I talked to the builders of pol.is over the weekend about this, because we were at a conference on collective decisionmaking and Vitalik Buterin funded my dev agency to try and build pol.is for manifold markets and forum magnun (if the forum team accept). So early days but we could see easier use here.
On Democratic Proposals—I think that more “Decision making based on democratic principles” is a good way of managing situations where power is distributed. In general, I think of democracy as “how to distribute power among a bunch of people”.
I’m much less convinced about it as a straightforward tool of better decision making.
I think things like Deliberative Democracy are interesting, but I don’t feel like I’ve seen many successes.
I know of very little use of these methods in startups, hedge funds, and other organizations that are generally incentivized to use the best decision making techniques.
To be clear, I’d still be interested in more experimentation around Deliberative Democracy methods for decision quality, it’s just that the area still seems very young and experimental to me.
Hi Ozzie, while I agree it’s true that there aren’t many high-performing organizations which use democratic decision making. I believe Bridgwater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, does use such a system. They use a tool called the dot collector to gather real time input from a wide base of employees and use that to come up with a ‘believability weighted majority’. The founder of the company Ray Dalio has said that he will generally defer to this vote even when he himself does not agree with the result. https://www.principles.com/principles/3290232e-6bca-4585-a4f6-66874aefce30/
So not as democratic as 1 person 1 vote but far more egalitarian than the average company (or EA for that matter).
Hi Ozzie,
Participedia is a great starting point for examples/success stories, as well as the RSA speech we linked.
Also this: https://direct.mit.edu/daed/article/146/3/28/27148/Twelve-Key-Findings-in-Deliberative-Democracy
And this: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/kCkd9Mia2EmbZ3A9c/deliberation-may-improve-decision-making
Thanks!
Hi Nathan,
If you’re interested in the performance of democratic decision-making methods then the Democratic Reason book is probably the best place to start!
Without wanting to play this entire post out in miniature, you’re telling me something I think probably isn’t true and then suggesting I read an entire book. I doubt I’m gonna do that.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/54vAiSFkYszTWWWv4/doing-ea-better-1#We_should_probably_read_more_widely
You generally read books to understand a thesis in more detail. If there would be a few examples of notable organizations that used democratic decision-making to great effect and someone would want to learn from that, reading a book that gives more details is a great idea. Reading a book to see whether or not a thesis deserves more attention on the other hand makes less sense.
Just a small point here—quite a few of the links/citations in this post are to academic texts which are very expensive [1] (or cumulatively expensive, if you want to read more than a couple) unless you have access through a university/institution. While blogposts/google docs may have less rigour and review than academic papers, their comparative advantage is the speed with which they can be produced and iterated on.
If anything, developing some of the critiques above in more accessible blogposts would probably give more ‘social proof’ that EA views are more heterodox than it might seem at first (David Thorstad’s blog is a great example you link in this post). Though I do accept that current community culture may mean many people are, sadly but understandably, reluctant to do so openly.
This is just my impression after a quick first read, and could be unrepresentative. I definitely intend to read this post again in a lot more detail, and thanks again for the effort that you put into this.