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).
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!