Attempted TL;DR [please comment if I missed something and I’ll fix it] :
Create software systems that will replace parts of government and perform better than them, such as interesting ways of voting which are both accessible and give citizens a different weighted voted based on what fits the situation.
Edit: GG (who is the author, I think) says: It’s more about experimenting towards better solutions. Probably better to read that comment in full.
I’d say that the spirit of the post is less to suggest a solution than to point out the perhaps fruitful process of experimenting toward a solution. The idea of weighting a decision-making process toward more qualified decision makers (however that is determined) makes sense to me, as does experimentation with untried formal systems of managing collective intelligence and cooperative mitigation of catastrophic risk (some academic examples of which are cited in the post). Also, I’d say that the proposal is less about replacing aspects of governments than it is about providing a clear example of more effective governance, one that could perhaps influence existing means of governance in a number of ways.
The idea of weighting a decision-making process toward more qualified decision makers (however that is determined)
My opinion:
“however that is determined” is where the magic happens, not a side point
As a naive example to explain what I’m talking about: if we give more weight to experts, there is the question of “how do we decide who are the experts”. Do we use expert experts? Who decides who those are?
The “Software systems” won’t be the challenging part of this project
Beyond, maybe, trying to give every person one vote (one “identity”) that can be used through the internet , which turns out to be really hard to do without huge problems, and the blockchain community is working really hard on already
Agree with these points. In the post, I give a toy example of a possible system in which various forms of contests can be used to assess a member’s ability to contribute. It seems as if identifying good generalists might be an easier task than identifying subject matter experts. I would imagine any process to identify expertise would include credentials and track records but I think it may be more important that a community of people that have already established trustworthiness are willing to take bets on a given individual. I think it’s very likely true that being a good generalist is a prerequisite to being an effective subject matter expert. But, yeah, lots of questions.
By voting, do you mean elections or referenda? If so, I don’t think that would be a good example, it really sells short the entire concept of software systems augmenting collective intelligence.
By referencing voting, I was referring to one possible input into a decision-making process. I wasn’t considering the notion of electing human representatives. Rather, the outputs of that collective decision-making process could be any number of things, and would be determined by the nature of the collective effort. In the post I suggest one possible such decision making body that controls the purse of a charitable organization. In such a case, the output of the process could include decisions around funding determinations, rule or policy decisions, the creation of a lobbying effort, etc.
Attempted TL;DR [please comment if I missed something and I’ll fix it] :
Create software systems that will replace parts of government and perform better than them, such as interesting ways of voting which are both accessible and give citizens a different weighted voted based on what fits the situation.Edit: GG (who is the author, I think) says: It’s more about experimenting towards better solutions. Probably better to read that comment in full.
I’d say that the spirit of the post is less to suggest a solution than to point out the perhaps fruitful process of experimenting toward a solution. The idea of weighting a decision-making process toward more qualified decision makers (however that is determined) makes sense to me, as does experimentation with untried formal systems of managing collective intelligence and cooperative mitigation of catastrophic risk (some academic examples of which are cited in the post). Also, I’d say that the proposal is less about replacing aspects of governments than it is about providing a clear example of more effective governance, one that could perhaps influence existing means of governance in a number of ways.
My opinion:
“however that is determined” is where the magic happens, not a side point
As a naive example to explain what I’m talking about: if we give more weight to experts, there is the question of “how do we decide who are the experts”. Do we use expert experts? Who decides who those are?
The “Software systems” won’t be the challenging part of this project
Beyond, maybe, trying to give every person one vote (one “identity”) that can be used through the internet , which turns out to be really hard to do without huge problems, and the blockchain community is working really hard on already
Agree with these points. In the post, I give a toy example of a possible system in which various forms of contests can be used to assess a member’s ability to contribute. It seems as if identifying good generalists might be an easier task than identifying subject matter experts. I would imagine any process to identify expertise would include credentials and track records but I think it may be more important that a community of people that have already established trustworthiness are willing to take bets on a given individual. I think it’s very likely true that being a good generalist is a prerequisite to being an effective subject matter expert. But, yeah, lots of questions.
Thank you, updated.
Btw I personally really like how the Ethereum community experiments with things like this, seems super healthy to me
By voting, do you mean elections or referenda? If so, I don’t think that would be a good example, it really sells short the entire concept of software systems augmenting collective intelligence.
By referencing voting, I was referring to one possible input into a decision-making process. I wasn’t considering the notion of electing human representatives. Rather, the outputs of that collective decision-making process could be any number of things, and would be determined by the nature of the collective effort. In the post I suggest one possible such decision making body that controls the purse of a charitable organization. In such a case, the output of the process could include decisions around funding determinations, rule or policy decisions, the creation of a lobbying effort, etc.