contrast with sortition, civic assemblies, etc. where it’s only real people deliberating with each other- no black box or autosuggests - is this a future fight?
I'm struck by the parallel with the aggregation of individualized guesses when it comes to, for example, guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, as described by James Surowecki in his Wisdom of Crowds, and by others as well. The reliability of such guesses appears greatest when the guessers are not influenced by others and less reliable when the guessers are prompted by the guesses of others in their in-group. This suggests that discussion, at least when it come to jelly beans, is more subject to confirmation, availability and my-side biases and that unmediated guesses are likely to aggregate to a more reliable median.
It is obvious that humans are not very capable of resolving their conflicts - even the conflicts of minor cognitive complexity. Using machines to develop non-obvious solutions for a given problem, solutions that for humans would remain obscure, is my favourite utopia.
But using machines to implement a "perfectly democratical society" is almost an opposite of it and reminds of theories of Zhao Thingyang and the benevolent administration of CCP that focuses on stability. Habermas' theories of deliberative society required in their real-world implementation a sizeable set of taboos and ended as a sort of soft totalitarianism.
contrast with sortition, civic assemblies, etc. where it’s only real people deliberating with each other- no black box or autosuggests - is this a future fight?
and thanks for illuminating!
I'm struck by the parallel with the aggregation of individualized guesses when it comes to, for example, guessing the number of jelly beans in a jar, as described by James Surowecki in his Wisdom of Crowds, and by others as well. The reliability of such guesses appears greatest when the guessers are not influenced by others and less reliable when the guessers are prompted by the guesses of others in their in-group. This suggests that discussion, at least when it come to jelly beans, is more subject to confirmation, availability and my-side biases and that unmediated guesses are likely to aggregate to a more reliable median.
It is obvious that humans are not very capable of resolving their conflicts - even the conflicts of minor cognitive complexity. Using machines to develop non-obvious solutions for a given problem, solutions that for humans would remain obscure, is my favourite utopia.
But using machines to implement a "perfectly democratical society" is almost an opposite of it and reminds of theories of Zhao Thingyang and the benevolent administration of CCP that focuses on stability. Habermas' theories of deliberative society required in their real-world implementation a sizeable set of taboos and ended as a sort of soft totalitarianism.