Reforming democracy should be like Twitch-plays-chess: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/09/15/twitch-plays-chess-against-a-grandmaster-and-wins/ … That is to say, there are more voters than there are lobbyists and partisan hacks, so this is a game we should be able to win. Collectively, we are smarter. But...
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...there's two things that makes it harder: a bigger board, and an unequal chat channel. Bigger board: democracy is a big, complex system. Even knowing what moves are possible isn't easy. It's not so much secrets, as focusing on what's important, that's hard.
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It's not impossible to summarize the state of play. For instance, I think that
@leedrutman in https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/19/us-democracy-two-party-system-replace-multiparty-republican-democrat/ … does a pretty good job. But it's not trivial, either. And so...1 reply 1 retweet 2 likesShow this thread -
...in order to win, we the people would need a good chat channel. One that can efficiently: 1. agree on the state of the board 2. consider the possible moves 3. and choose the best one. That's not what we have:
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Smart people like
@leedrutman can do a good job on step 1, get started on step 2. But instead of getting consensus on that and moving on, they're drowned out by fools and/or trolls peddling false views of 1. We can't finish steps 2 & 3; too busy shoring up the step 1 sandcastle.1 reply 0 retweets 3 likesShow this thread -
Furthermore: inequality of voice/reach reduces the effective number of brains. If you're in a room with 1000 people, but 10 of them are doing half the talking, you might as well just have 20 people; 980 are basically dead weight. Note: those two discourse flaws are in tension!
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To increase signal/noise, you want to boost smart people, silence trolls and fools. But to increase collective intelligence, avoid groupthink, you don't want to boost them *too* much. This is tough. There are people trying (
@generativist) and I look forward to results, but...1 reply 0 retweets 2 likesShow this thread -
...it's not the kind of thing you ever fully solve. And even if you did, you'd still have to actually play the chess game (in my original metaphor). Not just see the pieces, but analyze possible moves and countermoves. In the case of democracy reform...
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Yea. And tbh, lately I've been realizing that even for the limited things I'm trying to do in the near-term, I need more of a team to do so — it's all really tricky!
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