[liberationtech] Stability in truly "Democratic" decision systems

[Mitar]

Hi!

On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Peter Lindener
<lindener.peter at gmail.com> wrote:
>    So I gather your taking the position that Social Choice theory has no
> place in Social Decision Theory?  That is that the formality's of
> information as well as Game theory are entirely inapplicable in the process
> of achieving a better understanding of the truly democratic group decision
> process...

I have not yet found a mathematical function which would take two
human produced texts describing two proposed solutions to a problem
and produce a third text which would be a comprehensible and rational
merge of this two proposed solutions. Maybe your theory should start
from this?

I agree that theoretical foundation is important. But don't forget
what is the goal of democracy: that people can live together in a way
which satisfies all of them the most. We are using voting as a method
currently, because we might not know better (we are still using a two
thousand year old method!).

I agree with the interesting idea André pointed out. That we are
voting and getting everybody involved in decisions because we don't
know better. But the process of voting is not the end goal. It is not
the question how can we optimize voting, but can we finally find
something better? Which does not build on premises that everybody has
to be involved, that everybody knows how to decide for everybody, that
everybody has knowledge for that, and time to be involved. But which
still makes sure that decisions we are making as a society are those
people want and support. You can ask everyone of them (what is voting
in a way), or you could be smarter and know what they want and support
in some less invasive way?

You know what is a good governance system? Not one where you ask all
people for any small thing how they would decide. But one which
produces solutions which all people when they see it say "Wow, this is
a great solution, if just I could come up with it myself! I support
it!" Because this is what you would like: that the solutions we decide
for as a society are better than any individual him or herself could
come up with by him or herself.


Mitar

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