Truth through Democracy?

While the U.S. is resting on laurels over 200 yrs old, the rest of the world is improving Democracy.

Demo output from Pol.is opinion mapping software (https://info.vtaiwan.tw/)

In our glorious search for a better way to systematically seek Truth and better societal problem solving, it seems that it would be wise to look out into the world and see if anyone else has tried systems of their own. Now of course, America is the pinnacle of democracy, so I’m sure if there are any efforts going on it will be….oh, look there are lots of examples and virtually none of them are in America. How interesting. So where do we want to go, Spain, Austria, Mongolia, Taiwan? Let’s try Taiwan.

Sarcastic banter aside, there are numerous, varying efforts attempting to apply the “wisdom of the crowds” to solve large scale problems. Most of which have been relatively successful on the small scale, but virtually none of which seem to gain any traction in the United States (certainly not on any significant scale). Why? I have thoughts on that, and I’m interested in yours, but first let’s dive into an interesting example in Taiwan that I believe attempts to truly capitalize on the concept of Truth-seeking through the accumulation of many perspectives.

Also, to clarify, the concept of pulling on the wisdom and perspectives of “large” numbers of people to solve complex problems is not new. In fact, it has many names and flavors; deliberative/discursive/participatory democracy, wise democracy, advisory voting, wisdom councils, etc. etc. The purpose of this post is to look at an example of how these ideas can move beyond the conceptual, into the practical, and start a discussion on what roadblocks are holding it back in our current political and cultural system.

vTaiwan

vTaiwan is a participatory democracy system that was implemented in Taiwan in 2014. Ironically, as one of the more impressive examples of crowdsourcing legislation, it came into being after a large 3-week long Parliament occupation (known as the Sunflower Movement) protesting a secretive China trade agreement. In response to the occupation, the government decided to meet with the protest organizers (g0v “Gov-Zero”) and asked the activist if they could “create a platform for rational discussion and deliberation of policy issues that the entire nation could participate in.” (GovLab). Before I proceed, I have to ask: can anyone see the government responding this way in the U.S.? I think our first roadblock might be slapping us in the face here, but I’ll digress for the moment.

The framework of vTaiwan was born shortly after this meeting of minds, and- as their website describes it- they created “a decentralized open consultation process that combines online and offline interactions, bringing together Taiwan’s citizens and government to deliberate on national issues.” ( info.vtaiwan) Sounds nice, but does it work and how?

The short answer to the first question is “yes.” It works fairly well, although it is only applied to policy issues in “digital legislation,” and not across the board. Nevertheless, nearly 30 pieces of legislation have been implemented as a product of this system, including some spicy topics like regulating Uber, policies around Non-Consensual Intimate Images, and online Alcohol sales. And as far as I know, it is still kicking and legislating (albeit in a far more limited fashion than likely desirable).

The second question, “how?”, is a little more involved. There are actually numerous resources for getting a rundown of the vTaiwan process (including the front page of their website referenced earlier). Rather than re-hash what has already been done well elsewhere, I’m going to tease out the elements of their process that I think are particularly interesting, and perhaps pertinent to overcoming certain roadblocks we will discuss later. That being said, I highly recommend looking at the case study done by GovLab for a review of the mechanics, Tom Atlee’s 5-part blog series for a more philosophical analysis, and the MIT Technology Review for a more critical look at the success of the system.

Some things to consider

So here are highlights in the realms of strategy implemented, overall structure, and technology used:

Strategy: It relies on a 4-stage process using both digital and in-person discussions.

• Proposal: “The public” proposes an issue to address.
  - The public consists primarily of relevant experts, government officials, and stakeholders, but in general can include anyone interested.
  - Issues are not picked up if they do not have an assigned government “participation officer” and a vTaiwan facilitator (activist) agreeing to take charge of the process
• Opinion: The issue is put forth to the public through various methods over a relatively long period of time.
  - Relevant educational materials are also collected during this time and included in the various questionnaires and discussions.
  - Comments are fed through the Pol.is opinion mapping system to better facilitate the identification of disagreements and possible “rough consensus”. (see Technology section below for more on Pol.is)
• Reflection: In-person meetings to review opinion data and decide if more is needed.
  - If more is needed, it goes back to the Opinion Stage.
  - If the government representative and participants agree enough information is gathered, then in-person (but openly accessible via livestream) discussions take place involving key-stakeholders identified in the previous stages.
• Legislation: “Rough consensus” legislation recommendations are created based on all of the above.
  - The relevant government agency is required to respond to results in detail, but not necessarily adopt it as law.

Structure: Focused and (relatively) centralized communication with de-centralized control.

• Funding: Government Funded
• Operations: Run by volunteers and g0v (activist organization) administrators
• Transparency: All discussions and documents fully accessible to all throughout the process.
• Legal Requirements: None-ish. Government ministries are required to have a “Participation Officer” assigned to any relevant issues put forward by vTaiwan, however there are no direct requirements for the government to use the proposals/legislation that come from the process.

Technology: It leverages social networking, large scale communication platforms, and A.I analysis that have only just become available to us in the last few decades.

• Rolling Surveys: uses various existing social media platforms to gather information from interested parties, and gives them the ability to invite additional citizens, experts, and stakeholders that would have valuable input to the discussion.
  - Insights and relevant technical information are collected from the responding experts/stakeholders during this process. This information is then refined and made accessible to the general public as “educational materials” for consideration during future discussions/deliberations.
• Pol.is: “a digital platform for opinion collection, to facilitate large-scale conversations and consensus building.” ( info.vtaiwan)
  - Allows all participants to comment and agree/disagree with others’ comments, but no one can directly reply to comments (eliminates direct trolling).
  - Maps out and clusters comments based on consensus; thereby incentivizing people to draft statements that will garner agreement from as many participants as possible.
  - Eventually “rough consensus” statements are gathered that have extremely high, if not unanimous, agreement. (see MIT Tech Review for breakdown of specific results in the Uber legislation case).
  - “[It]… reduces a hundred identical responses to one dot in its cluster map, meaning that uniqueness is favored over mobilized masses in determining which differences and consensuses will be highlighted for further reflection. This reduces the importance of vast or “fairly representative” groups of participants in favor of getting clear on where diversity and consensus exist. In Pol.is even one person can easily have an impact if their statement has considerable wisdom-value.” Tom Atlee
• Various open discussion/document sharing technologies: Discourse, Gitbook, SlideShare, and HACKPAD are used.
  - Includes virtual participation abilities for all interested parties during in-person meetings dialogues.
  - Facilitates not only transparency in the process, but also participation on a mass scale if needed.

The USA is a Minefield

If all this sounds great to you, you’re probably right. In fact, a similar system might help resolve some of the most polarizing issues we have today and give U.S. citizens a far more direct way of effectively communicating with each other and the government. Also, like many great things, it is entirely useless if it can’t be implemented. And the USA is a virtual minefield of impediments.

So, to end this post on a sufficiently depressing note, I’m going to start what will probably be a months long series of discussions on what these impediments are. Why? Because we need to find these metaphorical mines and blow them the fuck up…. metaphorically? (that was a joke, calm down internet I’m not encouraging terrorism here…but seriously, explosions, just sayin’).

A not-remotely exhaustive list of mines to consider:

• Entrenched Power structure
  - We currently operate under an Oligarchy. Elected representatives are minimally accountable to the voters. They are very accountable to corporations, lobbyist, governments, media organizations, etc. (i.e. money/power)
  - Deliberative Democracy essentially creates a 4th branch of government, which challenges those currently wielding power.
  - How do we encourage buy-in from those in the current power structure?
• 2-Party systems inherently create and feed on black and white thinking
  - A 2-party system does not want “rough consensus” agreement on certain issues (i.e. abortion, guns, the border, etc.)
  - A 2-party system does not want “rough consensus” opposition to certain “uni-party” issues (i.e. war, corporate interests, government spending, etc.)
  - Again, this is a power issue. How do you convince those in power to share their favorite toy? (a key criticism of vTaiwan is that it is not binding on governments, and the current Taiwan government has taken advantage of that non-binding status).
• Manufactured Consent in the Media
  - While this phenomenon may be somewhat fracturing or changing, the collective “wisdom of the crowds” may be diminished if only certain narratives are allowed for public consumption (i.e. the key to gaining wisdom/insight from these processes is varied perspectives and respected/respectful dissent).
  - The collection and dissemination of educational materials typically involved in these kinds of deliberative or advisory democracy councils is key. Who vets this material? Are dissenting views allowed outside of accepted narratives?
  - How do we combat bought and paid for “experts?”
• Funding
  - How will it be funded in a way that the removal or elimination of any single funding source will not cripple the system? (Philanthropy? Tax Revenues? Government? Non-profits? All of the above?)
  - Diversification is essential for system resilience and to garner trust with the public, government, and market alike.
• Public Trust is needed
  - Trust in the security and neutrality of the technology used in the process.
  - Trust in the impact of the results (i.e. is their actual power? The current voting system has very little power for actual change, and everyone knows it, i.e. our piss-poor voter participation rates).
• Significant Participation is essential
  - The process will not be representative or trustworthy if it doesn’t have a very large number of individuals’ inputs (like our current polling system).
  - Thus, access to the process must be easy for the majority of the population (phone app?). The more time/effort required; the less ordinary folks will be able to contribute.
  - How and where should anonymity be used in the process?
• How do we structure the process to maximize the “wisdom” gained?
  - In the more intensive discussion parts of the process, how do we seek out and encourage holistic thinker/experts to participate?
  - How do we “enforce” or incentivize strategies for productive dialogue (i.e. not another social shitstorm like Twitter), while not suppressing speech?

As the political scientist Jane Mansbridge has said, “our structures of democracy, which basically evolved in the 18th century, are not sufficient to carry the load of the government coercion that we now need.” Or, in other words, our governmental operating system is old, corrupted, and laggy as hell. We need an upgrade. One way to do that is to just completely redesign the operating system and overwrite the old one. Warning, this process requires several system shutdowns/restarts and may not work correctly with your previously used programs. Just so we are clear, societal “shutdowns/restarts” are “bad.” They involve terror, starvation, and lots of violence and death.

OR, we can update the system by adding software that better identifies and corrects the corruption and streamlines the interface, making the system significantly more responsive to our inputs. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound as cool as a full-on re-boot, but I kind of like the idea of avoiding the starvation, violence, and death part. Also, we are not computers. We are living, thinking, constantly evolving organic life-forms. How about we start acting like it?

P.S. As always, I need your thoughts on this. This one more than most. How would you approach these roadblocks? What other impediments do you see? Have you seen a deliberative democracy style system implemented on scale elsewhere? Or, do you doubt that a citizen based “Fourth Branch of Government” would actually do any good? Let me know!

Originally published at https://thepathlesstruth.substack.com.

Note: All posts on The Pathless are meant to spur questions and promote discussion about the nature of Truth and how we can better find it. Please share your thoughts, and especially your disagreements. We need your point of view! Also, if you found this interesting, and would like to support this mission, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber over at The Pathless on Substack.