Polis: Open-source platform for large-scale civic deliberation

I'm curious to hear more of this "Informed Consent" based framework. I think disclosure of potential negative outcomes from a decision would help.

My concern with liquid democracy is about speed and predictability. Politics involves human relationships, traditions, compromises, etc. I'm worried rapidly switching would further erode local rule and undermine bottom up democracy. Recall referendum/elections seems to work well enough, they create a newsworthy topic so people may have time to absorb and adjust.

Regarding your question. Human behavior seems more a function of circumstances; trying on someone else's shoes can be heartbreaking, so it's often rationale to look the other way. Emotional decisions must be acceptable in a democracy: who am I to decide if someone else is being rational?

For the US, we could start by dramatically expanding the house of representatives so races become more about local human connection rather than party identity. The Senate seems immovable architectural debt, however, its role to buffer sudden change seems important.

I choose to think our current political challenges are human nature and historic, but increasingly unmoored by modern social isolation and addictive media without the dampening love (and healthy stress) of community. Ubiquitous estrangement within families is tragic; poignantly, the recent TX home death of a UK daughter by her father raised few eyebrows, let alone atonement or a societal reckoning. The prevalence of school shootings are another modern symptom. This runs very deep, there have been legal restrictions against extended households for decades, contractions of public spaces (libraries, malls) and barriers to community environments. We don't connect with neighbors let alone strangers: Amazon delivers to the doorstep. Now we even have AI "friends" trained by far off people with maligned incentives as our closest companions. We have forgotten how to cooperate. This isolation is toxic to the soul, it cannot and will not end well.

We urgently need 180° pivot, towards vibrant human-centered community centers and surrounding commercial districts within a few short blocks or a few minute gratis bus ride. This isn't luddite -- modern technology needs to support a human world, not the inverse. These centers must become the foundation of a renewed civics and democratic revival.

Technology is a necessary scaffolding for a modern, human-centered revival, especially with communication, logistics, transportation, and certainly democratic deliberation. Even so, universal participation in a slow-moving and bottom-up representative government with anonymous paper ballots is essential to restore the consent of the governed and relative peace.

I believe moral opposition to child labor is a widely held view, and that most politicians, if pressed, would be in favor of writing laws to eliminate it. There are many reasons that pressure isn't applied, but it being a culturally abnormal view isn't one of them.

> unmoored by modern social isolation and addictive media without the dampening love (and healthy stress) of community.

You have a point about community but I think for different reasons.

Historically, most communities were created by randomness - closeness by physical proximity, childhood friend of a childhood friend, etc. Today many communities emerge around a common topic or interest and it leads to echo chambers. People used to be around people with different opinions and they had to accept that because for 20 people there were 15 opinions and no side got the upper hand. Now you have 20 people with 2 opinions split roughly 80:20 and the 20 are afraid to say anything for fear of being ostracized. (Numbers pulled out of my ass.)

And another reason is the lost of not just anonymity but also plausible deniability. You say something offline, 5 people hear it and you can judge their reaction, whether to go on or better keep your mouth shut. And of course they can pass on that you said it but with each step, the claim loses credibility and becomes gossip. Now you say something online, it's there forever. Even if you can delete the message, 5k people say it and there's always this one asshole who takes screenshots so even if you change your mind later, he can and will use them against you. (And don't let me get started how screenshot aren't links so even if you clarified you position later, he effectively takes it out of context in a way that he has the final word and you don't even know about it.)

A few weeks ago, I had a shower thought: A social network where LLM-generated or other people's posts get your name assigned to them randomly from time to time. So that 1) people are used to seeing random crazy shit said by you (any everyone else) and not taking it seriously 2) when you actually say something you want to take back, you can just claim it's one of those posts you didn't actually write. It's a stupid idea but I'd also like to see it tried to make sure it's stupid...

That being said, I have been thinking about a social network with multidimensional voting and a network of trust more seriously. One effect would be that posts from people you know personally would be assigned a much higher weight and it might lead to restoring bottom up communities you talk about.

Anyway, I agree with a lot of what you say but don't have much to add.

It was a lovely discussion and made consider other approaches, thank you. Sadly, I’m must leave the conversation now. I’m very ill these past few years and am unlikely to recover.

I suggest reading Elinor Ostrom’s book, Governing the Commons. It describes fundamentals of successful cooperative organization. Specifically, successful cooperatives don’t grow bigger, they replicate bright spots while staying local and small, using umbrella organizations to coordinate similar or intertwined activities. This seems much more aligned with historical, decentralized hacker values. Ostrom describes democratic and expressly voluntary ways of organizing inherently monopolistic economic activity. For some industries, those with overwhelming network effects, I think it provides a model that is neither privately held nor government controlled, and when collaborative and nested, a workable decentralization.