Re: [Ag Meinungsfindungstool] Disruptive behaviour (was Re: Grundkonsens: Nicht werten, vernetzen)

[pa.rei AT gmx.de]

Hi Scott,

yeah, I think I know what you're trying to say.

The criticism of consensus oriented discussions is very interesting, indeed. 
I think, we need a middle way. In this working group we defined "consent" as 
the fact that all participants are having the same opinion and "consensus" as 
a defined ambitious quorum like 2/3 of all participants (AFAIK). As far as I 
can see, none of the platforms developed here is necessarily based on 
"consent", only "consensus".

But nevertheless, we have to think about it more deeply: On the one hand, I 
would define discussion as a process of increasing the logical consistency of 
the world views of the single participants. It's about finding wrong 
conclusions or wrong "facts", but also about bringing in new ideas or 
suggestions. If the discussion is based on the same basic values and 
underlying assumptions of "facts" (mathematicians would say: axioms), then 
the trend should be more common thinking (ideally "consensus"), as long as 
there is convergence according to the conclusions based on the "axioms".

On the other hand, when the product is convergence, this really doesn't 
garant that the discussion was successful! It may have happened that many 
people were manipulated so that they made the same conclusions. So it's not 
enough to only try to achieve consensus - there has to be more, I thin you're 
right.

> The difference of course is the tactics one uses to prove it:
> Disrupting a vote because it was held in a system that doesn't
> facilitate "consensus" ought to be roundly condemned.  Arguing the
> validity of "consensus" as a design goal in a decision-making system,
> on the other hand, ought to be encouraged and all the relevant
> scientific information on the issue brought to light.  At which point
> I'm sure the majority will conclude that is not a viable goal and that
> we can safely exclude any system that claims to provide it from the
> competition.

In concurrence to the theory of Authoritarianism described in your book, in 
this group has come up a rather interesting model (by Jana) about "functional 
fascism". The behavioral patterns of Authoritarianism and Functional Fascism 
seem to be mostly the same. The difference of the concepts is that the theory 
of Functional Fascism proposes that the context of the discussion can cause 
people to act like the stereotype of the Authoritarian or a democrat.
Jana meant the mode of "voting" or "rating" with context because the simple 
majority rule would cause people to think more in patterns of pushing their 
own proposal to win while other consensus-oriented tools might help to think 
in a way of finding common points in the discussion and cooperation instead 
of concurrence.

> Problem is, I believe your claim that we're always talking with "sane
> humans" is an unreasonable assumption, even on a relatively elite
> mailing list like this one (and the metagovernment list).  There will
> be disruptive influences in *any* group working to solve any
> non-trivial problem.  Which is again why "consensus" as a requirement
> for a decision-making system is simply not a viable alternative, and
> anyone who promotes it simply may have to be ignored or otherwise
> marginalized.  The system itself must be able to function properly and
> render a decision regardless of whether you have up to 25% of the
> people misusing it.  Because they will!

Yeah. But I said that according to this group. Only very few people are 
actively participating in the Mumble sessions, so I believe to be able to 
evaluate the sanity of these members :)

But I also know now that you didn't refer to these members exactly, so 
okily-dokily...
Cheers,
Paul

> 
> As for why certain people latch onto the concept of consensus and
> refuse to face the fact that it is unworkable, I'm still trying to
> work out that issue.  But my current thinking is that it may indeed be
> a symptom of authoritarianism, the logic being that since
> authoritarians are heavily invested in having an ultimate source of
> authority, a system that promises to deliver it in the form of 100%
> consensus will be vastly preferable to one that only guarantees 51%.
> The part that I'm still stuck on is why they would become involved in
> these direct democracy projects in the first place, since
> dictatorships or other leadership-based systems would seem to be more
> to their liking.  The explanation for that could be that there *are*
> no forums where one would feel safe arguing for a new dictatorship
> because the flaws in those systems have been so clearly demonstrated.
> Co-opting (or perhaps even overtly hindering) a direct democracy
> movement may simply be their only option at this point.  But of course
> their unwillingness to debate the issue is also a red flag: Debate is
> not an authoritarian strong point ;-)
>   Regards,
>     Scott
> 
> > Regards,
> > Paul
> 
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