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

[Scott Raney <scott AT metacard.com>]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2014 at 3:06 PM,  <pa.rei AT gmx.de> wrote:

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

Good to see language is not too much of a barrier!

> 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".
>

Not sure how these terms translate, but at least in my use of
"consensus" it implies at least no organized opposition even if the
decision is not "unanimous".  Most of the Metagovernment group's use
of the term seems to be similar, as is the design of Loomio (which has
"block" as one of the voting options).  A 2/3 majority IMHO is an
acceptable (albeit suboptimal) decision rule, but would not be
considered "consensus" by most people (certainly not by the MG
members!)

> 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".
>

Sounds reasonable, although I see a hint of over-complexity in this
proposal.  Information needs to be widely available, sure, but when it
comes time to make a decision, the agreed on decision rule *must*
override all this other stuff.  There are people who simply won't
agree on any set of axioms that disagrees with their prejudices, nor
even be able to follow a logical proof from these axioms even if they
did.  These people must be allowed to participate in the process, but
the system must be designed to function even when their influence
merely adds "noise" to the decisionmaking process.

> 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.
>

This proposal I think represents a fundamental misunderstanding of the
difference between authoritarians and neurotypicals (the term I use in
my book for those who are not authoritarians, social dominators,
sociopaths, or various other "specialized" personality types).
"Tyranny of the Majority" (which I'm guessing is a better translation
of "functional fascism") IMHO is merely a theoretical concern, and
simply will not be an issue in any system where neurotypicals are
actually the decisionmakers because they are egalitarian by their very
nature and so won't act this way so long as the system supports
filtering the disruptive influences (e.g., by allowing the
neurotypicals to flag authoritarianism, tribalism, prejudice,
fear-mongering, etc.)

> 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.
>

This is a theme I've seen repeatedly in the MG group.  Unfortunately
the scientific (social psychology and political economics) research
that I'm aware of does not support this theory.  Which is why in my
proposed system we must *assume* irrationality and prejudice will be
an integral source of disruption, not something that we can just
magically get rid of through the use of better technology.

> 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...

Right: But you always must keep in mind that even if a system works
for your group, we really need to be designing systems that will work
for the general public.  If your system doesn't work with thousands of
people chosen at random from a population, you're probably not solving
a very important problem (homogeneous groups is the *easy* case, and
there are already plenty of systems that work adequately for them).
  Regards,
    Scott

> Cheers,
> Paul