Hi! On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 3:29 PM, Peter Lindener <[email protected]> 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 -- http://mitar.tnode.com/ https://twitter.com/mitar_m -- Too many emails? Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password by emailing moderator at [email protected] or changing your settings at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech
