Fwd: [apsa_itp] community law-making, a system based on recombinant text

["Peter Muhlberger" <peter.muhlberger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Michael:  Lots of interesting points in your long reply.  I'll just
focus on a couple key things here (see below, etc.).  Much of the
success of the system you are suggesting seems to depend on the
delegate cascade.  Other parts depend on the feasibility of citizens
writing their own laws.  I think there are a lot more degrees of
freedom for idealistic schemes like this to work than many of my
social science colleagues, though I would caution that they may not
work without many transitional steps designed to cultivate and develop
people so they could function adequately in a system that demands a
far greater community identity and involvement than does the current
system.  We also need to develop preliminary data that these systems,
such as the delegate cascade, can work in practice.  I'd encourage
experimentation in real but favorable circumstances--try running some
institution or small community of relatively capable people with these
systems and collect a lot of data on its function and also *for whom*
the system works or does not work and why.  My research focuses on
heavily on measuring the latter.

My national dialog on political values idea would be a kind of
intermediate step toward a more engaged system:  if you can get people
to appreciate and understand alternative ideologies or to become
critical of their own, you'd have taken a major and necessary step
toward making it possible for people to collaborate in an engaged
political system.  Currently, there's intense political polarization
and too many people who so little understand alternative views that
they believe people holding these views must be stupid, crazy, or
evil.  When we start making attributions like that, it becomes rather
difficult to collaborate with others to make progress on public
policy.  I would certainly like to try putting some such political
values dialog into practice, if only on a small scale.  Just waiting
to find some funding opportunity!

Cheers, Peter

On 8/18/07, Michael Allan <mike@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I can't do justice in my response. You understand the social reality
far better than I understand the proposed system. What we need is a
detailed technical plan. Then, maybe with mathematical models,
simulations, or experiments, we could test it against reality. That
might help -- though only, I suspect, if we take into account how the
system itself will transform the context, the reality in which it
operates.

> > I agree. It would have to be one small step at a time. There'd be much
> > to learn along the way.
>
> Yup!  I think what's needed is some serious consideration of how to
> combine both technical and social efforts to move America in a
> direction that could make a more engaged democracy possible.  The
> technical systems need to be tailored to the limits of the audience
> and designed to help people improve their own reasoning.  One thing
> that might be very helpful would be to have people reflect on their
> own political values and ideologies--such reflection would get right
> to the heart of people's limited understandings and perhaps reveal
> better ways of thinking.  A nationwide online dialog of how people
> differ on political values and ideologies and how these result in
> major roadblocks to addressing a wide range of serious policy problems
> could remake the American political environment.  The whole thing
> would have to be framed in more concrete terms, of course.  I proposed
> this to a major Democratic party funder before the last presidential
> election, but no one bit.  The Dems really need to think more
> strategically.

I hope you will get this, with or without party approval!  :)

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