From 9ea52bb84926d816f007d07957625d066a273d7e Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: oskarth Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2024 11:26:21 +0800 Subject: [PATCH 1/9] feat(04-01): Add section on ZK and AnonAadhaar --- contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md | 3 +++ 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+) diff --git a/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md b/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md index 4176cbbc..1ad87703 100644 --- a/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md +++ b/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md @@ -125,6 +125,8 @@ At the same time, these systems have important limits on their ability to establ On the other hand, if privacy is protected, as in Worldcoin, by using biometrics only to initialize an account, the system becomes vulnerable to stealing or selling of accounts. Because most services people seek to access require more than proving they are a unique human (e.g. that they have a particular name, an ID number of some type issued to them by a recognized government, that they are a citizen of some country, and maybe some other attributes like educational or employment credentials at a company etc.) this extreme preservation of privacy undermines most of the utility of the system. Furthermore, such systems place a great burden on the technical performance of biometric systems. If eyeballs can, sometime in the future, be spoofed by artificial intelligence systems combined with advanced printing technology, such a system may be subject to an extreme "single point of failure". In short, despite their important capacity for inclusion and simplicity, biometric systems are too reductive to achieve establish and protect identities with the richness and security required to support ⿻. +With recent improvements in the use of Zero Knowledge Proofs (ZKPs), digital identity systems such as Aadhaar can also be augmented to better protect the user's privacy without the need for biometrics. Projects such as Anon-Aadhaar [^AnonAadhaar] allow an Aadhaar user to selectively reveal only a subset of information to some entity in a provable way. This method of combining traditional digital identity systems, such as digital signatures by some authority, together with novel Zero Knowledge Proof cryptography, is only possible in recent years and shows a lot of promise. + Starting from a very different place, another set of work on identity has reached a similar challenging set of trade-offs. Work on "decentralized identity" (DID) grew from many of the concerns about digital identity we have highlighted above: fragmentation, lack of natural digital infrastructure, issues with privacy, surveillance and corporate control. A key founding document was Microsoft identity architect Kim Cameron's "Laws of Identity" [^LawsOfIdentities], which emphasized the importance of user control/consent, minimal disclosure to appropriate parties, multiple use cases, ⿻ism of participation, integration with human users and consistency of experience across context. Kim Cameron worked on develoing the cardspace [^CS] system while at MSFT and this became the InformationCard [^icard] standards. These did not get market adoption in part because they were too early - smart phones were not widely adopted yet and the idea that this device could hold a wallet for people. With the emergence of crypto currencies and distributed append only ledgers that can store information indefinately in a public way. The community focused on user-centric identity considered how this could be used to achieve the vision of people really being the pivot point or control locus of their own digital represntations (rather then being at the affect of a central athority assigning them an identifier (corporate SSO or an Aahdaar like system) that they had to authenticate against but ultimately didn't control. They developed the Decentralized Identifiers (DID) standard [^DID] at the W3C that defines a way to have decentralized globally resolvable endpoints with associated public keys. This creates a way to grant individuals "ownership" over identities, rooted in "public" data repositories such as blockchains, and create standardized formats for a variety of entities to issue digital credentials referencing these identifiers. @@ -204,3 +206,4 @@ As we noted above, almost everything relevant about us is known by others and is [^icard]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_card [^CS]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CardSpace [^DID]: https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/ +[^AnonAadhaar]: https://mirror.xyz/privacy-scaling-explorations.eth/YnqHAxpjoWl4e_K2opKPN4OAy5EU4sIJYYYHFCjkNOE \ No newline at end of file From 55cf809f295145cdfc7e2f6dd1ded2c07db202ca Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junsol Kim Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:41:46 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 2/9] Update 05-04-augmented-deliberation.md --- .../english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md | 81 +++++++++---------- 1 file changed, 40 insertions(+), 41 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md index 4d764e70..12171a87 100644 --- a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -1,110 +1,106 @@ # Augmented Deliberation -As we have noted above, one of the most common concerns about social media has been its tendency to entrench existing social divisions, creating "echo chambers" that undermine a sense of shared reality. Whatever one's evaluation of the extent to which this is true (relative to what counterfactual), it is natural to ask how these systems might be designed with an opposite intention. The largest-scale attempt at this is the Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) system in the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform. +As we have noted above, one of the most common concerns about social media has been its tendency to entrench existing social divisions, creating "echo chambers" that undermine a sense of shared reality. News feed algorithms based on collaborative filtering selects contents that are likely to maximize user engagements, prioritizing like-minded content that reinforces their existing beliefs and insulates them from diverse information. Despite mixed findings on whether these algorithms truly exacerbate political polarization and hamper deliberations, it is natural to ask how these systems might be redesigned with the opposite intention of “bridging” the crowd. The largest-scale attempt at this is the Community Notes (formerly Birdwatch) system in the X (formerly Twitter) social media platform. Twitter Community Notes -Usually seen as a variant of "fact checking", Community Notes (CN) allows members of the X community to suggest contextualizing additional information on posts that are flagged as potentially misleading as illustrated above. Participants in this process not only submit suggested notes: they also rate the notes suggested by others. These ratings are used to assess the overall perspective of a rater statistically. +Community Notes (CN) is a community-based “fact-checking” platform. CN allows members of the X community to flag potentially misleading posts and provide additional contexts about why the posts could be misleading. CN participants not only submit these notes to the platform; they also rate the notes proposed by others. These ratings are used to assess whether the notes are helpful and are eligible to be publicly released to the X platform as illustrated in figure. -Specifically, raters are placed on a one-dimensional spectrum of opinion, discovered by the statistical analysis from the data but in practice corresponding in most applications to the "left-right" divide in the politics of much of the Western hemisphere. Then (or really simultaneously), the support each note receives from any community member is attributed to a combination of its affinity to their position on this spectrum and some underlying, position-agnostic "objective quality". Notes are then shown if this objective quality, rather than their overall support, is sufficiently high. This represents a way of prioritizing content shown based on the principle of collaboration across diversity, consistent with ⿻, to which hundreds of millions of people are currently exposed each week. +Specifically, raters are placed on a one-dimensional spectrum of opinion, discovered by the statistical analysis from the data but in practice corresponding in most applications to the "left-right" divide in the politics of much of the Western hemisphere. Then (or really simultaneously), the support each note receives from any community member is attributed to a combination of its affinity to their position on this spectrum and some underlying, position-agnostic "objective quality". Notes are then considered to be “helpful” if this objective quality, rather than the overall ratings, is sufficiently high. Instead of prioritizing notes that are supported by a biased, like-minded cluster of users, the system rewards notes that are supported by diverse groups of users, correcting biases driven by political and social fragmentation. This approach leverages alternative social media algorithms to augment human deliberations, prioritizing contents based on the principle of collaboration across diversity, consistent with ⿻, to which hundreds of millions of people are currently exposed each week. This platform has been shown to encourage the exploration of diverse political information, compared to the previous methods of moderating misinformation [^CNDiversity]. -
- -Words, whether written or spoken, are probably the most common and consistent form of communication and collaboration in human history on this planet. Friendships, business, politics, science, culture and much else certainly rely on other modes of interaction, but the exchange of ideas, directions, critics, feelings and more through verbal communication is typically at the center of them. In this chapter, we will explore the power and severe limits of conversation today and hope advances in ⿻ might make words an engine for both proliferating and bridging diversity like never before. - +In this chapter, we explore the considerable power and limitations of human conversations, expressing hope that advances in ⿻ might transform conversations into a more powerful engine for both amplifying and connecting diverse perspectives in ways previously unimaginable. ### Conversation today -The omnipresence of verbal exchange in human life makes it daunting to classify, especially as briefly as we must, but we will roughly distinguish two patterns (oral and written) and a third that combines the first two (networked) in which written summaries of oral interactions are transmitted across distances and possibly used to stimulate other oral interactions. - - -      Oldest, typically richest and still most common form of verbal exchange is the in-person meeting. The business meeting and negotiation is how most consequential decisions in such arenas are made. Idealized portraits of democracy typically refer more heavily to the discussions, such as what took place among traditional tribes, in the Athenian marketplaces or in New England town halls, than to votes or media. The recent film, *Women Talking*, brilliantly captures this spirit in its portrait of a traumatized community coming to a plan for common action through discussion. Groups of friends, clubs, students and teachers, all exchange perspectives, learn, grow and form common purpose through in-person talk. In addition to their interactive nature, in-person interactions often carry elements of the richer, non-verbal communication we described above, as participants share a physical context and can perceive many non-verbal cues from others in the conversation. +The oldest, typically richest and still most common form of conversations is the “in-person meeting.” Idealized portraits of democracy typically refer to discussions involved in these in-person conversations, such as what took place among traditional tribes, in the Athenian marketplaces or in New England town halls, than to votes or media. The recent film, *Women Talking*, brilliantly captures this spirit in its portrait of a traumatized community coming to a plan for common action through discussion. Groups of friends, clubs, students and teachers, all exchange perspectives, learn, grow, and form a common purpose through in-person talk. In addition to their interactive nature, in-person interactions often carry elements of the richer, non-verbal communication, as participants share a physical context and can perceive many non-verbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, and gestures, from others in the conversation. +The next oldest and most common communicative form is writing. While far less interactive, writing enables words to travel across much greater distances and time. Typically conceived as capturing the voice of a single "author", written communications can spread broadly, even globally, with the aid of printing and translation. They can endure for thousands of years, allowing for a "broadcast" of messages much farther than amphitheaters or loudspeakers can achieve. -The next oldest and most common communicative form is writing. While far less interactive, writing allows words to travel across much greater space and time. Typically conceived as capturing the voice of a single "author", written communications can spread broadly (even globally) with the aid of printing and translation, and endure for sometimes thousands of years, allowing for a "broadcast" of messages much farther than amphitheaters or loudspeakers (though recorded audio and visual formats can rival this). +This underscores a crucial trade-off: the richness and immediacy of in-person discussions versus the extensive reach and permanence of the written word. Many platforms strive to blend elements of both in-person and written communication by creating a network where in-person conversations serve as links among individuals who are physically and socially proximate, and writing serves as a bridge, connecting people who are geographically distant from each other. The World Cafe [^WorldCafe] or Open Space Technology [^OpenSpace] methods, where dozens or even thousands of people convene and participate in small groups for dialogue, while the written notes from those small clusters are synthesized and distributed broadly. Other examples include many constitutional and rule-making processes, book clubs, editorial boards for publications, focus groups, surveys, and other research processes, etc. A typical pattern is that a group deliberates on writing that is then submitted to another deliberative group that results in another document that is then sent back, and so on. One might recognize this in legal tradition via oral and written arguments, as well as the academic peer review process. -As this discussion illustrates, there have long been severe trade-offs between the richness of in-person discussion and the reach of the written word. Many structures attempt to harness elements of both through a network where in-person conversations and deliberations are nodes and writing acts as edges. The World Cafe [^WorldCafe] or Open Space Technology [^OpenSpace] methods, where dozens or even thousands of people convene and participate in small groups for dialogue, while the written notes from those small clusters are synthesized and distributed broadly. Other examples include many constitutional and rule-making processes, book clubs, editorial boards for publications, focus groups, surveys, and other research processes, etc. A typical pattern is that a group deliberates on writing that is then submitted to another deliberative group that results in another document that is then sent back, and so on. One might recognize this in legal tradition via oral and written arguments, as well as the academic peer review process. +One of the most fundamental challenges this variety of forms tries to navigate is the trade-off between diversity and bandwidth [^TradeoffDiversity]. On the one hand, when we attempt to engage individuals with vastly diverse perspectives in conversations, the discussions could become lengthy, costly, and time-consuming. This often means that they have trouble yielding definite and timely outcomes, the "analysis paralysis" often bemoaned in corporate settings and complaint (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) that "socialism takes too many evenings". +On the other hand, when we attempt to increase the bandwidth and efficiency of conversations, they often struggle to remain inclusive of diverse perspectives. People engaging in the conversation are often geographically dispersed, speak different languages, have different conversational norms, etc. Diversity in conversational styles, cultures and language often impede mutual understanding. Furthermore, given that it is impossible for everyone to be heard at length, some notion of representation is necessary for conversation to cross broad social diversity, as we will discuss at length below. -One of the most fundamental challenges this variety of forms tries to navigate is the trade-off between speed and inclusion. On the one hand, conversations are long, costly and time-consuming. This often means that they have trouble yielding definite and timely outcomes, the "analysis paralysis" often bemoaned in corporate settings and complaint (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) that "socialism takes too many evenings". +Perhaps the fundamental limit on all these approaches is that while methods of *broadcast* (allowing many to hear a single statement) have dramatically improved, *broad listening* (allowing one person to thoughtfully digest a range of perspectives) remains extremely costly and time consuming. As economics Nobel Laureate and computer science pioneer Herbert Simon observed, "(A) wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."[^InformationWealth] The cognitive limits on the amount of attention an individual can give, when trying to focus on diverse perspectives, potentially impose sharp trade-offs between diversity and bandwidth, as well as between richness and inclusion. +. -On the other hand, deliberation often struggles to be inclusive. People affected by a topic are often broadly geographically dispersed, speak different languages, have different conversational norms, etc. Diversity in conversational styles, cultures and language often impede mutual understanding. Furthermore, given that it is impossible for everyone to be heard at length, some notion of representation is necessary for conversation to cross broad social diversity, as we will discuss at length below. +A number of strategies have, historically and more recently, been used to navigate these challenges. Representatives are chosen for conversations by a variety of methods, including: -Perhaps the fundamental limit on all these approaches is that while methods of *broadcast* (allowing many to hear a single statement) have dramatically improved, *broad listening* (allowing one person to thoughtfully digest a range of perspectives) remains extremely costly and time consuming. As economics Nobel Laureate and computer science pioneer Herbert Simon observed, "(A) wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."[^InformationWealth] The limits on attention impose potentially sharp trade-offs on richness and inclusion. - -A number of strategies have, historically and more recently, been used to navigate these challenges. Representatives are chosen for conversations by a variety of methods, including -1. Election: A campaign and voting process is used to select representatives, often based on geographic or political party groups. This is used most commonly in politics, unions and churches, with the advantage of conferring a degree of broad participation, legitimacy and expertise, but often being rigid and expensive. +1. Election: A campaign and voting process are used to select representatives, often based on geographic or political party groups. This is used most commonly in politics, unions and churches, with the advantage of conferring a degree of broad participation, legitimacy and expertise, but often being rigid and expensive. 2. Sortition: A set of people are chosen randomly, sometimes with checks or constraints to ensure some sort of balance across groups. This is used most commonly in focus groups, surveys and juries, and maintains reasonable legitimacy and flexibility at low cost, but sacrifices (or needs to supplement with) expertise and has limited participation 3. Administration: A set of people are chosen by a bureaucratic assignment procedure, based on "merit" or managerial decisions to represent different relevant perspectives or constituencies. This is used most commonly in business and professional organizations and tends to have relatively high expertise and flexibility at low cost, but has lower legitimacy and participation. -Once participants to a deliberation are selected and arrive, facilitating a meaningful interaction is an equally significant challenge and is a science unto itself. Ensuring all participants, whatever their communicative modes and styles, are able to be fully heard requires a range of techniques, including active inclusion, careful management of turn-taking, encouragement of active listening and often translation and accommodation of differing abilities for auditory and visual communication styles. These strategies can help overcome the "tyranny of structurelessness" that often affects attempts at inclusive and democratic governance, where unfair informal norms and dominance hierarchies override intentions for inclusive exchange.[^TyrannyStructurelessness] - -Some of the challenges to inclusion have been significantly ameliorated by technology in recent years. Physical travel distance used to be a severe impediment to deliberation. Phone and video conferences have significantly mitigated this challenge, making various formats of distance/virtual meetings increasingly common loci for challenging discussions. - -Similarly expansive of inclusion in written formats has been the advent of internet-mediated writing, including email, message boards/usenets, webpages, blogs, and especially social media. These have offered a variety of alternative approaches for allocating limited attention, including by (effectively) popular vote of friends (via "likes" or "reposts") or website ranking and thus have allowed significant changes in the network structure imposed by editorial processes. While these have in many ways included many who could not speak in the past, the challenges of allocating attention continue to bite, with many of these media lacking context and thoughtful facilitation, leading to many of the problems we have highlighted previously including "misinformation", "disinformation" and flooding by well-resourced actors. - - +Once the participants who will engage in conversations and deliberations are selected, facilitating meaningful interaction becomes an equally significant challenge. Ensuring all participants, regardless of their communicative modes and styles, are able to be fully heard requires a range of techniques, including active inclusion, careful management of turn-taking, encouragement of active listening and often translation and accommodation of differing abilities for auditory and visual communication styles. These strategies can help overcome the "tyranny of structurelessness" that often affects attempts at inclusive and democratic governance, where unfair informal norms and dominance hierarchies override intentions for inclusive exchange [^TyrannyStructurelessness]. +Some of the challenges to “inclusion” have been significantly ameliorated by technology in recent years. Physical travel distance used to be a severe impediment to deliberation. However, phone and video conferences have significantly mitigated this challenge, making various formats of distance/virtual meetings increasingly common venues for challenging discussions. +The rise of internet-mediated writing, including formats such as email, message boards/usenets, webpages, blogs, and notably social media, has significantly broadened “inclusion” in written communication. These platforms offer unique opportunities for individuals to gain visibility and attention easily through user interactions (e.g., "likes" or "reposts") and algorithmic ranking systems. This paradigm shift has enabled the diffusion of information among the public, a process once firmly controlled by the editorial procedures of legacy media. However, the effectiveness of these platforms in optimally distributing attention remains a topic of debate. A common drawback is the lack of context and thorough moderation in the diffusion of information, contributing to issues like the spread of "misinformation" and "disinformation," and the dominance of well-resourced entities. Moreover, the reliance on algorithmic ranking can inadvertently create "echo chambers," confining users to a narrow stream of content that reflects their existing beliefs, thus limiting their exposure to a diverse range of perspectives and knowledge. ### Conversation tomorrow -A range of recent advances have begun to push back the frontier of these trade-offs, allowing more effective networked sharing of rich in-person deliberation and more thoughtful, balanced and contextualized moderation of more inclusive social media forms. +Recent advancements are progressively shifting the dynamics of the trade-offs, enabling more efficient and networked sharing of rich, in-person deliberations. Simultaneously, these developments are facilitating more thoughtful, balanced, and contextualized moderation within increasingly inclusive forms of social media, thereby enhancing the overall quality and reach of these platforms. As we discussed in the "View from Yushan" chapter above, one of the most successful examples in Taiwan has been the vTaiwan system, which harnesses OSS called Polis in English. This platform shares some features with social media services like X, but builds abstractions of some of the principles of inclusive facilitation into its attention allocation and user experience. As in X, users submit short responses to a prompt. But rather than amplifying or responding to one another's comments, they simply vote these up or down. These votes are then clustered to highlight patterns of common attitudes which form what one might call user perspectives. Representative statements that highlight these differing opinion groups' perspectives are displayed to allow users to understand key points of view, as are the perspectives that "bridge" the divisions: ones that receive assent across the lines that otherwise divide. Responding to this evolving conversation, users can offer additional perspectives that help to further bridge, articulate an existing position or draw out a new opinion group that may not yet be salient. -Polis is a prominent example of what leading ⿻ technologists Aviv Ovadya and Luke Thorburn call "collective response systems" and others call "wikisurveys". Other leading examples include All Our Ideas and Remesh, which have various trade-offs in terms of user experience, degrees of open source and other features. What these systems share is that they combine the participatory, open and interactive nature of social media with features that encourage thoughtful listening, an understanding of conversational dynamics and the careful emergence of an understanding of shared views and points of rough consensus. Such systems have been used to make increasingly consequential policy and design decisions, around topics such as the regulation of ride-hailing applications and the direction of some of the leading large foundation models (e.g. Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's "Democratic Inputs" project and resulting "collective alignment" team).[^DemocraticInputs] They have also been central to inspiring related approaches, such as X Community Notes that we highlighted above, that have even greater reach and influence. +Polis is a prominent example of what leading ⿻ technologists Aviv Ovadya and Luke Thorburn call "collective response systems" and others call "wikisurveys". Other leading examples include All Our Ideas and Remesh, which have various trade-offs in terms of user experience, degree of open source and other features. What these systems share is that they combine the participatory, open and interactive nature of social media with features that encourage thoughtful listening, an understanding of conversational dynamics and the careful emergence of an understanding of shared views and points of rough consensus. Such systems have been used to make increasingly consequential policy and design decisions, around topics such as the regulation of ride-hailing applications and the direction of some of the leading large foundation models (e.g. Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's "Democratic Inputs" project and resulting "collective alignment" team).[^DemocraticInputs] They have also been central to inspiring related approaches, such as X Community Notes that we highlighted above, that have even greater reach and influence. An approach with similar goals but a bit of an opposite starting point is one that centers in-person conversations but aims to improve the way their insights can be networked and shared. A leading example in this category is the approach developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for Constructive Communication in collaboration with their civil society collaborators; called Cortico. This approach and technology platform, dubbed Fora, uses a mixture of the identity and association protocols we discussed in the Freedom part of the book and natural language processing to allow recorded conversations on challenging topics to remain protected and private while surfacing insights that can travel across these conversations and spark further discussion. Community members, with permission from the speakers, lift consequential highlights up to stakeholders, such as government, policy makers or leadership within an organization. Cortico has used this technology to help inform civic processes such as the 2021 election of Michelle Wu as Boston's first woman and non-white (Taiwanese-American) mayor.[^RealTalk] The act of soliciting perspectives via deep conversational data in collaboration with underserved communities imbues the effort with a legitimacy absent from faster modes of communication. Related tools, of differing degrees of sophistication, are used by organizations like StoryCorps and Braver Angels and have reached millions of people. A third approach attempts to leverage and organize existing media content and exchanges, rather than induce participants to produce new content. Organizations like the Society Library collect available material from government documentation, social media, books, television etc. and organize it for citizens to highlight the contours of debate, including surfacing available facts. This practice is become increasingly scalable with some of the tools we describe below by harnessing digital technology to extend the tradition described above by extending the scale of deliberation by networking conversations across different venues together. -Other more experimental efforts overlap heavily with the approaches we highlighted in "Immersive Shared Reality", aiming to push the richness of remote deliberations towards that possible in person. A recent dramatic illustration was a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and leading podcast host Lex Fridman, where both were in virtual reality able to perceive minute facial expressions of the other. A less dramatic but perhaps more meaningful example was the Portals Policing Project, where cargo containers appeared in cities affected by police violence and allowed an enriched video-based exchange of experiences with such violence across physical and social distance. Other promising elements include the increasing ubiquity of high-quality, low-cost and increasingly culturally aware machine translation tools and work to harness similar systems to enable people to synthesize values and find common ground building from natural language statements. +Other more experimental efforts, closely aligned with the techniques discussed in "Immersive Shared Reality," aim to enhance the depth and quality of remote deliberations, aspiring to emulate the richness and immediacy typically found in in-person interactions. A recent dramatic illustration was a conversation between Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and leading podcast host Lex Fridman, where both were in virtual reality able to perceive minute facial expressions of the other. A less dramatic but perhaps more meaningful example was the Portals Policing Project, where cargo containers appeared in cities affected by police violence and allowed an enriched video-based exchange of experiences with such violence across physical and social distance. Other promising elements include the increasing ubiquity of high-quality, low-cost and increasingly culturally aware machine translation tools and work to harness similar systems to enable people to synthesize values and find common ground building from natural language statements. ### Frontiers of augmented deliberation -Some of these more ambitious experiments begin to point towards a future, especially harnessing large language models (LLMs), where we go much further towards addressing the broad listening problem, empowering deliberation of a quality and scale that has henceforth been hard to imagine. The Internet enables collaboration at an extreme scale by reducing the possible space of collaborative actions, such as to buy/sell market transactions, and by utilizing a similar reduction in information transmission, i.e. to five star rating systems. An effective increase in our ability to transmit and digest information can result in a corresponding increase in our ability to deliberate on difficult and nuanced social issues. +Some of these more ambitious experiments begin to point towards a future, especially harnessing large language models (LLMs), where we go much further towards addressing the “broad listening” problem, empowering deliberation of a quality and scale that has henceforth been hard to imagine. The Internet enables collaboration at an extreme scale by reducing the possible space of collaborative actions, such as to buy/sell market transactions, and by utilizing a similar reduction in information transmission, i.e. to five star rating systems. An effective increase in our ability to transmit and digest information can result in a corresponding increase in our ability to deliberate on difficult and nuanced social issues. -One of the most obvious directions that is a subject of active development is how systems like Polis and Community Notes could be extended with modern graph theory and LLMs. The "Talk to the City" project, for example, illustrates how LLMs can be used to replace a list of statements characterizing a group's views with an interactive agent one can talk to and get a sense for the perspective. Soon it should certainly be possible to go further, with LLMs avoiding participants being limited to short statements and up-and-down votes, instead allowing them to fully express themselves in reaction to the conversation, but with the models condensing this conversation and making it legible to others who can then participate, while also potentially retrieving facts to enrich the conversation from graphs like those the Society Library creates. Models could also help look for areas of rough consensus not simply based on common votes but on a natural language understanding of and response to expressed positions. +One of the most obvious directions that is a subject of active development is how systems like Polis and Community Notes could be extended with modern graph theory and LLMs. The "Talk to the City" project, for example, illustrates how LLMs can be used to replace a list of statements characterizing a group's views with an interactive agent one can talk to and get a sense for the perspective. Soon, it should certainly be possible to go further, with LLMs allowing participants to move beyond limited short statements and simple up-and-down votes. Instead, they will be able to fully express themselves in reaction to the conversation. Meanwhile, the models will condense this conversation, making it legible to others who can then participate. Models could also help look for areas of rough consensus not simply based on common votes but on a natural language understanding of and response to expressed positions. A recent large-scale study highlights the positive impact of AI tools in enhancing online democratic discussions. In this experiment, LLM was used to provide real-time, evidence-based suggestions aimed at refining the quality of political discourse to each participant in the conversation [^LLMDemocracy]. The results indicated a noticeable improvement in the overall quality of conversations, fostering a more democratic, reciprocal exchange of ideas. Notably, these AI-driven interventions were effective in elevating the tone of discussions while preserving the original content and viewpoints. -Furthermore, while the current discussion around collective response models focuses on identifying areas of rough consensus, another powerful role is to support the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict. On the one hand, they help identify different opinion groups in ways that are not a deterministic function of historical assumptions or identities, potentially allowing these groups to find each other and organize around their perspective. On the other hand, by surfacing representing consensus positions that have diverse support, they also create diverse opposition that can coalesce into a new conflict that does not reinforce existing divisions, potentially allowing organization around that perspective. In short, collective response systems can play just as important a role in mapping and evolving conflict dynamically as helping to navigate it productively. +Furthermore, while the current discussion around collective response models focuses on identifying areas of rough consensus, another powerful role is to support the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict. On the one hand, they help identify different opinion groups in ways that are not a deterministic function of historical assumptions or identities, potentially allowing these groups to find each other and organize around their perspective. On the other hand, by surfacing as representing consensus positions that have diverse support, they also create diverse opposition that can coalesce into a new conflict that does not reinforce existing divisions, potentially allowing organization around that perspective. In short, collective response systems can play just as important a role in mapping and evolving conflict dynamically as helping to navigate it productively. -In a similar spirit, one can imagine harnessing and advancing elements of the design of Community Notes to more holistically reshape social media dynamics. While the system currently lines up all opinions across the platform on a single spectrum, one can imagine mapping out a range of communities within the platform and harnessing its bridging-based approach not just to prioritize notes, but to prioritize content for attention in the first place. Bridging could be applied at many different scales and to many intersecting groups, not just to the platform overall. One can imagine a future where different content in a feed is highlighted as bridging and being shared among a range of communities one is a member of (a religious community, a physically local community, a political community), reinforcing context, common knowledge and action in a range of social affiliations. +In a similar spirit, one can imagine harnessing and advancing elements of the design of Community Notes to more holistically reshape social media dynamics. While the system currently lines up all opinions across the platform on a single spectrum, one can imagine mapping out a range of communities within the platform and harnessing its bridging-based approach not just to prioritize notes, but to prioritize content for attention in the first place. Furthermore, bridging can be applied at many different scales and to many intersecting groups, not just to the platform overall. One can imagine a future where different content in a feed is highlighted as bridging and being shared among a range of communities one is a member of (a religious community, a physically local community, a political community), reinforcing context and common knowledge and action in a range of social affiliations. -Such dynamic representations of social life could also dramatically improve how we approach representation and selection of participants for deeper deliberation. With a richer accounting of relevant social differences, it may be possible to move beyond geography, simple demographics, and skills within groups that need to be represented. Instead, it may be possible to increasingly use the full intersectional richness of identity as a basis for considering inclusion and representation. Constituencies defined this way could participate in elections or, instead of sortition, protocols could be devised to choose the maximally diverse committees for a deliberation. This could be devised by, for example, choosing a collection of participants that minimizes the marginalization of representation of the most marginalized participants, based on known social connections and affiliations. Such an approach could achieve many of the benefits of sortition, administration and election simultaneously, especially if combined with some of the liquid democracy approaches we discuss in the voting chapter below. +Such dynamic representations of social life could also dramatically improve how we approach representation and selection of participants for deeper deliberation, such as in person or in rich immersive shared realities. With a richer accounting of relevant social differences, it may be possible to move beyond geography or simple demographics and skills as groups that need to be represented. Instead, it may be possible to increasingly use the full intersectional richness of identity as a basis for considering inclusion and representation. Constituencies defined this way could participate in elections or, instead of sortition, protocols could be devised to choose the maximally diverse committees for a deliberation by, for example, choosing a collection of participants that minimizes how marginalized from representation the most marginalized participants are based on known social connections and affiliations. Such an approach could achieve many of the benefits of sortition, administration and election simultaneously, especially if combined with some of the liquid democracy approaches that we discuss in the voting chapter below. -It may be possible to, in some cases, even more radically re-imagine the idea of representation. LLMs can be "fine-tuned" to increasingly accurately mimic the ideas and styles of individuals, as we discussed in the previous chapter. But there is nothing special to individual humans about this approach: it is simply based on a body of text. One can imagine training a model on the text of a community of people and thus, rather than representing one person's perspective, it could operate as a fairly direct collective representative, possibly as an aid, complement or check on the discretion of a person intended to represent that group. +It may be possible to, in some cases, even more radically re-imagine the idea of representation. LLMs can be "fine-tuned" to increasingly accurately mimic the ideas and styles of individuals [^LLMFineTune]. One can imagine training a model on the text of a community of people and thus, rather than representing one person's perspective, it could operate as a fairly direct collective representative, possibly as an aid, complement or check on the discretion of a person intended to represent that group. -Most boldly, this idea could in principle extend beyond living human beings. In his classic *The Parliament of Things*, philosopher Bruno Latour argued that natural features (like rivers and forests) deserve representation in governments. The challenge, of course, is how these can speak. LLMs might offer ways to translate scientific measures of the state of these systems into a kind of "Lorax", Dr. Seuss's mythical creature who speaks for the trees and animals that cannot speak for themselves. Something similar might occur for unborn future generations, as in Kim Stanley Robinson's *Ministry for the Future*. For better or worse, such LLM-based representatives might be capable of carrying out deliberations faster than most humans can follow and might then convey summaries to human participants, allowing for deliberations that include individual humans and also allow for other styles, speeds and scales of natural language exchange. +Most boldly, this idea could in principle extend beyond living human beings. In his classic *The Parliament of Things*, philosopher Bruno Latour argued that natural features (like rivers and forests) deserve representation in governments. The challenge, of course, is how they can speak. LLMs might offer ways to translate scientific measures of the state of these systems into a kind of "Lorax", Dr. Seuss's mythical creature who speaks for the trees and animals that cannot speak for themselves. Something similar might occur for unborn future generations, as in Kim Stanley Robinson's *Ministry for the Future*. For better or worse, such LLM-based representatives might be capable of carrying out deliberations faster than most humans can follow and might then convey summaries to human participants, allowing for deliberations that include individual humans and also allow for other styles, speeds and scales of natural language exchange. ### Limits of deliberation -The centrality of natural language to human interaction makes it tempting to forget its severe limitations. Words may be richer symbols than numbers, but they are as dust compared to the richness of human sensory experience, not to mention proprioception. "Words cannot capture" far more than they can. Whatever emotional truth it has, it is simply information theoretically logical that we form far deeper attention in common action and experience than in verbal exchange. Thus, however far deliberation advances, it cannot substitute completely for the other richer forms of collaboration we have already discussed. +The centrality of natural language to human interaction makes it tempting to forget its severe limitations. Words may be richer symbols than numbers, but they are as dust compared to the richness of human sensory experience, not to mention proprioception. "Words cannot capture" far more than they can. Whatever emotional truth it has, it is simply information theoretically logical that we form far deeper attention in common action and experience than in verbal exchange. Thus, however far deliberation advances, it cannot substitute for the richer forms of collaboration we have already discussed. + + +Furthermore, and on the opposite side, talk takes time, even in the sophisticated versions we describe. Many decisions cannot wait for deliberation to fully run its course, especially when great social distance has to be bridged, which will generally slow the process. The other approaches to collaboration we discuss below will typically be needed to address the need for timely decisions in many cases. + + +Many of the ways in which the slow pace of discussion can be overcome (e.g. using LLMs to conduct partially "in silico" deliberation) illustrate another important limitation of conversation: many other methods are often more easily made transparent and thus broadly legitimate. The way conversations take inputs and produce outputs are hard to fully describe, whether they occur across people or in machines. In fact, one could consider inputting natural language to a machine and producing a machine dictate as just a more sophisticated, non-linear form of voting. But, in contrast to the administrative and voting rules we will discuss below, it might be very hard to achieve common understanding and legitimacy on how this transformation takes place and thus make it the basis for common action in the way that voting and markets often are. Thus checks on the way deliberations occur and are observed arising from those other systems are likely to be important for a long time to come. -Furthermore, and on the opposite side, talk takes time. Many decisions cannot wait for deliberation to fully run its course, especially when great social distance has to be bridged, which will generally slow the process. The other approaches to collaboration we discuss below will typically be needed to address the need for timely decisions in many cases, though many of the sophisticated forms of deliberation we have described have greatly sped up the process. +Furthermore, deliberation in the democratic process is also limited by the ability for humans to practically survey more capable LLM (scalable oversight). This poses a unique limitation for model evaluators where supervision is not sufficient, due to overly powerful AI Systems. LLMs have also been demonstrated to adhere to instructions blindly; this can raise issues around LLM censorship as a factor that can undermine the democratic process within AI systems[^LLMCensorship]. This situation highlights the urgent need to explore alternative strategies for aligning LLMs with more ⿻istic, democratic objectives. The challenge lies in training models to offer a diverse array of reasonable responses, enabling them to adapt and reflect various perspectives, and ensuring they are accurately calibrated to the nuances of specific populations. -Also, many of the ways in which the slow pace of discussion can be overcome (e.g. using LLMs to conduct partially "in silico" deliberation) illustrate another important limitation of conversation: many other methods are often more easily made transparent and thus broadly legitimate. The way conversations take inputs and produce outputs are hard to fully describe, whether they occur across people or in machines. In fact, one could consider inputting natural language to a machine and producing a machine dictate as just a more sophisticated, non-linear form of voting. But, in contrast to the administrative and voting rules we will discuss below, it might be very hard to achieve common understanding and legitimacy on how this transformation takes place and thus make it the basis for common action in the way that voting and markets often are. Thus checks on the way deliberations occur and are observed arising from those other systems are likely to be important for a long time to come. +Furthermore, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions and reach a true "common will". Yet, while reaching points of overlapping and rough consensus is crucial for common action, so is the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict to fuel dynamism and ensure productive inputs to future deliberations. Thus deliberations and their balance with other modes of collaboration must always attend, as we have illustrated above, to this stimulus to productive conflict as much as it does to the resolution towards active and away from explosive conflict. -Deliberation in the democratic process is also limited by the ability for humans to practically survey more capable LLM (scalable oversight). This poses a unique limitation for model evaluators where supervision is not sufficient, due to overly powerful AI Systems. LLMs have also been demonstrated to adhere to instructions blindly; this can raise issues around LLM censorship as a factor that can undermine the democratic process within AI systems7. +[^CNDiversity]: Junsol Kim, Zhao Wang, Haohan Shi, Hsin-Keng Ling, and James Evans. "Individual misinformation tagging reinforces echo chambers; Collective tagging does not." _arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.11282_ (2023). [https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11282](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11282) -Also, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions and reach a true "common will". Yet, while reaching points of overlapping and rough consensus is crucial for common action, so is the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict to fuel dynamism and ensure productive inputs to future deliberations. Thus deliberations and their balance with other modes of collaboration must always attend, as we have illustrated above, to this stimulus to productive conflict as much as it does to the resolution towards active and away from explosive conflict. +[^TradeoffDiversity]: Sinan Aral, and Marshall Van Alstyne. "The diversity-bandwidth trade-off." American journal of sociology 117, no. 1 (2011): 90-171. [^InformationWealth]: Simon, Herbert. (1971) Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich World, _Computers, Communications, and the Public Interest_ @@ -120,4 +116,7 @@ Also, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions and reac [^OpenSpaceTechnnology] [Open Space Technology](https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/) +[^LLMDemocracy]: Lisa P. Argyle, Christopher A. Bail, Ethan C. Busby, Joshua R. Gubler, Thomas Howe, Christopher Rytting, Taylor Sorensen, and David Wingate. "Leveraging AI for democratic discourse: Chat interventions can improve online political conversations at scale." _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 120, no. 41 (2023): e2311627120. +[^LLMFinetune]: Junsol Kim, and Byungkyu Lee, "Ai-augmented surveys: Leveraging large language models for opinion prediction in nationally representative surveys," _arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.09620_ (2023). [https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620]( https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620) +![image](https://github.com/JunsolKim/plurality/assets/13177827/e3fe9414-18aa-46e6-b968-3f08b5fefab1) From 0772814e12866b7b9feb2ebefff46ea4580c68f9 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junsol Kim Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:42:15 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 3/9] Update 05-04-augmented-deliberation.md --- contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md | 3 +-- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md index 12171a87..da9827d7 100644 --- a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -118,5 +118,4 @@ Furthermore, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions a [^LLMDemocracy]: Lisa P. Argyle, Christopher A. Bail, Ethan C. Busby, Joshua R. Gubler, Thomas Howe, Christopher Rytting, Taylor Sorensen, and David Wingate. "Leveraging AI for democratic discourse: Chat interventions can improve online political conversations at scale." _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 120, no. 41 (2023): e2311627120. -[^LLMFinetune]: Junsol Kim, and Byungkyu Lee, "Ai-augmented surveys: Leveraging large language models for opinion prediction in nationally representative surveys," _arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.09620_ (2023). [https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620]( https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620) -![image](https://github.com/JunsolKim/plurality/assets/13177827/e3fe9414-18aa-46e6-b968-3f08b5fefab1) +[^LLMFinetune]: Junsol Kim, and Byungkyu Lee, "Ai-augmented surveys: Leveraging large language models for opinion prediction in nationally representative surveys," _arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.09620_ (2023). [https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620](https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.09620) From e6fe973326114e26f9b8d59b281d17b2a626e5fb Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junsol Kim Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:42:48 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 4/9] Update 05-04-augmented-deliberation.md --- contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md index da9827d7..ce19ebce 100644 --- a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -112,9 +112,9 @@ Furthermore, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions a [^LLMCensorship]: David Glukhov, Ilia Shumailov, Yarin Gal, Nicolas Papernot, Vardan Papyan (2023). LLM Censorship: A Machine Learning Challenge or a Computer Security Problem? https://arxiv.org/abs/2307.10719 -[^WorldCafe] [World Cafe](https://theworldcafe.com/) +[^WorldCafe]: [World Cafe](https://theworldcafe.com/) -[^OpenSpaceTechnnology] [Open Space Technology](https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/) +[^OpenSpaceTechnnology]: [Open Space Technology](https://openspaceworld.org/wp2/) [^LLMDemocracy]: Lisa P. Argyle, Christopher A. Bail, Ethan C. Busby, Joshua R. Gubler, Thomas Howe, Christopher Rytting, Taylor Sorensen, and David Wingate. "Leveraging AI for democratic discourse: Chat interventions can improve online political conversations at scale." _Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences_ 120, no. 41 (2023): e2311627120. From ab2b03bc72904d365e77306179f54e1770e3e715 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junsol Kim Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:46:54 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 5/9] Update 05-04-augmented-deliberation.md --- contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md | 4 ++-- 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md index ce19ebce..88ec5e92 100644 --- a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -89,14 +89,14 @@ Most boldly, this idea could in principle extend beyond living human beings. In The centrality of natural language to human interaction makes it tempting to forget its severe limitations. Words may be richer symbols than numbers, but they are as dust compared to the richness of human sensory experience, not to mention proprioception. "Words cannot capture" far more than they can. Whatever emotional truth it has, it is simply information theoretically logical that we form far deeper attention in common action and experience than in verbal exchange. Thus, however far deliberation advances, it cannot substitute for the richer forms of collaboration we have already discussed. -Furthermore, and on the opposite side, talk takes time, even in the sophisticated versions we describe. Many decisions cannot wait for deliberation to fully run its course, especially when great social distance has to be bridged, which will generally slow the process. The other approaches to collaboration we discuss below will typically be needed to address the need for timely decisions in many cases. +On the opposite side, talk takes time, even in the sophisticated versions we describe. Many decisions cannot wait for deliberation to fully run its course, especially when great social distance has to be bridged, which will generally slow the process. The other approaches to collaboration we discuss below will typically be needed to address the need for timely decisions in many cases. Many of the ways in which the slow pace of discussion can be overcome (e.g. using LLMs to conduct partially "in silico" deliberation) illustrate another important limitation of conversation: many other methods are often more easily made transparent and thus broadly legitimate. The way conversations take inputs and produce outputs are hard to fully describe, whether they occur across people or in machines. In fact, one could consider inputting natural language to a machine and producing a machine dictate as just a more sophisticated, non-linear form of voting. But, in contrast to the administrative and voting rules we will discuss below, it might be very hard to achieve common understanding and legitimacy on how this transformation takes place and thus make it the basis for common action in the way that voting and markets often are. Thus checks on the way deliberations occur and are observed arising from those other systems are likely to be important for a long time to come. Furthermore, deliberation in the democratic process is also limited by the ability for humans to practically survey more capable LLM (scalable oversight). This poses a unique limitation for model evaluators where supervision is not sufficient, due to overly powerful AI Systems. LLMs have also been demonstrated to adhere to instructions blindly; this can raise issues around LLM censorship as a factor that can undermine the democratic process within AI systems[^LLMCensorship]. This situation highlights the urgent need to explore alternative strategies for aligning LLMs with more ⿻istic, democratic objectives. The challenge lies in training models to offer a diverse array of reasonable responses, enabling them to adapt and reflect various perspectives, and ensuring they are accurately calibrated to the nuances of specific populations. -Furthermore, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions and reach a true "common will". Yet, while reaching points of overlapping and rough consensus is crucial for common action, so is the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict to fuel dynamism and ensure productive inputs to future deliberations. Thus deliberations and their balance with other modes of collaboration must always attend, as we have illustrated above, to this stimulus to productive conflict as much as it does to the resolution towards active and away from explosive conflict. +Lastly, deliberation is sometimes idealized as helping overcome divisions and reach a true "common will". Yet, while reaching points of overlapping and rough consensus is crucial for common action, so is the regeneration of diversity and productive conflict to fuel dynamism and ensure productive inputs to future deliberations. Thus deliberations and their balance with other modes of collaboration must always attend, as we have illustrated above, to this stimulus to productive conflict as much as it does to the resolution towards active and away from explosive conflict. [^CNDiversity]: Junsol Kim, Zhao Wang, Haohan Shi, Hsin-Keng Ling, and James Evans. "Individual misinformation tagging reinforces echo chambers; Collective tagging does not." _arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.11282_ (2023). [https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11282](https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.11282) From 4c58fe1235033da1eb538c369e29568b0825ea30 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Junsol Kim Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 22:48:42 -0500 Subject: [PATCH 6/9] Update 05-04-augmented-deliberation.md --- contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md | 3 +-- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 2 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md index 88ec5e92..f3206d1b 100644 --- a/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md +++ b/contents/english/05-04-augmented-deliberation.md @@ -22,12 +22,11 @@ The next oldest and most common communicative form is writing. While far less in This underscores a crucial trade-off: the richness and immediacy of in-person discussions versus the extensive reach and permanence of the written word. Many platforms strive to blend elements of both in-person and written communication by creating a network where in-person conversations serve as links among individuals who are physically and socially proximate, and writing serves as a bridge, connecting people who are geographically distant from each other. The World Cafe [^WorldCafe] or Open Space Technology [^OpenSpace] methods, where dozens or even thousands of people convene and participate in small groups for dialogue, while the written notes from those small clusters are synthesized and distributed broadly. Other examples include many constitutional and rule-making processes, book clubs, editorial boards for publications, focus groups, surveys, and other research processes, etc. A typical pattern is that a group deliberates on writing that is then submitted to another deliberative group that results in another document that is then sent back, and so on. One might recognize this in legal tradition via oral and written arguments, as well as the academic peer review process. -One of the most fundamental challenges this variety of forms tries to navigate is the trade-off between diversity and bandwidth [^TradeoffDiversity]. On the one hand, when we attempt to engage individuals with vastly diverse perspectives in conversations, the discussions could become lengthy, costly, and time-consuming. This often means that they have trouble yielding definite and timely outcomes, the "analysis paralysis" often bemoaned in corporate settings and complaint (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) that "socialism takes too many evenings". +One of the most fundamental challenges this variety of forms tries to navigate is the trade-off between diversity and bandwidth [^TradeoffDiversity]. On the one hand, when we attempt to engage individuals with vastly diverse perspectives in conversations, the discussions could become less efficient, lengthy, costly, and time-consuming. This often means that they have trouble yielding definite and timely outcomes, the "analysis paralysis" often bemoaned in corporate settings and complaint (sometimes attributed to Oscar Wilde) that "socialism takes too many evenings". On the other hand, when we attempt to increase the bandwidth and efficiency of conversations, they often struggle to remain inclusive of diverse perspectives. People engaging in the conversation are often geographically dispersed, speak different languages, have different conversational norms, etc. Diversity in conversational styles, cultures and language often impede mutual understanding. Furthermore, given that it is impossible for everyone to be heard at length, some notion of representation is necessary for conversation to cross broad social diversity, as we will discuss at length below. Perhaps the fundamental limit on all these approaches is that while methods of *broadcast* (allowing many to hear a single statement) have dramatically improved, *broad listening* (allowing one person to thoughtfully digest a range of perspectives) remains extremely costly and time consuming. As economics Nobel Laureate and computer science pioneer Herbert Simon observed, "(A) wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."[^InformationWealth] The cognitive limits on the amount of attention an individual can give, when trying to focus on diverse perspectives, potentially impose sharp trade-offs between diversity and bandwidth, as well as between richness and inclusion. -. A number of strategies have, historically and more recently, been used to navigate these challenges. Representatives are chosen for conversations by a variety of methods, including: From 1c096d47a31d4dc99c99028153dfa0aa36f33cf7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kaliya - Identity Woman Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 21:21:40 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 7/9] =?UTF-8?q?Update=2004-00-rights-os-and-=E2=BF=BB-free?= =?UTF-8?q?dom.md?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit I just reframed sightly away from "No protocols" to "no widely adopted non-proprietary" protocols - which is more accurate. I put in foot notes for the existing/emerging protocols that are not yet widely adopted - but to exist. --- ...04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" | 17 ++++++++++++++++- 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git "a/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" "b/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" index 91e8b814..09aab16a 100644 --- "a/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" +++ "b/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" @@ -127,7 +127,22 @@ Intellectually and philosophically, the ⿻ tradition we described in "Connected Because technological systems are instantiated in formal mathematical relationships, a simple way to see what this requires is to use the canonical mathematical model that directly corresponds to ⿻ description of society: the "hypergraph" as pictured in the figure. A hypergraph, which extends the more common idea of a network or graph by allowing groups rather than just bilateral relationships, is a collection of "nodes" (viz. people, represented by the dots) and "edges" (viz. groups, represented by the blobs). The shade of each edge/group represents the strength of the relationship involved (viz. mathematically its "weight" and "direction"), while the digital assets contained in the edges represent the collaborative substrate of these groups. Any such digital model is, of course, not literally the social world but an abstraction of it and for real humans to access it requires a range of digital tools, which we represent by the arrows entering into the diagram. These elements constitute jointly a menu of rights/OS properties which one of each of the next five chapters articulates more completely: identity/personhood, association, commercial trust, property/contract and access. -The project of constructing shared digital protocols to reflect these has hardly begun, as we highlighted in "The Lost Dao". Most of the natural, fundamental affordances of networking are not available to most people even in wealthy countries as basic parts of the online experience. There is no native, non-proprietary protocol for identification that protects rights to life and personhood online, no protocols for the ways we communicate and form groups online that allows free association, no protocols for payments to support commerce on real–world assets and no protocols for the secure sharing of digital assets like computation, memory and data that would allow rights of property and contract in the digital world. These services are almost all controlled and often quasi-monopolized by nation state governments or more often by private corporations. And even the basic conception of networks that lies behind most approaches to addressing these challenges is too limited, ignoring the central role of intersecting communities. If rights are to have any meaning in our digital world, this has to change. +The project of constructing shared digital protocols to reflect these is in nacent stages, as we highlighted in "The Lost Dao". Most of the natural, fundamental affordances of networking are not available to most people even in wealthy countries as basic parts of the online experience. + +There is no widely adopted, non-proprietary protocol for identification[^IDprotocols] that protects rights to life and personhood online, +no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for the ways we communicate [^MIMI] [^MLS] [^DIDComm] and form groups online that allows free association, + +no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for payments to support commerce on real–world assets and no protocols for the secure sharing of digital assets like computation, + +memory[^FFC] and data[^holoChain] that would allow rights of property and contract in the digital world. + +These services are almost all controlled and often quasi-monopolized by nation state governments or more often by private corporations. And even the basic conception of networks that lies behind most approaches to addressing these challenges is too limited, ignoring the central role of intersecting communities. If rights are to have any meaning in our digital world, this has to change. Luckily, it has begun to change. A variety of developments in the past decade have fitfully taken up the mantle of the "missing layers" of the internet. This work includes the "Web3" and "Decentralized Web" ecosystems, the Gaia-X data sharing framework in Europe, the development of a variety of digital-native currencies and payment systems and most prominently growing investment in "digital public infrastructure" as exemplified by the "India stack" developed in the country in the last decade. These efforts have been underfunded, fragmented across countries and ideologies and in many cases limited in ambition or misled by technocratic or libertarian ideologies or overly simplistic understanding of networks. But they together represent a proof of concept that a more systematic pursuit of ⿻ is feasible. In this section of the book, we will show how to build on these projects, invest in their future and accelerate our way towards a ⿻ future. +[^IDprotocols] [Decentralized Identifiers](https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/) step of closed proprietary name space and globally managed registries. There is also [Verifiable Credentials](https://www.w3.org/TR/vc-data-model/) that support people being able to collect credentials from a variety of sources. +[^MIMI] https://datatracker.ietf.org/group/mimi/about/ +[^MLS] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messaging_Layer_Security +[^DIDComm] https://blog.identity.foundation/didcomm-v2/ +[^FFC] https://fil.org/ IPFS https://www.ipfs.tech/ +[^holoChain] https://www.holochain.org/ From bbf4b8f25eec5c2e2775c4abc0cc851563da1465 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kaliya - Identity Woman Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 21:24:13 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 8/9] =?UTF-8?q?Update=2004-00-rights-os-and-=E2=BF=BB-free?= =?UTF-8?q?dom.md?= MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit --- .../04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" | 11 +---------- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 10 deletions(-) diff --git "a/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" "b/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" index 09aab16a..106e3524 100644 --- "a/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" +++ "b/contents/english/04-00-rights-os-and-\342\277\273-freedom.md" @@ -127,16 +127,7 @@ Intellectually and philosophically, the ⿻ tradition we described in "Connected Because technological systems are instantiated in formal mathematical relationships, a simple way to see what this requires is to use the canonical mathematical model that directly corresponds to ⿻ description of society: the "hypergraph" as pictured in the figure. A hypergraph, which extends the more common idea of a network or graph by allowing groups rather than just bilateral relationships, is a collection of "nodes" (viz. people, represented by the dots) and "edges" (viz. groups, represented by the blobs). The shade of each edge/group represents the strength of the relationship involved (viz. mathematically its "weight" and "direction"), while the digital assets contained in the edges represent the collaborative substrate of these groups. Any such digital model is, of course, not literally the social world but an abstraction of it and for real humans to access it requires a range of digital tools, which we represent by the arrows entering into the diagram. These elements constitute jointly a menu of rights/OS properties which one of each of the next five chapters articulates more completely: identity/personhood, association, commercial trust, property/contract and access. -The project of constructing shared digital protocols to reflect these is in nacent stages, as we highlighted in "The Lost Dao". Most of the natural, fundamental affordances of networking are not available to most people even in wealthy countries as basic parts of the online experience. - -There is no widely adopted, non-proprietary protocol for identification[^IDprotocols] that protects rights to life and personhood online, -no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for the ways we communicate [^MIMI] [^MLS] [^DIDComm] and form groups online that allows free association, - -no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for payments to support commerce on real–world assets and no protocols for the secure sharing of digital assets like computation, - -memory[^FFC] and data[^holoChain] that would allow rights of property and contract in the digital world. - -These services are almost all controlled and often quasi-monopolized by nation state governments or more often by private corporations. And even the basic conception of networks that lies behind most approaches to addressing these challenges is too limited, ignoring the central role of intersecting communities. If rights are to have any meaning in our digital world, this has to change. +The project of constructing shared digital protocols to reflect these is in nacent stages, as we highlighted in "The Lost Dao". Most of the natural, fundamental affordances of networking are not available to most people even in wealthy countries as basic parts of the online experience. There is no widely adopted, non-proprietary protocol for identification[^IDprotocols] that protects rights to life and personhood online, no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for the ways we communicate [^MIMI] [^MLS] [^DIDComm] and form groups online that allows free association, no widely adopted non-proprietary protocols for payments to support commerce on real–world assets and no protocols for the secure sharing of digital assets like computation, memory[^FFC] and data[^holoChain] that would allow rights of property and contract in the digital world. Many of these services are almost all controlled and often quasi-monopolized by nation state governments or more often by private corporations. And even the basic conception of networks that lies behind most approaches to addressing these challenges is too limited, ignoring the central role of intersecting communities. If rights are to have any meaning in our digital world, this has to change. Luckily, it has begun to change. A variety of developments in the past decade have fitfully taken up the mantle of the "missing layers" of the internet. This work includes the "Web3" and "Decentralized Web" ecosystems, the Gaia-X data sharing framework in Europe, the development of a variety of digital-native currencies and payment systems and most prominently growing investment in "digital public infrastructure" as exemplified by the "India stack" developed in the country in the last decade. These efforts have been underfunded, fragmented across countries and ideologies and in many cases limited in ambition or misled by technocratic or libertarian ideologies or overly simplistic understanding of networks. But they together represent a proof of concept that a more systematic pursuit of ⿻ is feasible. In this section of the book, we will show how to build on these projects, invest in their future and accelerate our way towards a ⿻ future. From c83b72960e69120a95e7a57f945a99b8e728c629 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Kaliya - Identity Woman Date: Sun, 10 Mar 2024 21:43:27 -0700 Subject: [PATCH 9/9] Update 04-01-identity-and-personhood.md I modified the language about "on a blockchain" and "etched in a digital ledger" there is no need for either to make the use-case as it is articulated come alive and make sense. --- contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md | 6 +++--- 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-) diff --git a/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md b/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md index 1ad87703..8e7bff8d 100644 --- a/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md +++ b/contents/english/04-01-identity-and-personhood.md @@ -14,8 +14,8 @@ Her nearly defunct phone loaded a page with a few straightforward questions. She swiftly affixed her signature on the screen. Her phone then began displaying pertinent information to assist her in responding to the questions accurately. -- In a conflict-torn village, you built makeshift schools, bringing smiles to children's faces. This beacon of hope is echoed by 76 trustworthy sources, their praises etched on a digital ledger, endorsed by agencies recognized by the EU. -- At a press conference, your firm stance against affiliations with harmful individuals to your community echoed powerfully, backed by 41 affirming testimonials on a secure blockchain, showcasing an unyielding protector of society. +- In a conflict-torn village, you built makeshift schools, bringing smiles to children's faces. This beacon of hope is echoed by 76 trustworthy sources, their praises contained in multiple digital credentials, endorsed by agencies recognized by the EU. +- At a press conference, your firm stance against affiliations with harmful individuals to your community echoed powerfully, backed by 41 affirming testimonials digitally signed, showcasing an unyielding protector of society. - Your efforts in bridging dialogue between communities and 34 government agencies have crafted a shield of trust and safety around you, each acknowledgment a mark of your dedication, immortalized in a digital shield of recognition. - Your innovation fueled life changing projects, celebrated by 78% of your peers through vibrant digital narratives, weaving a dynamic tapestry of your significant contributions to the engineering sector. - Your support for... @@ -206,4 +206,4 @@ As we noted above, almost everything relevant about us is known by others and is [^icard]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_card [^CS]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_CardSpace [^DID]: https://www.w3.org/TR/did-core/ -[^AnonAadhaar]: https://mirror.xyz/privacy-scaling-explorations.eth/YnqHAxpjoWl4e_K2opKPN4OAy5EU4sIJYYYHFCjkNOE \ No newline at end of file +[^AnonAadhaar]: https://mirror.xyz/privacy-scaling-explorations.eth/YnqHAxpjoWl4e_K2opKPN4OAy5EU4sIJYYYHFCjkNOE