Dear Guy and all,
thank you for your answer, feedback and interesting questions. Of course, we would appreciate it, if Dr. Nicholas Gruen would join our discussion!
ok. We can give you some more information concerning the ELD-Eisberg model and the related methods, and how to integrate and extend the Policy Incubator (concept) within the field of Extended Liquid Democracy (see figure 1 above capturing the ELD-Eisberg model).
First, we like to make some more distinctions concerning the method categories above and under water:
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On the one hand, the ELD-Eisberg model reflects the final (materialized) realization of the Eisberg above the water, i.e. the final resolution, which in line with the “Republikstandard” is found by a Yes/No - majority vote. If the final resolution is made by a legally binding referendum, it is called direct democracy. If the final resolution is made by groups of representatives or a parliament, it is called representative democracy.
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On the other hand, there are bottom-up methods, the underwater sphere including the water surface, which are associated with the emergence of the will and preferences, and an open participatory decision-making before the final resolution. With the concept of Extended Liquid Democracy, we primarily focus on the processes and results, which should naturally occur before the stage of final resolution above the water.
In contrast to the legally fixed final resolution format realized by Yes/No majority-voting, the format of the decision-making process before the final resolution is, besides proposals for certain quorums, less legally fixed. So we think, besides the Yes-quorums described in Guy’s flow chart of the policy-making process, there is still a good space for theory and experimenting with open questions, decisions with more than 2 solutions/proposals, rating of different argument levels and additionally using ordinal and metric scales as quality indicators in the phase of decision-making before the final resolution.
Yes, that’s right. While Policy Incubator incorporates a rather unstructured minimal standard, the ELD-Eisberg model is a more structured theoretical and complex scientific approach.
In your flow chart of the concept of policy-making with the Policy Incubator, you describe a process where one issue of citizens’ interests are brought up to another political class-level (the policy-maker) where the proposal is written and optimized until it is finally decided by referendum. As your concept integrates participatory and direct democratic elements of resolution, it can be included within ELD as a rather unstructured, participatory tool under the top-down (resolution-like) procedures related to the top of the Eisberg above the water. Top-down methods with single solutions and nominal scales, even for more complex problems, thereby have the lowest level of freedom and information in expressing the result of more complex considerations and comparisons of alternatives compared to bottom-up methods.
The following basic assumptions of the ELD-Eisberg model underline this:
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A method is categorized as top-down when it includes closed questions concerning up to 2 issues that are answered by a nominal scale of either Yes or No.
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A method is categorized as bottom-up when it includes open questions, an open gathering of a diversity of more than 2 problems and/or solutions and feedback is given with traffic light (ordinal) or more sensitive, metric scales (e.g. like a thermometer) for every alternative.
Comparing the definitions of bottom up and top-down processes in political sociology versus natural sciences of self-organization and the will, we think to recognize a difference or bias that may be caused by a rather ideologically framed political sociology of governance. Political sociology of governance often seems to frame bottom-up and top-down processes by class stereotypes according to a more or less undoubted power hierarchy. Thereby, the formation of the will is (ideologically pseudo-) explained by personified power hierarchies of authorities (e.g. citizens, politicians, leaders and final God) - instead of a structural ELD-theory of the will and rational criteria for conscientious decision-making and public welfare.
In Psychology, bottom-up processes (on the individual level) are associated with the stimulus-driven parts of perception and action, and with the emergence of automatized habits and conditioned behaviour that instrumentally reduce or change an unwanted state. There are a lot of autonomous and less conscious processes and needs that may be relevant for self-regulation and an organisms’ homoeostasis. In contrast, top-down processes (on the individual level) are associated with the cognitive parts of perception, self-controlled action and volitional efficiency, that for example enable the identification of objects, self-discrimination, attentional control, e.g. the ignoring of irrelevant ideas and options, and behavioural persistence in executing a certain plan to reach an important goal or a desired state.
In self-organizing groups of equal members, bottom-up is related to the open, decentral and pluralistic pattern formation of a group’s will by a free, equal and sensitive prioritization of inner-democratic needs or an upcoming group consensus about most fitting solution(s). In contrast, top-down (at the group level) is related to a monistic resolution, centralized government and execution of any will by enslaving individual degrees of freedom and dominating a group’s discussion, planning and action progress in favour of anyone’s goals.
Yes, we hope so.
Yes, the ELD-theory and the Eisberg model make several structural assumptions for an upgraded self-organized collective intelligence (e.g. via FixMyRepublic). These are for example:
- the distinctions of bottom-up versus top-down processes and decision methods,
- of psychological mind sets for self-coherent goal setting versus the execution of one’s will,
- of an information and discussion phase that can be iterated, in terms of “quiet revolutions”, to transparently optimize proposals before the final resolution;
- a problem solving and proposal-structure for a fully defined intention and the TOTE-unity, possibly with multiple votings on varying argument levels,
- and universal rational choice criteria that may increase efficiency, coherence with common goals and representativeness through performance-contingent (real-time) liquid feedback.
The ELD-theory further suggests several algorithms for the initiation and utilization of bottom-up and top-down methods and processes, e.g. to avoid people unconsciously being forced into false dilemmas and inhibited in their freedom of expression and choice concerning their intuitive and rational processes and results of matching, rating, comparing and ranking of concrete needs, goals and actions (under water).
Moreover, there is an ELD-inherent categorization of methods resulting in different modules that can be worked with on different (sub-)argument levels. At the moment, we differentiate 5 ELD-modules including the Republikstandard module A and the Real Liquid Feedback modules B to E:
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Module A (usal majority voting) = characterized by single or multiple closed questions with up to 2 options, nominal rating (e.g. Yes, YES/No) and discussion of pro and/or contra
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Module B (informative majority voting) = characterized by closed or open questions with up to 3 options, ordinal rating (e.g. a traffic-light scale measuring the solutions fit with common goals) and discussion of reasons for fit (green), non-fit (red), and anticipated conditions of fit (yellow).
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Module C (quick selectional consensus) = characterized by open questions with more than 2 or 3 options, metric ratings of priority, suitability/fit or precision, and discussion of reasons
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Module D (medium to intensive selectional consensus) = characterized by open questions with more than 2 or 3 options, multiple metric ratings of priority, suitability/fit and precision and iteration of discussion process to optimize proposals.
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Module E (quick to intensive Consensus Cafés) = characterized by multiple open questions, e.g. for solving complex sub-/problems with single to multiple ordinal to metric quality scales and iterations of discussion phases to decentrally and equally create and optimize a common codex, manifest or management.
We further like to discuss some use cases and results of these ELD-modules
within a fictional scenario:
It comes up in an independent grassroots community that a team member wears a weapon. Some team members want to discuss its relevance and acceptance.
Which possibilities does the community have to discuss this topic and self-organize with the help of an ELD-compatible platform?
Self-organization, a posteriori (after the incident) with:
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Module A: a majority voting concerning the question whether it should be allowed to wear a weapon with a pro/contra discussion with yes or no as options.
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Module B: an informative majority voting (of experts, a jury, community-members) concerning the question whether and under which circumstances the wearing of a weapon is acceptable by law or fits with the codex of the group by means of a traffic-lights-scale plus comments including conditions of fit. If there is a majority for no-fit and “fits under conditions” further proceed with module C…
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Module C: Evaluating the degree of violence of the deviant behaviour with a necessary 80% agreement in ratings of independent, blinded raters (e.g. experts, a jury, community members). The level of violence which is reached by an 80% consensus is associated with a specific a priori fixed sanction level in a treatment list that is build before the incidence (Module D).
Self-organization, a priori (before the incident) with:
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Module C: A regular discussion and priority ranking via metric priority ratings of (most) important problems and goals in the community to be discussed or solved.
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Module C: A discussion about how to improve safety in the community according to common values and goals, especially when it is given a high priority by the community members.
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Module D: Building and optimizing a list of automatized tailored treatment dependent on the 80% agreement of experts and community members concerning a specific treatment or sanction that should be given for a certain degree of violence or deviant behaviour.
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Module D: Optimizing a specific part of the codex by including specific circumstances, under which it is allowed to wear weapons according to common values, i.e. an additional iteration of a former consensus process with metric quality ratings of fit and precision.
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Module E: Building and optimizing a codex, manifest or management of violent or deviant behaviour.
Please note that with bottom-up methods, there is an increasing freedom of expression and decision, and complexity with additional valuable information concerning the people’s will, differences between options and conditions of agreement, by ensuring equality and justice and by serving the potential of various forms of autonomous, decentralized self-organization.
The Extended Liquid Democracy includes empirical methods similar to those used in market research, as it incorporates qualitative and quantitative self-report methods but based on scientific theories of self-organization, motivation and self-determined action. The ELD includes a rational choice model of self-coherent decision and action as well as a scientific humanistic approach to measure the will and common welfare. See figure 2 capturing the logo of Extended Liquid Democracy which is also a model for the functioning of the soul, the self and science:
The definition of Extended Liquid Democracy (ELD) thereby is as follows:
“In a real democracy people freely, equally and cooperatively strive to avoid pain (P-) and to sustain or multiply happiness (P+).”
Yes, the effectiveness may be especially increased with quality-specific metric ELD-subscales and quality indicators, since it becomes possible to sort or filter arguments in order to their priority, suitability, precision or correctness and to self-regulate and learn more efficiently through performance-contingent liquid feedback. If it is possible to mark and associate single text parts with a high or low quality and the different overall quality-ratings of the text, it becomes possible to create a heat-map of a text that further explains the result of the overall (info) quality measures of arguments or news etc. We also have thought about such a prototype and an associated quality-index for news and proposals and to rate quality of information presented in discussions.
A scale from 1 to 5 would rather be an ordinal scale level (at the surface), but without any clue what is measured with it. Together with metric scales, e.g. numerical rating scales from 0 to 10 or semantic differentials at a metric scale level, we called it grey scales in terms of measurement of degrees of resistance between black and white. The most of our P-scales and response modes, i.e. for voting via traffic lights-P-scale and semantic P-differentials, however, are better reflected by different (shades of) colours.
We think it is a very good idea to enable ratings of arguments and sub-arguments to improve discussion and to facilitate the recognition and correction of fake news or false arguments, hate speech etc… Within the ELD, the evaluation of sub-arguments is a generally recommended add-on for all discussion modules or levels of the Eisberg. This means, it is not primarily more deliberative (i.e. more bottom-up and uncensored), but it is probably more precise and correct, and promoting a higher quality of information and discussion as a precondition for good decisions.
We think that the possible userbase of ELD-tools promoting value-oriented self-organization is much bigger than from the political context only, where one could say that a party’s or NGO’s aim in general is to give public services for a need-oriented development of policies and proposals to solve common problems of citizens in coherence with human rights…
Perhaps you have some additional suggestions and ideas?
We are looking forward to the further discussion, your comments and questions! 
Sincerely,
Jana and Laura