User:Ardaboga/sandbox

First Reflections
Hello to all! I will first make some comments on the class, and then will reflect on my recent thought experiences related to electoral democracies and representative government.

Course Structure
So far, I have really been enjoying the course, primarily because the class presents a dynamic discussion atmosphere. I guess that it is important for us to connect our discussions to readings and relevant authors' arguments; at this point, Professor Landemore does a great job, summarising the points of the thinkers and deepening their arguments before further conversations. I finally want to note that the reading selection is engaging, given the variety from philosophical pieces to factual and experimental papers.

Thoughts on Representative Democracy and its Alternatives
Starting from the very initial readings about the practice of democracy in Athens, I have been convinced that the electoral system is very elitist and discriminatory, making a clear distinction between rulers and ordinary citizens. I also support the arguments that elected representatives are not totally representative of citizens' preferences, and will not always craft responsive policies respecting their choices. On the other hand, we have read in several experimental papers that citizens mostly make irrational choices and behave in an ideologically-inclined and easily-manipulated way, which signals to me the necessity of transferring the decision-making mechanism from all citizens to certain citizens - at least in certain cases.

As I outspokenly expressed my thoughts in the last session, my initial idea was that political decisions need to be made by certain elites, defined by the depth of social-scientific knowledge. Very basically, since most political decisions require complex knowledge and expertise in various fields, such as economics, science, and mathematics, it wouldn't be reasonable for ordinary citizens to be quickly informed on these matters and make efficient decisions. The talk that I had with Professor Landemore in the end of the class, however, challenged my thoughts, as she claimed that on a community-related matter, citizens in New Haven came up with a creative solution, in a deliberative decision-making setting and contributed to the future of their cities quite successfully.

I believe that similar examples may be multiplied, for which I have decided to review my thoughts. First of all, direct democracy can be very useful when it comes to policy setting. It has been shown that elected representatives fail to address the true problems that citizens face; therefore, direct democracy could act like a very effective mechanism to directly tell the representatives about what to deliberate on, even after they are elected. One may ask: "Do you still think that it should be an elite that needs to deliberate, rather than all citizens?" This question brings me to my second point: division of deliberation. It is reasonable to think that the quality, complexity and dimension of decisions vary from problem to problem; one may not need the same level of knowledge when deciding on the design of public parks, and the level of taxation. Currently, I think that certain themes that don't require a lot of technical knowledge can be addressed by citizens, as long as they take part in deliberative polls and get engaged in discussions, using their critical thinking; my intuition is that more the nature of these themes are local, more citizens will be able to conceptualise and address these issues appropriately. However, I firmly believe that more complex issues, such as foreign policies and economic strategies, are beyond the borders of ordinary citizens informed by simple deliberative polls and need to be tackled by a group of experts, or epistocrats.

Crowdsourcing
This week, we discussed about the benefits and potential applications of crowdsourcing to the democratic arena. I actually believe that crowdsourcing can be a good alternative to quickly and easily grasp the ideas and inclinations of the public; moreover, it has the advantage to be scaled quite easily, as opposed to deliberative polling organised in citizens' assemblies. Interestingly, I make intensive use of crowdsourcing platforms for my academic work; for instance, for many of the theorems that I need to prove, I directly head to a widely-used mathematics/computer science crowdsourcing platform, where "expert" people respond your questions and guide you through a problem. This is an amazing alternative to a traditional google search, since it is very likely that google doesn't contain answers to the particular questions that I need to deal with. In conclusion, I first hand witness on a regular basis that crowdsourcing platforms are useful to complete small-scale tasks, and that they can even foster inquisitive and deliberative conversations. (e.g.: when people guide you through the question, they tend not to give the answer immediately, and make you understand proves step by step.)

Let's ask: can this work for social science and political discussions? I am not really positive... One reason for which crowdsourcing works greatly for mathematics, is that there is already an objective answer that I try to reach - there is no room for "discussions that would produce a variable outcome depending on the direction of the discussion". Therefore, I doubt that exchanging three/four lines of paragraphs will result in an efficient outcome, such as a policy decision. Moreover, it is important to take into account the time factor; sometimes, one needs to wait hours before receiving a legitimate answer.

Nevertheless, there is no reason for which crowdsourcing could not be used for agenda setting; as I said, it is pretty scalable, and can be very efficient to analyse public's problems. In a direct democracy, these problems can be addressed more efficiently rather in a citizens' assembly.

Article Evaluation Task
About a week ago, I evaluated an article on Noocracy, in which the criticisms to the noocratic philosophy were not developed enough. In the Talk section, I suggested that the arguments for the criticism to noocracy need to be drawn from viable sources and cited appropriately.

Wikipedia Article Edit
For my final essay, I am interested in writing about a some sort of hybrid democratic system, containing elements from epistocracy and direct democracy. Therefore, it makes sense to me to edit a wikipedia article epistomocracy to get familiarised with the theme, and contribute to an underdeveloped wikipedia page. An alternative for me is to write on illiberal democracies, as I may go on a field trip in Singapore this summer.

I am planning to make a joint project with Dan, and as we discussed, I will be writing on Rationales for Epistocracy, and he will be writing on Criticisms of Epistocracy.

Irrationality of Voters
Supporters of the epistocratic theory mainly depart from the empirical evidence that most voters in modern democracies are largely ignorant, misinformed and irrational. Therefore, one person one vote mechanism proposed by democracy cannot be used to produce efficient policy outcomes, for which the transfer of power to a smaller, informed and rational group would be more appropriate. The irrationality of voters inherent in democracies can be explained by two major behavioral and cognitive patterns. Firstly, most of the voters think that the marginal contribution of their vote will not make a difference on election outcomes; therefore, they do not find it useful to inform themselves on political matters. In other terms, due to the required time and effort of acquiring new information, voters rationally prefer to remain ignorant. Moreover, it has been shown that most citizens process political information in deeply biased, partisan, motivated ways rather than in dispassionate, rational ways. This psychological phenomenon causes voters to strongly identify themselves with a certain political group, specifically find evidence to support arguments aligning with their preferred ideological inclinations, and eventually vote with a high level of bias.

Democracy's Susceptibility for Bad Policies
Irrational political behaviors of voters prevent them from making calculated choices and opting for the right policy proposals. On the other hand, many political experiments have shown that as voters get more informed, they tend to support better policies, demonstrating that acquisition of information has a direct impact on rational voting. For example, Martin Gilens notes in his research that low-income democrats tend to have more intolerant thoughts pertinent to LGBT rights, whereas high-income democrats have the opposite preferences. Moreover, supporters for epistocracy see a greater danger in the fact that politicians will actually prefer to implement the policy decisions of citizens to win elections and stabilize their power, without paying particular attention to the content and further outcomes of these policies. In democracies, the problem is thus not only that voters are prone to make bad policy decisions, but also that politicians are incentivized to implement these policies due to personal benefits. Therefore, epistocrats argue that it makes sense to limit the voting power of citizens in order to prevent bad policy outcomes.

Use of Expertise for Efficient Outcomes
According to epistocrats, given the complex nature of political decisions, it is not reasonable to assume that a citizen would have the necessary knowledge to decide on means to achieve their political aims. In general, political actions require a lot of social scientific knowledge from various fields, such as economics, sociology, international relations, and public policy; however, an ordinary voter is hardly specialized enough in any of those fields to make the optimal decision. To address this issue, Christiano proposes a ruling system based on division of political labor, in which citizens set the agenda for political discussions and determine the aims of the society, whereas legislators are in charge of deciding on the means to achieve these aims. For epistocrats, transferring the decision-making mechanism to a body of specifically trained, specialized and experienced body is expected to result in superior and more efficient policy outcomes. Recent economic success of some countries that have a sort of epistocratic ruling element provides basis for this particular argument in favor of epistocracy.

For instance, Singapore has a political system that favors meritocracy; the path to government in Singapore is structured in such a way that only those with above-average skills are identified with strict university-entrance exams, recruiting processes, etc., and then rigorously trained to be able to devise best the solutions that benefit the entire society. In the words of country’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore is a society based on effort and merit, not wealth or privilege depending on birth. This system primarily works due to citizens’ belief that political leaders tend to have a better understanding of country’s long-term plans than themselves; therefore, as they see positive policy outcomes, they tend to go along with the system, rather than complain about the meritocratic dimensions. For example, most citizens praise their government in Singapore, stating that it managed to transform Singapore from a third world country to a developed economy, and that it successfully fostered loyalty in its citizens towards the country and gave birth to a unique concept of Singaporean citizenship despite a great level of ethnic diversity. In order to develop further Singapore’s technocratic system, some thinkers, like Parag Khanna, have proposed for the country to adapt a model of direct technocracy, demanding citizen input in essential matters through online polls, referenda, etc., and asking for a committee of experts to analyze this data to determine the best course of action.

Rejection of Demographic Unjustness of Epistocracy
Proponents of democracy attempt to show that epistocracy is intrinsically unjust on two dimensions, using the unfairness and bad results arguments. The former states that since people with different income levels and education backgrounds have unequal access to information, the epistocratic legislative body will be naturally composed of citizens with higher economic status, and thus fail to equally represent different demographics of the society. The latter argument is about the policy outcomes; since there will be a demographic overrepresentation and underrepresentation in the epistocratic body, the system will produce unjust outcomes, favoring the demographically advantaged group. Brennan defends epistocracy against these two criticisms, presenting a rationale for the system.

As a rejection of the unfairness argument put forward by democrats, Brennan argues that the voting electorate in modern democracies is also demographically disproportionate; based on empirical studies, it has been demonstrated that voters coming from privileged background, such as white, middle aged, higher-income men, tend to vote at a higher rate than other demographic groups. Although de jure every group has same right to vote under one person one vote assumption, de facto practices show that privileged people have more influence on election results. As a result, the representatives will not match the demographics of the society either, for which democracy seems to be unjust in practice. With the right of type of epistocracy, the unfairness effect can actually minimized; for instance, enfranchisement lottery, in which a legislative electorate is selected at random by lottery, and then incentivized to become competent to address political issues, illustrates a fair representation methodology thanks to its randomness.

To refute the letter claim, Brennan states that voters do not vote selfishly; in other terms, the advantaged group does not attempt to undermine the interests of the minority group. Therefore, the worry that epictocratic bodies that are demographically more skewed towards the advantaged group make decisions in favor of the advantaged one fails. According to Brennan, epistocracy can serve in a way that improves the welfare of the overall community, rather than certain individuals.

Notes on my First Draft
I will be writing on epistocracy, and more specifically, will try to analyze and present the rationales for the use of epistocracy. I want to note that I have found the process of writing in wikipedia much harder than writing an essay for two reasons. First of all, it is very important to remain impartial throughout the entire process. There is no room to present personal thoughts, which makes me think twice before I get down to writing something. The second difficulty for me is definitely the use of encyclopedic language; I would like to actually get feedback on that!

Finally, here are some questions (and notes) that I want to ask myself and to all of you, regarding my draft:
 * Does the categorisation for the rationales of epistocracy make sense? Should it be changed?
 * Under the section of "Use of Expertise for Efficient Outcomes", should I add another example, eg: the case of China?
 * I am very concerned about the very last paragraph of the draft; it seems to do its job, but it somehow remains week compared to other paragraphs. I would appreciate some feedback for this paragraph.
 * I used various articles to write my draft (and have a list of them), but haven't added the citations yet. I will do it after spring break.