Arbitrary demographics: lessons learned from markets

Geography is a completely arbitrary demographic filter. It represents nothing concrete and dilutes cultural characters found in large urban populations. Marketing has understood this perfectly, going as far as tending to the large-scale psychological personalities. Politics remain in complete incomprehension of this sociological knowledge other than for marketing purposes. This use is a waste of the most efficient decision-making process allowed to complex adaptive systems: distributed intelligence.

Economic markets have well adapted to these realities and are well on their way to satisfy all the primary needs of humankind. The secondary needs, important but not mandatory, can partially be met by those markets. Tertiary needs are much beyond what markets can adapt to. With these needs, competitive access is always detrimental to the overall efficiency of the socioeconomic system, especially decision-making.

Science works largely based on critical debate and multiple decision-making mechanisms. Politics usually works along such practices, but lacks the check science with which science evolves: peer review. But there must be caution about peer review, as human intelligences easily make the mistake of confounding what is true and what is believed to be true. It is completely impossible to make an intelligent decision, especially the best possible decision, without understanding all the relevant facts. Citizens, whose most fundamental responsibility is to carry out or have the most qualified individuals exercise their political power, are asked to do just that. They inevitably fail as it is a physical improbability for the best decisions to be majority if information improbabilities are too high. In other words, when critical facts are misunderstood, there are simply too many possible options and decision-making becomes gamble. While it may be amusing to some individuals, it is far from useful to anybody that political decisions are not the best possible given the resources available.

This is an obvious argument for proportional democracy. However the systems created at the Institute go much beyond electoral proportional democracy. They are capable of truly representing not only the proportional interests of a society but also its distributed intelligence. Social networks, especially those used for political decision-making, do not arise out of arbitrary demographic filters like geography, any more than race, language and sex. These filters were abundantly used by the marketing and public relations industries for several decades. After they failed miserably, they were accordingly replaced with the much more efficient dynamic of understanding its beneficiaries. There is little reason why it would make any more sense in politics.

The Sunni-Shiite split

However politically incorrect it may be, it is a chilling thought that human beings are willing to kill each other over such a simple issue. There is no rational way to justify violent action for opinions. A very abrupt understanding modern science has given us is that all opinions, every single one of them, is at best a weak and abstract representation that does not come close to understanding reality. We merely see the world through electromagnetic and chemical communications, imprinted in chemical concentrations that allow electrical signals to pass at various levels.

Whatever opinion each of us holds is only barely correct, although often very truthful. But none is truly indisputable or transcendent in any way. Ideology, this time in the form of a mass religion, is capable of exaggerating minor issues to completely hide the larger picture of reality. Religion is a powerful meme but it will inevitably go away, or at least evolve to an unrecognizable level. There will always be purely speculative explanations about the world. But the future ones will not involve magical interventions in our individual lives.

Islamic extremists were actually close to becoming insignificant and drew very negative responses from Muslim populations. This branch of Wahhabism considers that Muslims who are not rejecting the infidels are infidels themselves and are therefore legitimate targets for attacks. The small group that surrounded Bin Laden was chased from every Muslim nation, whose populations did not appreciate the holy wariors' piousness, and only found solace in war-wrecked Afghanistan, where extremists overthrew the government during a power vacuum. That the world did not respond in the first place, despite knowledge of every salient information to prove the situation was a violation of human rights, is a testament to a broken and corrupt political order.

Governments everywhere are packed full of very intelligent people who, despite intellectual skills, can do very little because the vastness of their responsibilities exceed what even them can handle. History is as plagued by political corruption as it is by political incompetence. Public administrations have become very efficient, but decision-making institutions have not evolved from their 17th century origins.

Only with fully accountable decision-making can democracy function. A vital dynamic of the decision-making process of a democracy is the understanding and power to express opinions of the citizens. Otherwise politics is dysfunctional and dangerous. Its activities become redundant and recursive. They justify their existence and daily activities. For citizens to understand what the government is doing, it must know everything the government does. There is simply no other way to make sure that every decision is subject to accountability.

While traditionally justified on efficiency, secrecy actually hinders political efficiency in many ways. It requires to create bureaucratic institutions to make sure decisions are broadcasted to the designated checks and balances. If citizens knew everything the government knows and does, decision-making could be very decisive when there is truly approval from over half the population. These kinds of decisions would be carried very efficiently as administrative barriers can be replaced by a single, all-knowing and free accountability mechanism. No wrong step could go unnoticed, so decision-makers would largely be given blank checks for political power. They would have much wider powers in exchange for unlimited accountability.

There is no point in finding solace elsewhere than in this reality, where we have a limited lifespan, both individually and collectively. Rationality has prevailed over a long enough period of time. Humans do not have a history of war because they are naturally driven to dark instincts. Biology has clearly shown that everything in a living organism drives it to bring the best to itself and its society. All human behavior, unless interrupted by threatening forces, works to eliminate harmful sources. Humans never try to carry negative growth ideas on large scale unless violence is imposed.

Past decision-makers, politicians and theologians, are largely to blame for that behavior. Humans respond extremely well to positive environments. Any human being can be trained to behave a specific way. By censoring the emotions of individuals, their personality can be molded. But given the best conditions, all conscious actors unite to improve the collective decision-making.