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shockingdevelopment t1_j4ki475 wrote

You're missing the inherent virtue of democracy: it provides the maximum dispersion of power throughout a population, which matters because in a free society everyone should have an equal voice, virtually by definition.

Your alternative is to say good decisions are better than popular decisions. Unfortunately you cite only hypotheticals of perfect AI and "impartial" courts to provide this.

How could we decide which cabal of intellectuals is granted tyranny over us? Right and wrong are quite orthogonal to politics unless you spell out your meta ethics first. I.e. there are rational defences of both left and right policies. The differences are in our values.

So, policy guided by reason doesn't tell us anything about how to organise ourselves.

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zhibr t1_j4krdqj wrote

Right. Democracy isn't a solution for how to get a moral society, it's a solution for how to have a functional society at all when the people in it disagree on morality.

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imdfantom t1_j4lgrq9 wrote

>You're missing the inherent virtue of democracy: it provides the maximum dispersion of power throughout a population, which matters because in a free society everyone should have an equal voice, virtually by definition.

Direct democracy would provide maximum dispersion, what we have in most countries is representative democracies.

In a nutshell it is the method we have decided to do this:

>How could we decide which cabal of intellectuals is granted tyranny over us?

Not saying that we can do away with representative democracy, we can't (at least not for now if we want a functioning society)

Just that although a useful tool, it is just a popularity contest to see which king will be ruling over us.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4lj6k4 wrote

> it is just a popularity contest to see which king will be ruling over us.

Well yes but the cliche response is evergreen: any other system for nominating leaders is worse.

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imdfantom t1_j4lk79c wrote

I did say that we can't do without it in the previous sentence.

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JoKing311 t1_j4rmmji wrote

>Direct democracy would provide maximum dispersion, what we have in most countries is representative democracies.

Isn't the reason for representative democracy to maximize dispersion while also allowing minorities a voice? Like in the 2 wolves v 1 sheep case mentioned in the article, allowing the sheep a voice that actually matters, even though they're in the minority, can keep the majority from having complete power.

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contractualist OP t1_j4ksraj wrote

I actually think power distribution and enshrining national values are the best arguments for democracy and I’ll be discussing them in a future posts. Yet these are only good to the extent they lead to good decisions.

If power distribution instead lead to factionalism rent seeking, or poor policymaking overall, and if a better method of policymaking was available, then we’d be better off with that other method instead.

For instance, international data shows that a more independent central bank leads to lower inflation. If we cared about lower inflation, we should give more discretion to a central bank rather than elected politicians in creating monetary policy.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4l8lfp wrote

The rational / best solution is a matter of values, not intellect. I'd like you to take a stab at that problem.

And who exactly decides? What kind of person is worthy? Philosopher kings?

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contractualist OP t1_j4la0wm wrote

One’s religious, artistic, or personal values can’t have any political authority over others who don’t share those values. What has political authority is reason, more specifically, those principles which can’t be reasonably rejected. Those are our moral principles, which any legitimate political and legal institution needs to be based on.

And it would be either private parties or experts (judges, admin agencies, etc.). Although this power would be based on degrees rather than purely categorical. There are instances where reason would require majority rule vs expert judgment.

I’ll be writing in article discussing this further that addresses the trustee vs delegate issue.

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ProfMittenz t1_j4lknen wrote

So this sounds like Rawl's argument from Political Liberalism, but even Rawls changed his mind, see "Public Reason Revisited." Excluding personal or religious reasons from public deliberation is just a way of imposing a set of moral values on a democratic public without/before the process of democracy. Wolterstorff talks about this in his book with Robert Audi. A really good take down of this point of view is Christopher Eberle, Religious Conviction in liberal politics. Check out the sep article on public reason and all of the criticisms. Even the arch rationalist Habermas changed his mind about religious reasons in the public square.

I think your best bet is to go with including everybody and all their reasons in the most robust democratic deliberation possible. Go with an epistemic defense of democracy that argues the legitimacy of democracy comes from its epistemic ability to identify and solve social problems. Check out Helene Landemore and David Estlund. Epistemic democracy is a super hot topic right now and I think it makes the best argument for Democratic legitimacy.

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contractualist OP t1_j4lo65c wrote

Thank you for the recommendations! I will review that literature and will incorporate those ideas into my next post.

I agree with Rawls's original formulation of Public Reason since I believe certain moral values should be imposed on constitutional deliberation for political authority to be legitimate. This means that religious/aesthetic based arguments would be excluded from deliberation.

I argue in the piece that epistemic defenses of democracy are also insufficient. The empirical literature on deliberative democracy is weak and given certain anti-market/identitarian biases of the public (Caplan 2007 and Bartels and Achen 2017 respectively). This is why I believe experts should play a greater role as lawmaking demands more complexity.

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ProfMittenz t1_j4lq6no wrote

If you want to go with the old school.Rawlsian position, Jonathan Quong would be useful for you. But I think that position has been pretty roundly rejected for its antidemocratic implications. Two other things: "deliberative democracy" is an umbrella term that basically encompasses all democratic theory these days. It just means that deliberation is at the heart of political legitimacy but in lots of different forms (so this includes Rawls and political liberalism). Also I wouldnt be so quickly dismissive.of epistemic democracy. The first citation you gave is from 2007 and epistemic democracy theory has really exploded since then. Some of what you sound like you're arguing is in fact for epistocracy or rule by experts, but if you read Helene landemore, she utilizes the "diversity Trump's ability theorem" which claims that a plurality of thinkers are better at solving problems than a small group of experts. The diversity approach also helps solve the problem of who counts as an expert since in a democracy we all have to debate who the expert is anyway.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4lg43j wrote

I don't mean aesthetic values, I mean fundamental politics. I.e. hierarchy vs egalitarianism. The left and right can both make rational arguments for these opposing values. How do you decide if the experts should push left or right wing policy?

I would say democratically.

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contractualist OP t1_j4lhipv wrote

Yes, I wrote in another comment that values and power distributions are the best arguments for democracy.

I’ll be arguing that democracy is useful for establishing these overarching values where the moral principles of the social contract are ordered in terms of priority. These are the values of a society which may be expressed through voting. Although this is different than policy making, which turns those national political values into concrete legal rules. The former applies moral principles to social and cultural circumstances to create constitutional values whereas the latter applies those constitutional values to social facts to create legal rules. Yet reason is applied in both cases. Values that can’t be publicly justified aren’t values that have political authority.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4liy59 wrote

That just sounds like most democracies today. The public guide meta ethics and (theoretically) experts develop policy to further our community's choices.

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contractualist OP t1_j4ln7a7 wrote

That's what I argue it should be. Yet from a US standpoint, too much discretion is currently given to democratic majorities and legislative action. At the end of the piece, I argue that courts and agencies should play a greater role in curbing the actions of majorities when they conflict with reason.

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fjaoaoaoao t1_j4ln34y wrote

I definitely think an expansion of how reason and values are formed, agreed upon as worthwhile, and adapted to changing times could help further the thoughts you shared in your article more. Looking forward to more!

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XiphosAletheria t1_j4nh6qb wrote

>One’s religious, artistic, or personal values can’t have any political authority over others who don’t share those values. What has political authority is reason, more specifically, those principles which can’t be reasonably rejected. Those are our moral principles, which any legitimate political and legal institution needs to be based on.

This just sounds like you lack self-awareness of your own biases. Because all moral principles are at base personal preferences. Politics is always about whose values get to be imposed on everyone and justified as "reasonable". Religion only fell out of favor as a good source of such values because society changed to quickly to keep up, and so it lost too many adherents to make its influence stick.

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fjaoaoaoao t1_j4llk6m wrote

You are right that the author is talking about an ideal that doesn't exist. Right now that AI would be heavily influenced by a "cabal of intellectuals" (but probably not even intellectuals).

But it's still an interesting thought to deshrine or at least point out flaws in democracy. Not anything completely new, but I do think the piece adds to the conversation. As the auth points out, majorites don't often reflect proper application of ethical principles. Democracy places some degree faith in the ability of the people and their human nature to govern. Not that people aren't fallible, but democracy intends to be self-correcting.

an AI-ocracy would place faith in the ability of rational, impartial AI to reflect proper application of ethical principles, which in theory would be nice but obviously would need a code of values and morals to build off from to decide what's more rational and ethical in the gray areas, and these values, morals, and working definitions change over time. If it skips the more gray areas, then it's usefulness of a governing body is diminished.

Perhaps AI-ocracy is not feasible or overall better, but blending AI with other governance forms, using AI as a tool might be.

For right now, maybe a practical solution is for AI to review cases or applications of law and offer an opinion on whether it is using application of ethical principles. It's code base should be open and public so anyone can have a look-see. Having a consistent review might be a good testing ground to see how it could be used in other governance contexts.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4llzp3 wrote

In practice I doubt the AI could propose something we think is fucked up without us saying uhhhh no.

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fjaoaoaoao t1_j4lp97z wrote

I don't think that's the point though. There are heaps of cases each year and as the article points out, incredibly complex documents that most people cannot bother to review. It's easy for AI to take more subtle choices or make decisions in more morally grey areas, depending on the values and morals it's trained on. Of course, it's not like we have significantly better systems now, but the level of faith in a particular system should always be scrutinized. This is why I suggest a practical solution is to just develop an AI that reviews cases or offers policy examples for now.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4lslgt wrote

It'd be a landmark moment if AI settled deontology vs consequentialism and solved ethics.

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XiphosAletheria t1_j4nghyj wrote

>You're missing the inherent virtue of democracy: it provides the maximum dispersion of power throughout a population, which matters because in a free society everyone should have an equal voice, virtually by definition.

Is this its main virtue, though? Or is it just that it gives people desperate for change a non-violent means of pursuing it, and people hungry for power a non-violent way of seeking it? Because I don't think high levels of social power equality is particularly characteristic of most democracies. Elon Musk has a wee bit more power than, say, your average janitor, despite living in a democracy.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4nmba8 wrote

Since it's fundamental to a free society, It is (in my view) the main virtue.

> Musk

In more properly functioning democracies inequality isn't so egregious. I notice almost all criticisms of democracy are explained by a lack of actual democracy, which is encouraging as a democracy enthusiast.

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XiphosAletheria t1_j4o79an wrote

>In more properly functioning democracies inequality isn't so egregious.

I mean, most democracies have fairly high levels of inequality, and to the extent you seem to mean "free society" by "democracy" rather than "tyranny of the majority", economic inequality seems baked in - people are not equal, so any system that leaves people with a fair amount of economic freedom is going to end up reflecting that.

> I notice almost all criticisms of democracy are explained by a lack of actual democracy, which is encouraging as a democracy enthusiast.

Or you are no true scotsmanning it.

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shockingdevelopment t1_j4obsdi wrote

You can compress income so no one is living like an animal and also have the talented better off. Look at the Nordic model.

> Tyranny of the majority

As opposed to literally every other system which gives power to a smaller handful.

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