I have a short paper appearing next month in the Journal of Public Deliberation. A preview is available here. Below is a precis. In its first half, “Cultivating Deliberation for Democracy” discusses the failure of “deliberation technologies” to substantially improve public deliberation in either quantity or quality. To be sure, new technologies have made possible [...]
Archive for the ‘Wisdom of Crowds’ Category
“Cultivating Deliberation for Democracy”
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Deliberation, Democracy, Wisdom of Crowds, YourView on March 12, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
The dismal state of political discourse
Posted in Deliberation, Democracy, Wisdom of Crowds, YourView on February 26, 2012 | 4 Comments »
Two perceptive comments on the state of democracy in Australia, from yesterday’s Age. First Barry Jones laments the dismal state of political discourse: I have been heavily involved in politics all my adult life and the current national situation, both in the government and opposition, is a low point, the lowest I can recall – even [...]
What Do We Think? available
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Decision Making, Deliberation, Deliberative Polling, Opinion, Sustainability, Wisdom of Crowds on November 17, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A new draft of What Do We Think? Divining the Public Wisdom to Guide Sustainability Decisions is now available. Download PDF
What do we think? Part 3: A virtual forum, and why it might work
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Deliberation, Deliberative Polling, Democracy, Opinion, Polling, Sustainability, Wisdom of Crowds on October 15, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
List the features you’d want to see in a mechanism for identifying public wisdom. These requirements mean the mechanism would have to be internet based – i.e. a kind of national virtual forum. Such a forum would face a range of major challenges, but there’s reason to think these could be handled.
What do we think? Part 2: Why we should know but don’t
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Deliberation, Deliberative Polling, Democracy, Opinion, Polling, Sustainability, Wisdom of Crowds on October 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
We need the public wisdom because politically it would help governments make decisions; and on some issues would be the best guide to what the right decision would be. However we almost never know what the public wisdom is. Deliberative polling is our best current mechanism for finding out, but is too cumbersome and expensive to fully meet the need.
What do we think? Part 1: Public Attitude versus Public Wisdom
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Deliberation, Deliberative Polling, Democracy, Opinion, Polling, Sustainability, Wisdom of Crowds on October 14, 2011 | 3 Comments »
Governments must make lots of decisions for Australia to make a smooth and timely transition to sustainability. Those decisions are constrained by public opinion; therefore we need to know what the public thinks. Standard opinion polls identify the public attitude, which falls far short of the public wisdom.
Four Grades of Collective Wisdom
Posted in Collective Wisdom, Deliberation, Deliberative Polling, Wisdom of Crowds on August 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Much of what Austhink does these days is concerned with “collective wisdom” – the knowledge that a group as a whole has. As Surowiecki famously pointed out, when the conditions are right, the wisdom of the group can be superior to that of the individuals making it up. However finding out what that collective [...]
Boards sharing arguments
Posted in Boards, Decision Making, Decision mapping, Wisdom of Crowds on October 19, 2009 | 2 Comments »
Two recent publications suggest the Boards can improve their decision making by using structured techniques to improve information sharing.
Figuring out what We believe
Posted in Argument Mapping, Austhink, Belief, Deliberation, Rationale Consensus, Wisdom of Crowds on March 17, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Think of a collection of people as having a kind of collective mind. How can you find out what that collective mind believes? That may sound like a fanciful philosophical question, but it has very real, even urgent applications. For example the IPCC is a collection of hundreds of scientists, and they put out reports [...]
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