Sapiocracy: Decide Differently
A Novel Decision System
This is a very brief write-up on Sapiocracy, a group decision making system I birthed in 2013.
This brief overview may give you more questions than it answers. For a more detailed explanation, you need to read http://www.sapiocracy.com/sapiocracy.html. I expect it will take around an hour or so to read.
If you have the motivation, please read it and think about it for a while.
Please do not post questions answered by the above document - I will ignore posts that are answered in the above long-form specification.
Funny Anecdote
Have you ever heard anyone say something like:
“Man, I wish there were a way to keep idiots from voting!”
I assert that Sapiocracy will achieve similar results, but also being 100% fair.
Origin
In January 2013, I had an interesting idea that a modified direct democracy could be implemented with computers in such a way that corruption, naïveté and incompetence could be muted almost out of existence. This is possible because it uses a feedback loop that has been shown to be the most powerful type of predictive feedback loop known to academia. I have been told that a similar feedback loop is used by the Department of Defense for analyzing Human intelligence input and also used to essentially cheat in the stock market.
I’m what I call a large systems analyst. I have always had the ability to visualize large systems and zoom in and out between details and macro views. This particular idea is, in my opinion, really disruptive, but in a very, very good way. It sounds too good to be true, but I challenge you to point out how it wouldn’t work. In over 10 years now, nobody has been able to show why deploying Sapiocracy wouldn’t work.
It isn’t every day you get to invent a new form of government that could revolutionize the world in ways that are almost impossible to imagine.
Deliberative Collaboration
I wrote up the idea and immediately started talking to friends and colleagues. I was in Austin, Texas and knew a lot of very intelligent people. It took some explaining, but over the following months, I had hundreds of hours of conversations and debates with others. Sometimes it would take a lot of explaining over periods of weeks to get to a full understanding. It takes time to get your head around this idea.
There were exactly two results with people: About 2/3rds of the people would get it, and they would get very excited. The other 1/3rd would endlessly say there was no way it could work, but without being able to articulate why. This would go on with specific people for years. They never offered a coherent reason why they held this belief. They would instead say things like “it just doesn’t seem like this will work.” Also, some of these people were the smartest people I’ve ever met, which confused me.
I have a good theory on why some people never get it. Is it a coincidence that about 2/3rds of people are not willing to be criminal while the other 1/3rd are? That’s my theory, so your view may vary. I don’t think it is a coincidence. Criminals should hate this idea because it would destroy them.
How Is Sapiocracy Different?
There are myriad proposals for direct democracy systems online. None of them have the extremely clean feedback system of Sapiocracy. Most of them have feedback systems, but in my opinion, the feedback is mistargeted or woefully inadequate for purpose. I’m not going to analyze any of them here because I think it is pretty clear they won’t work very well in practice. They certainly won’t be adopted at scale, in my opinion.
The secret of Sapiocracy is in the definition of wisdom. Wisdom is a murky thing to define, but in practical terms, a person who has had more experience tends to be correct in their predictions more often than people who have had less experience. This history of predictive correctness is almost always the method Humans use to judge how wise someone is. If you don’t believe me, try to come up with an alternate way to judge someone’s wisdom or ability to make good decisions. Keep in mind that you have to use some discrete measure that is usable in a system like this.
The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that Sapiocracy requires the extra step of having to predict outcomes and having to build the testing of outcomes into the propositions. It is a fair criticism because these things do add overhead. Everyone seems to always think we can do better without having to actually do more. However, I hope you, dear reader, understand the cost/benefit involved after giving Sapiocracy decent consideration.
Super Brief Overview - How Sapiocracy Works
First, I need to define wisdom and credibility. Both are measures of how good of a decision maker someone is. Sapiocracy keeps track of how much wisdom and credibility each person using inputs that are the result of the process. It uses this information very cleanly to direct how the system works. Better decision makers have more voting weight than poor decision makers.
Every vote in Sapiocracy requires predictions for the cases where a proposition passes and if that proposition fails. Over time, this allows Sapiocracy to determine how much wisdom each voter should have. The more wisdom you have, the more weight your vote has compared to everyone else. Every successful proposition is tested after being passed and the outcomes are compared to people’s predictions. This is how Sapiocracy knows if each person was correct or incorrect in their predictions.
Sapiocracy allows everyone to participate equally in making laws and voting for laws. Any idea can happen if enough people agree and it doesn’t matter whose idea it is. Sapiocracy gives everyone an equal opportunity, NOT an equal vote! This is key, because Sapiocracy essentially removes power from those who are corrupt, naïve or incompetent. Sapiocracy automatically gives more power to the wise.
If you think removing power from the corrupt, naïve or incompetent is a bad idea, then I suggest you have your head examined. Also, if you think giving the same power to the unwise as the wise, then I also suggest having your head examined.
The Expected Result
After having hundreds of hours of deliberation about Sapiocracy, I am completely convinced the following list of results (and much more) would happen if Sapiocracy were implemented:
Accountability for all parties is enforced because every proposition is tested
All elected legislators would be eliminated
Efficiency would skyrocket
Corruption would be reduced so low as to be shocking
Political conversation as we know it would almost disappear
Government would do much more with far fewer resources
Advancement would accelerate to levels at the edge of Human capacity
Basic banking would be absorbed into Sapiocracy
E-mail spam would virtually vanish
Privacy issues online would vanish
Governmental transparency would be fully achieved
A new species will emerge (see below)
You may think I’m insane. Fortunately, I don’t care!
Seriously…the above list at first seems impossible. Before you pooh-pooh it, spend some quality time thinking about it. I challenge everyone to be able to articulate actual reasons why the above wouldn’t happen. (Not the pink fluffy unicorn. That part was a joke.)
What Is A Sapioplex?
I have used the name Sapioplex online since 2013. Here’s why:
After deliberating about Sapiocracy for a few months, I realized that the adoption of a system like Sapiocracy would cause the formation of a new species on planet Earth.
What, you say?
Sapiocracy will cause the Human species to start using a strict, technologically aided protocol to govern their social behavior. Essentially, the Human species will have decided to govern their own behaviors using technology developed with our frontal lobes. This will be a first in Human history because it requires a machine to make it work. But there’s more…
This would make Humanity into a hive. However, hives are made up of genetic clones. A Sapiocracy is a genetically diverse hive — something that has never happened before.
This new type of hive would be a new species, would it not?
Well, since I’d invented a potential new species, I figured I had better come up with a good name for it.
So, I coined the term Sapioplex to mean a genetically diverse hive which uses a technological protocol for its social decision making.
Et voila. Let’s hope I didn’t just invent the Borg. Except…I kinda did.
Why Am I Still Alive?
Before about 2022, I was quite afraid this idea might get me killed. I didn’t actively promote Sapiocracy, although I did make the PDF file publicly available in January of 2013. At some point, you have to speak truth to power and flip the bird to the criminals who run the world.
By 2022, I had figured out enough about what is going on (Q, etc.) to understand that the war was strategically won years before and there never was much to worry about regarding Sapiocracy.
In 2013, I was actively seeking out the most experienced experts in decision theory. I talked to a well known academic (who I won’t name) in the northwest United States. He is one of the most recognized decision theorists in the world and regularly communicates with the other people at the top of this field. This is some heady stuff, by the way — how the Human brain processes information and derives conclusions.
My first call with him was to get him to read the document and he was noticeably polite but didn’t expect to be impressed — I could tell. He read the document and I had a second call with him. He was on fire. He asked if I would be willing to fly to Asia to present the idea as a paper to 18 of the best experts in the field, who had already agreed on this special meeting. In short, the most experienced decision theorists in the world really wanted to take a close look at this and they wanted me there to talk about it — in person.
I agreed to go to Asia and he told me he would contact me shortly with the details. I waited.
After two weeks of hearing nothing, I tried to contact him. It took me another week or two to get him on the phone. He told me that he had talked to a couple of colleagues and they didn’t think it would work. His tone was absolutely dismissive as if it was a shitty idea.
I don’t know about you, but this was some serious bullshit.
What had happened? I think he was either threatened directly, someone pointed out that this was a recipe for losing your life or something else was going on that this idea would disrupt. Whatever it was, he was lying.
This made me quite afraid that I might have triggered my own death sentence, but here I am — still alive today. I think is because there was never any real danger because I was already on someone’s RADAR for reasons that have nothing to do with Sapiocracy.
What’s Happening Now?
There are organizations working on this now. That’s all I can say at the moment.
It is also possible other organizations have been working on this without my knowledge. The document has been available for more than 10 years and there’s no reason it can’t be implemented, although computing security will eventually be an issue.
I’m not giving any organization an exclusive endorsement for Sapiocracy. This idea is going to happen eventually (because it can) and the more people trying to make it happen, the better.
My biggest concern is security. For that reason alone, I suspect that serious organizations will want my personal involvement as I’m also very uniquely skilled in that field.
If you are interested in developing the idea, feel free to contact me. Serious inquiries only, please.
If there are outside resources to list, I will put them on my website at http://www.sapiocracy.com.
Conclusion
So there’s my introduction to you of Sapiocracy.
Once again, this brief overview may give you more questions than it answers. For a more detailed explanation, you need to read http://www.sapiocracy.com/sapiocracy.html. I expect it will take around an hour or so to read in full.
Show it to your friends. Talk about it. See what happens.
- sapioplex
The minute I read this, I was sold. I actually came up with a very similar system, only simpler. After my initial mulling over Sapiocracy, I was totally for it in favor of my own system. I even promoted it on sites I often comment on. But after someone pointed out the fallacy of having weighting as a criteria for voting, I must say, it changed my mind back to preferring my own system which I call The Egalitarian Proposal System. A simple generic name that conveys all it means.
I can see your reasoning that people who study subjects have more knowledge on those subjects, however it misses on another 2 points - the wisdom of crowds and specialization tends to keep experts closed-minded on other areas, not necessarily of scholarship, but of that layer of humanity that doesn't have a name for it as yet.
I guess it comes right down to our foundational beliefs - do we believe that everyone is equally valuable? Not to the economy, but to life. I believe each of us are, even if we are incapacitated in any way.
The wisdom of crowds is also a phenomenon that we should recognize as it has been shown many times, there is this phenomenon and it tends to produce the most favorable outcomes.
I think when we get into a situation where someone decides the value of another's voice, we are putting ourselves into real trouble. Just keep it simple - every vote has equal value. Let's try things that way for a change, rather than always going by hierarchy and see what ensues.
However the weighting system would work wonderfully well if it were assigned to a ranking system so that then we can all see how wise someone has been historically and this does make life so much simpler so we're not having to ascertain things over and over.
The Egalitarian Proposal System suggests this ranking system, so that each profile has a rank using say, the 5-star system which we see everywhere.
We need to be discussing these subjects so we can get out of the mousetrap.
Thank you for the work you did on it, it really is brilliant.
Life could be a dream, shaboom shaboom, if we went by a system that made sense.
I am among those who don't think it has the promise you believe. The principal reason is because it limits disruption and disruptive ideas. Many ideas are advanced by single champions that run counter to accepted wisdom. For example, if society self-deluded itself to a degree on one subject, breaking the paradigm could only be done by an alternative society. If your longer document (which I obviously haven't read) addresses this, please let me know. I'm not talking about new ideas that intelligent people would agree on, but ideas that initially seem foolish and radical but may be necessary. As a further exploration of the thought, I suggest the science fiction book "The Player of Games" by Ian Banks, which compares and posits a clash between two different cultures, one of which seems to be governed as you describe.