The Democratic Dilemma
Where the internet’s echo chamber might be transformed into tomorrow's lab.
One of the things the internet failed to deliver—see also my essay “The Wasted Internet Potential”—is an informed citizenry utilising this unprecedented and free access to immense amounts of information for their own betterment. Roughly speaking, instead of using the increasingly more easily available fount of information on the internet to enlighten themselves, or inform themselves on topics of which they had little (or no) knowledge, most people used the internet to confirm the misinformation they already had.
They didn’t use it to challenge their beliefs—if the evidence demonstrates a false belief, the right thing to do is to change that belief—but rather to reinforce them. So instead of a diverse information ecology where people mutually enlighten each other, the internet resembles an archipelago of wilfully ignorant fiefdoms who are willing to defend their conspiracy theories to the death. Because it can’t be wrong if thousands—or in some cases millions—of others agree with you, right?
As a result, democracy suffers. Since like-minded masses can now be easily targeted, these are flooded with relentless waterfalls of misinformation, lies, and utter bullshit. This leads to the democratic dilemma: while voters now have access to a multitude of resources for making an informed decision, many prefer to stay within the walls of their own disinformation domains (the self-reinforcing echo wells of stupidity). As such, many people vote against their own best interest1 and the ones profiting from their votes—the ultra rich—become even richer while keeping the voting masses poor and dumb.
This democratic dilemma is amplified by a ‘first-past-the-post’ system—like those in the UK and USA—where it becomes possible that a party with less than 50% of the vote still has a majority in government. Many people wonder about the scattered political landscape in countries like The Netherlands and Belgium, where not a single party has been able to get a majority for several decades, and where coalition governments are the norm. I my personal experience, this means that negotiations after an election take 6 to 12 months (meaning the new government effectively only governs for 3—3,5 years of their 4-year period), while the coalition normally smothers the most extreme legislation efforts of the most extreme party.
Would a obligation to vote—like in Australia—help alleviate this democretic dilemma? I suspect not, as there have been one-party majority governments in Australia that delivered some horrible results2.
While a proportional election system is the least of all unsatisfactory options, it is time to adapt the democratic system to the modern age. Voters need to be incentiviced to vote (arise interest in the political system) and voters need to make an informed decision. An increasing mistrust in government increases voter apathy, meaning less people vote in every subsequent election. The avalanche of misinformation on both the internet and in the mass media prevents many voters from making an informed decision. Voters need to be informed with data that is as unbiased as possible, voters need to be interested, and they need to be educated.
The current status quo prevents this, as huge companies and billionaires have too much influence on the politicians, manipulating them to implement policies that favour those huge companies and the ultra rich. So how to fix this?
Some people propose a meritocratic approach; that is, only let those vote who have ‘merit’. This is wrought with many problems: who determines who has ‘merit’? What will stop those with ‘merit’ already in power to limit those with ‘merit’ only to those who support them?
To wit, Wikipedia lists quite a few ‘alternatives’ to democracy:
Epistocracy
Political Meritocracy;
Political decentralisation;
Markets;
I think they all depend too much on the gatekeepers being reliable, without there being a way of guarding the guardians (which was, I think, one of the main reasons democracy was developed; that is a system independent of kings, emperors, dictators and the like).
Therefore, my proposal: a massive simulation of the country in question—made as realistic as possible by including the latest demographical data, government questionnaires, etcetera—which can then be fed with the politicies of the various political parties, and subsequently checked for their consequences.
Obviously, this massive simulation—not unlike Sid Meier’s Civilization Game—will often get it wrong. But, over time, it should get better as more data is fed into it, and its algorithms improve as it can compare the latest policies with the latest results. Even then, it will never get everything right—I suspect reality is a bit too complex for that—but it should eventually get quite a goodapproximation for the best direction to take.
I know what some of you are saying: but what about black swan events like COVID-19 and the Ukraine war? Well, the model will also be updated with those, and actually should have correlations and corrections for external influences, as well.
Which will make it more complicated, and which will increase the time for it to put out better predictions, but that is unavoidable. And the model could work together with other models of other countries using the same. Especially in the European Union such a co-operation might work.
So . . . gaming democracy, gaming the future? It’s been done before (as mentioned above), albeit at a much smaller scale through the Civilization video game. and more recently through Positech Games’s Democracy. But that was in the 90s and early 00s3, surely we can do much better today?And why not, as it may get more people involved with politics, especially as access to the model is opened to everyone. They can then test it and check out the reliability of the model for themselves, while simultaneously helping to improve it.
Let’s call it the Democracy Simulation but, by all that is intelligent and unbiased, keep AI as far away from it as possible, because current AI models are not only just as biassed and misinformed as the current archipelago confederation of self-reinforcing dunces, but they hallucinate, as well. The model will make mistakes before it gets better, and let’s not compound those mistakes with AI hallucinations and bigotry. A model that tries to predict results based on verified knowledge4, not on biased operators (be they human or AI).
And yes, it will get things wrong. Yet it should get better over time, and once it gets things more right than wrong, participation and implementation should increase until even the most wilfully stupid parties recognise its usefullness5 and have no choice but to use it, as well. What can I say? A person can dream.
Author’s note: as with many of my essays, I try to offer a solution while pointing out a problem. Obviously, my solution may not be the correct one, but I hope it makes you think about a better one. Many thanks for reading, and welcome to another new subscriber!
And this has been happening throughout the centuries, see, for example, Louis Paul Boon’s De Kapellekensbaan;
Not to mention the result of the proposal to recognise Aboriginal peoplein the constitution, which was utterly shameful;
Although Democracy has been updated to version 4 in 2018;
This—as I mentioned in previous essays—might very well be Wikipedia’s killer app;
See also Factfulness by Hans Rosling;