Social Chaos Theory

Chaos Theory is neatly summarised by the notion that the flap of a butterfly's wings may result in a cyclone thousands of miles away. It is the idea that even when all the variables are fully understood, small perturbances in their values can result in wildly different results. If we apply this idea to human systems, where the rules of the game feed into changing people's attitudes and behaviours, we may see that the advantages of social science and the types of policy experimentation I have advocated here, may be limited. Nevertheless, chaos theory also explains that patterns can emerge.

Experimentation: The Death of Ideology and Pursuit of Rational

In this TED talk, Esther Duflo (founder of MIT's Jameel Poverty Action Lab) explains how controlled experiments can be used to discover the best ways of fighting poverty. The same principles can be used to test many social policies and I would encourage politicians to become experts in this aspect of social science.
Interactive Democracy can also benefit from controlled and randomised social experiments. Perhaps each topic of debate should include a web site tab to propose and discuss how it can be tested. Apart from setting up experiments contributors may highlight comparisons with foreign government policy in order to shed more light on the subject.