Public Consultation

Due to the continued high rates of teenage pregnancies and STDs there have been calls for a relaxation of UK rules about advertising condoms and, according to this report, abortion clinics. The proposals are up for review and public consultation.

Interactive Democracy would provide an effective channel for just such public consultation and voting.

AIDA

AIDA is often cited as the basics of any advert:

• Attention (grab it)


• Interest (seize it)


• Desire (build it)


• Action (demand it)

This is why adverts sometimes show shocking images and why headlines are so important to draw you into a story.

AIDA is undoubtedly used in political advertising and I feel sure that it would be employed to persuade voters in Interactive Democracy, just like it is used in General Elections today. However, the budget employed by political marketers on advertising would be diluted across many, many more ballots under the Interactive Democracy system, so the effect of political advertising may be a lot less.

Stories Trump Statistics

Editors know what sells newspapers. It's the heart wrenching stories that grab our attention more than banal facts and figures. And photos of people mean more to most of us than graphs, even if they convey less concrete information. This is because most of what we think is governed by our gut instinct rather than our rational self.

This poses a problem for all human decision making and every form of democracy. Luckily both sides of any debate can be illustrated with both testimony and statistics.

Blame the politicians?

It's par for the course to blame politicians. It's just part of holding them to account. But Interactive Democracy gives everyone the ability to get involved in the political process and with that ability comes a degree of responsibility.

Recently many commentators have blamed politicians for the collapse of the banking system and the economy due to the softening of financial regulation. But how many people foresaw the impending disaster and had the gumption to do something about it? If Interactive Democracy had been in place would we have seen apolitical experts calling for change and drumming up public support? Some how I doubt it.

Will this dilution of responsibility allow politicians to dodge responsibility? I imagine that the majority will look at this on a case by case basis, but it's worth remembering that, with ID, we don't have to wait for a general election to exercise our wrath.

Molded by Parliament

Interactive Democracy gives the public the power to push issues forward and force Parliament to debate them, with the objective of offering the public a small range of solutions from which to choose, in a referendum. I would expect MPs to bring all their experience to bear, their knowledge of the existing laws and policies, and to broaden the debate to involve all aspects of associated issues. The results may be a referendum on something that looks a little different to the original concept.

This balance of power, balance of wants and practical needs, balance of amateur insight and expert law making, is important to the creation of good and realistic government.

Refusal by Government

Imagine the situation: a referendum reaches a decision that the elected government, for whatever reason, can't stomach. Could they refuse to implement the mandated policy? They may have very good reasons for doing so as the situation may have changed or new evidence may have come to light. So I expect that this would be a possibility. However, the government would have to look to their own re-election and the public could use Interactive Democracy to bring that date forward.

In this way Interactive Democracy provides balance between the wants of the public and delivery by government. And it provides a balance of power between elected rulers and the majority.

Political Apathy and the Division of Labour

Much has been written over the years about the division of labour, or specialisation of labour, in economics. From Xenophon to Durkheim, according to Wikipedia. And politics is just another specialist job. Among the disadvantages of the division of labour listed on Wikipedia are

• Disconnection of effects from actions
• Lack of motivation
• Dependency
• Loss of flexibility

All terms that fit rather neatly with the political apathy often seen in modern society.

So, maybe the division of labour shouldn't be applied to politics quite as stringently as may be warranted on a production line. Maybe we shouldn't have expert lawmakers or career politicians and maybe much greater involvement of the electorate would be a good thing.

There are a number of businesses, using less hierarchical management structures, that provide evidence for increased efficiency with increased involvement: Ricardo Semler's organisation and WL Gore and Associates are examples.

Offensive Protests

When the Royal Anglian Regiment marched through the town of Luton on their return from Iraq they were "greeted" by protesters angry over Britain's role in the war and waving placards reading "... Butchers of Basra" and "cowards, killers, extremists". Not surprisingly, many have taken offense at the protest and have called for them to be banned.

So where does "freedom of speech" begin and end?

Most people concentrate on the "offense" when people are "taking offense". Perhaps we should be aware of the "taking" part of the phrase and advise people to just leave the "offense" where it is!

The limits of freedom of speech should be incitement to damage property or person. Most school children know this: "Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never harm me!". But abusive behaviour is asking for trouble, emotional animals that we are, and picking fights will soon involve the police.

Interactive Democracy wouldn't completely stop protests, but it would provide a safety valve, offering anyone the opportunity to directly influence the political process. Through ID the majority would make a far bigger and more credible "noise" than a handful of people shouting abuse on the street.

I suspect the Royal Anglians have coped with much harsher abuse than this. Nevertheless, I would have liked to have seen the Sergeant Major call "Halt", "To the right, Salute" promptly followed by each soldier producing a crisp V sign in the direction of the protesters, before resuming their march with glints in their eyes. If you are going to dish it out you ought to be able to take it!

The Value of Evidence

Not all evidence carries the same value:

1. Reproducible empirical experiments provide the strongest proof.


2. Statistical evidence may be good, but tricky to handle. Even very bright and scientifically trained people may mishandle statistical data. A typical example is assuming that correlations mean cause and effect.


3. First hand testimony may be good but people can be tricked either by the deceit of others or miscomprehension. If testimonial can be corroborated by others, then its value goes up, taking into account the risk of collusion and trickery.


4. Allegory is a step away from direct experience and makes poorer evidence.


5. Analogy is another move away from direct evidence and belongs in the realm of concept association and logic.

All of these types of evidence are present in politics. Unfortunately there may be little in the way of useful socialogical experiments and difficult to comprehend statistical evidence may be the best we can get. This points to the necessity for scientific governmental advisers in the Interactive Democracy system.

In Love with Ideology

Historically, political parties have espoused one ideology or another. Party members have cherished beliefs. They fight for their sacrosanct values; ideals that are automatically defended.

Interactive Democracy encourages debate, issue by issue, and takes a step away from left/right party politics. There is less need for anyone to tow the party line. This concentration on each topic will engender a more detailed examination of the facts and encourage scientific study of the situation even if some arguments are based on ideology. It could be a step away from emotional knee jerk reactions.

Presenting Statistics

Not all journalists want to titillate with scary and often misleading statistics. Click here for an interesting article about the presentation of statistics, making them more meaningful to the majority.

Fear Mongering

"This is the scourge of the earth and I'm the only one who can save you! Without me you will perish!"

Interactive Democracy is much less about appointing saviours (political leaders) and much more about contributing ideas and decisions. It stimulates debate and questions the validity of mood engineering and political manipulation at every turn.

Strap Li(n)es and Sound Bites

The world is a complex place and its very difficult to convey all the available information on any issue. Explaining the context, accuracy, probability and every other factor involved in a point of view is nigh on impossible and not even useful if you are trying to convince someone of your argument. So the simplification of your message can easily sully the vast and complex 'truth'.

I suggest that mechanisms for gleaning the truth are important to democracy and that advertising standards and the legal system, both have roles to play both in clarifying what is true and as a deterrent to those who may be casual with facts.

However, misconception will never be eliminated. Debates and competition between ideas are just as important in keeping democracy clean.

Types of False

• Lies



• Exaggeration



• Omission



• Different context



• Mistakes of data (rounding errors)



• Mistakes of statistics (spurious correlations)



• Mistakes of observation



• Mistakes of conclusion



• Mistaken measurement



• Mistaken calculation

Interactive Democracy may encourage people to highlight the mistaken assumptions of others. In particular I'd hope that those with specialist knowledge of the issues being debated would feel empowered to speak out when they hear political leaders making mistakes.

Democracy - Sacred Belief?

Perhaps blindly believing in certain things is important. Perhaps it is wrong to criticise parliamentary democracy and maybe, if we all maintain our conviction in it, our shared values will bond us together in social harmony, peace and prosperity.

Some would say that immutable belief can fly in the face of 'truth' and that 'truth' is the value that we should all hold dear. But if the only concrete proof of 'truth' is evidence then maybe politics would be better served by science than by democracy!?

Is evidence of past 'truths' any predictor of the future of society? Maybe it can be. The social sciences surely have something to offer, providing insight through case history and experiment.

However, improving society surely requires more than facts: Goals, values and creativity are ingredients that can be added and mixed together by effective democracy.

This site challenges the sacred belief that the current political system is as good as it gets.

Arguments For and Against

It would be useful if each ePetition listed arguments for and against. These could be contributed by the general public, added under "Arguments For" and "Arguments Against".

There may also be comments classified under "Interesting Points" (please see De Bono's PMI system) and "Questions". The latter may have answers submitted by the general public.

It may require the webmaster to weed out duplicate points with the danger that this could introduce political bias. Therefore, maybe the best approach would be for the web master to bundle the duplicate points together, in chronological order, thereby making the system more manageable without deleting any opinions. They could be viewed by clicking on the original argument. Search software could make this task much easier and would reduce any "operator bias".

Office of National Statistics

You can visit the ONA website by clicking here.

Science, Values, Ideology

Some would say that science is its own ideology, that some have faith in science while others don't. But most scientists equate their profession with little more than gathering and interpreting evidence. Politics is completely different. It is seamed through with values and ideology and the grasping of power. So the social and political sciences are curious beasts.

I suggest that the separation of unbiased scientific empirical evidence from politics could be a significant improvement to democracy.

Freakonomics

Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner provides interesting insight into how the study of social statistics could effect social policy. Rigorous and independent review of statistical material may prove to be very powerful in improving society and could aid the democratic process. Freaconomics provides examples of the types of studies that an Independent Scientific Commission could carry out.

That said, correlation of statistics doesn't infer cause and effect and it must be made clear that this is a different level of evidence compared to conducting controlled experiments.

Conformity

Solomon Asch conducted experiments that showed how the opinions of others skewed an individuals judgment. Just because several other people stated a view that was contrary to the subjects own opinion, their confidence declined and they tended to agree. There may be good evolutionary reasons for this: conforming to the group allows many people to work together; always making every decision for yourself consumes time and energy and may increase the risks of making a mistake - a mistake that the many minds of the group would have spotted and avoided.

The conformity instinct can drag us away from the hard evidence, as it did in Asch's experiments and others conducted by Richard Crutchfield. This may be another good reason for an Independent Science Commission as a force capable of balancing our gut reactions with incontrovertible evidence.

Here's a video of Asch's experiment.

Scientific Support for Democracy

The independence of the BBC is sacrosanct and one of its most important attributes. Its independence adds considerably to democracy.

I'd like to see an Independent Science Commission, publicly funded and beyond political bias, charged with getting the evidence and getting to the truth. It should be kept separate from any political party.

Parliament may request that the Independent Science Commission study any particular issue (perhaps triggered by the Interactive Democracy system). The ISC would typically conduct a critical study of the data from previous studies before deciding if further research is required. They would report the evidence in strict scientific terms and without opinion. Reports could be published on the Internet for peer review and public comment.

The ISC should be staffed by experienced and professional scientists and conducted with scientific and statistical rigour. The head of the ISC should be appointed by a cross party parliamentary commission to avoid political bias and may be asked to swear allegiance to the principles of science, much like the police are asked to swear to uphold the law.

The ISC may commission and manage other scientists to conduct studies in specific areas where it hasn't the equipment or staff available to carry out the research itself, but the reports arising from such contracts would be approved and published by the ISC.

Apart from dealing with empirical evidence, statistical analysis would be an important role of the ISC.

Homer's Wisdom

"People can come up with statistics to prove anything... 40% of people know that!"

So which statistics should we trust?... Are there any statistics we can trust?

One of the problems comes from interpreting complex data and simplifying it for public consumption. Another comes from looking for evidence to support our ideas, which may be conscious or sub-conscious confirmation bias. And doesn't research funded by one interested party or another call into doubt the impartiality of that research?

It's not surprising that Homer (and most of the rest of us) distrust science and statistics.

Realisation Utility

Professors Nicholas Barberis and Wei Xiong of Yale and Princeton Universities coined the term "realisation utility" when explaining investor behaviour. Realisation utility encourages investors to hang on to stocks that have sunk -- even when those stocks have dim futures. Here's what they wrote:

"The authors consider an additional experimental condition in which the experimenter liquidates subjects' holdings and then tells them that they are free to reinvest the proceeds in any way they like. If subjects were holding on to their losing stocks because they thought that these stocks would rebound, we would expect them to re-establish their positions in these losing stocks. In fact, subjects do not re-establish these positions."

"Subjects were refusing to sell their losers simply because it would have been painful to do so … subjects were relieved when the experimenter intervened and did it for them."

This is akin to the psychological pain of admitting you were wrong and instead sticking it out instead of changing. It may be a significant factor in politics.

Interactive Democracy can unlock politicians from "unprofitable" behaviour that they may be reluctant to relinquish themselves.

But will the majority get locked into poor behaviour? Will they exhibit "realisation utility"?

Individual voters are under far less pressure than politicians and this may allow them to change their view more easily, allowing timely changes of policy.

Demands for Data

A friend recently mentioned to me that the Australian health service charge a small percentage of the cost of drugs so as to avoid the wastage that may occur with free prescriptions. Are drugs wasted by patients? This could be a useful area of study that could influence policy, especially in light of calls for free prescriptions in England, to match those in Wales.

Academic studies may be just as important to improving society as any form of Democracy. Any majority could demand them through the Interactive Democracy process.

Majorities can be Wrong, Experts can be Wrong!

Many commonly held beliefs form years gone by have been proven to be wrong: "the Earth's flat", "the stars rotate around the earth", "you can catch cholera from bad air". So should we put our faith in experts? Well, the experts of their day all believed in the statements I've just mentioned, so that doesn't help. And the majority of common folk probably believed them too.

So who can we trust?

To my mind the only solution is to base decisions on the best possible information - the best evidence. And to be willing to adapt whenever a decision is proven to be wrong.