72 Comments
Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

The example debates here are all a disagreement on (future) reality. Many of the debates in our world are about policy. In such debates, difference in values also lead to different conclusion. I wonder how to extend the proposed system to such debates

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Several added boxes

China makes most of our stuff including chips

We buy most of our stuff from China including chips

China has billion people

We have 360 million

Chinas middle class is rising as ours is declining

Soon China will just need to sell to the rest of the world and themselves

China also produces and refines most of the worlds raw materials

We need raw materials like iron and rare earth elements

China has a military and operational control of the Taiwan area

Our military leaders have noted under no scenario could our military win in a limited conflict with China

An all out war would not be acceptable to either side

Tianmin Square, Hong Kong and Vietnam provide examples of use and limits of power

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

there is no resolvable answer to the question about whether or not the USA and China would go to war over Taiwan - I doubt that even the USA and China know whether they would - I'm reminded of the quote attributed to David Hume that "reason is the slave of the passions" - if push came to shove would reason or passion prevail - the outcome would be very situational and impossible to predict ahead of time - probably the best we can do for issues like this that deal with trying to predict future actions is to surface our assumptions - the key difference between the assumptions of David and Niall seem to be around the future ambitions of China and the USA neither of which it is really possible to 'know' - so, the question makes for an interesting but unresolvable discussion

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

As usual, Tomas has searched out a better way for debate just as he does with everything that he focuses his mind, and heart, upon. I love visual methods of presenting information, especially inserts of pertinent photos, charts, and graphics that Tomas uses deftly. His summary color chart with the highlights centered in Yellow is a great foundation to work from.

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Nice idea but who gets to write the boxes and who assigns points?? And how to keep the crazies out??

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I think it is VERY important to pursue the creation of this kind of structured argumentation. Let's imagine that we have perfected it. We should not be discouraged by the fact that a small % of the people on the internet will use it. Most people have a position that is governed by tribal affiliation, and argue to support a tribal position and to inflame their self righteousness. But as always a small number of people usually call the shots and aspire to be rational and improving their batting average is a good thing.

There are several sources of uncertainty that can swing a policy decision: The probability of an outcome of alternative policy options, the relative value of outcomes and then the importance of ideological constraints. Reasonable people can disagree on policy because of disagreements on any or all of these. But if it is made explicit at least one understands that there is no one conclusion that all reasonable people would subscribe to, and this can free up the willingness to muddle through to a good enough solution. The current debates about pandemic policy involves all three of these issues.

Raymond Neutra MD

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Feb 5, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Very important subject Tomas! I have seen a bit about Taiwan and its Digital Minister, Audrey Tang, and how it is coming up ways to make the internet less a source for misinformation and polarisation.

I couldn't follow it in detail but it seems they have a Facebook equivalent where the algorithm upgrades when people agree rather than disagree, as well as quite a few more smart things. Sorry I don't have more details but I reckon your research skills would be better than mine. Listening to her talk, I was thinking Taiwan was showing the world how to use technology to make democracy better rather than worse. Tristan Harris from the Centre for Humane Technology and Daniel Schmachtenberger from The Consilience Project are fans. It would be interesting to see where you disagree and agree with them.

cheers

Tony

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Feb 2, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

I think most debates I encounter these days don't fall into this category - of a debate between two reasonable people, looking for evidence and balanced on what is essentially a judgement call. (e.g. desire for Taiwan vs economic cost).

Instead most debates these days seem to be with people who are down the rabbit-holes, so what you produce as evidence will be dismissed because is from the "MSM", or ignored in favor of some youTube pundit, or the latest Joe Rogan misinformation. :-)

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Feb 2, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Certainly worth a try …..as you say…the current system is rather useless

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Thanks for sharing! I really do like this visualization. The first issue my mind went to was the issue of evidence. How do you weigh, value, and visually represent stronger evidence in support of various points in the argument? For example, if a majority of peer-reviewed research supports point X, does that get added weight, visually, vs. "looser" or anecdotal points? And does stronger or more recent research have more value than research with less rigor or recency?

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

I think the key is to synthesize info and identify surprising agreement and those that are coming to it (ie "experts" of the moment and topic and significance).

1. I would definitely start with Marshall McLuhan. The tool shapes us. "The medium is the message". Your Twitter example unbundles how Twitter UI and Algos fail when it's pushed to an extreme. I think that's the 4th Law of all communication mediums according to McLuhan.

2. However another reason current platforms fail is that the platforms are still incentivized for maximizing engagement not debate SYNTHESIS. They want as many people and bots as possible expressing and competing with shock value. I believe China and Web3.0 will push the "algos" toward "unsubscribe"/"adblock"/"show my tags"... I know - I said China! boo :P

3. In some ways, "synthesis" is more of a ranked list than a "democrazy"... But of course the common denominator person is told that "democratizing" everything is the thing to do and democracy is the best system we've tried, but that's hardly true! Here's are different ways of thinking about that:

A. There are many other types of voting that are better for different purposes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting#Compliance_with_voting_system_criteria

B. There is Bayesian Truth Serum that is so meta it identifies Truth and Experts. I think this is mindboggling, but still ignored. Sure there are some situations it doesn't apply to, but many where it does. It would be ideal to rank folks into progressive expertise hierarchies or at least get rid of idiots. I'd paste a link but there are many papers to peruse. IMO, this is really the next "AI" - "HGI" human group intelligence. Just turn it into an iterative game... question/answer.

C. For some group decision this paper is relevant. See "Figure 5: Five most accurate and fastest network structures".

http://www.kevinzollman.com/uploads/5/0/3/6/50361245/zollman_-_communication_structure.pdf

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Feb 2, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Ive been thinking about this a bit lately too, in my case I wanted to determine personal decisions around COVID responses (vaccination for children in particular) and it was actually by reading your article that I thought I need to break this down for myself b/c you are persuasive, but you are weighing certain data points more strongly than others (or not at all) and If I do not agree with those then my conclusions may differ. So in a way I was imagining this tool you’re describing to crucially analyse your work! (or more to the point my response to it).

One thing I think that is missing so far that I was focussing on myself was how the supporting evidence for each argument/assertion is factored in, say for e.g, a news article link. This could be weighted (and voted on by the participants by a number of criteria, for e.g. how strongly it supports the assertion, how credible the publication is, how credible the author is (which is probably an amalgam of many factors, but for simplicity just a single metric score would do). So these 3 (+ more I imagine) scores tally up to provide a Strength of Argument Metric (with lots of tweak-ability like weighting some of them, at a global level perhaps if they are considered more impactful - publication may not matter so much, but credibility of Author does etc).

The higher the metric (with more higher calibre evidence), the more strongly that assertion is supported (and then you might even start to visually show the balance tipping for or against when compared to the opposite assertion!) Perhaps though to limit the ability to game the system with a lot of low quality supporting evidence, only the top 10 evidence items are used? These different evidence scores could then be tallied up for each contention (and multiplied by the importance factor of the contention itself) to show ultimately which of the arguments/decisions are the stronger.

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The question of a workable format that would work across a wide array of issues is daunting. My first step would be an exhaustive search for ALL the relevant issues at play. What is historically relevant; economic and geographic limits and some concensus on what each party is most likely to value going forward from that particular point in time. Tomas, nowhere in your example is there any discussion of an underlying tension about the dollar vs the yuan. I only point out this as an example of potentially missing one of the relevant issues. So, I would say step one is developing a method of getting all the issues on the table. That's my 2¢.

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

I like the layout of the debate... Fits with my way if breaking down a problem. Didn't quite understand the points / numbers in the yellow boxes and to what extent they influence the deepness of the yellow?

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Feb 1, 2022·edited Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

I think showing a visual summary like you did is the way forward. Great idea.

Side question - your debate with Arnold Kling made me remember : I saw somewhere (probably on this blog) that you asked for the US citizenship.

This really surprises me, for I assumed that, because you wrote these articles about the end of nation-states, you were maybe libertarian leaning - or at least that you plan your future today according to your own predictions (which is that in the future nation-states will fight to the death to keep the status quo).

So there is a big risk that many nation states will try to restrain the freedom and mobility of their most mobile citizen, in one way or another.

And if it is so, why did you choose to take on the only* nationality on Earth that will tax you no matter where you live, prevent you from opening bank accounts in many countries, and burden you with paperwork to fill every year even if you don't have any more ties with the US ?

Don't you want to keep this freedom to choose to let go of a state, if it becomes too overarching ?

*yes Eretria does that too, theoretically, but... well you know what I mean :)

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Feb 1, 2022Liked by Tomas Pueyo

Loved the discussion topology, before I saw your images I started visualizing a cluster diagram with larger and smaller circles representing their relevance, I think that would also work very well.

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