Harnessing Collective Intelligence: A Proposal for Transparent, Data-Driven Decision Making

Peter Thiel has argued that aside from advancements in data, our society has seen little progress in the past century. Google's success, valued in hundreds of billions of dollars, stemmed from their innovative use of links as a voting system for website rankings. This suggests that we could apply similar principles to rank ideas directly, rather than merely directing users to external websites. Google's algorithm places trust in websites with more links, but this can be flawed as people often make mistakes.

A more robust algorithm could consider the number of valid arguments supporting a claim, rather than merely counting links to a website. By refining this approach, we could harness the power of big data to improve decision-making. What we need is collective, transparent intelligence, not closed, artificial intelligence.

Imagine a system where we assign scores to various elements, thereby building conclusion validity from evidence validity. These could include:Linkage scores, addressing the relevance of evidence to a conclusion,

• Uniqueness scores, indicating the lack of redundancy,
• Data validity scores, addressing verification,
• Logical validity scores,
• Bias-free scores.

This could provide a solution to life's most pressing challenges. Rational collective thinking necessitates the dissection, evaluation, and scoring of arguments. We can't begin to address our problems without this process.

Transparent, collective cost-benefit analysis is the key to avoiding major catastrophes such as wars, artificial intelligence threats, global warming, extinction events from comets, supernovae, and super-volcanoes.

As it stands, our public policy is declining in intelligence. We're filtering all our decisions through our limited attention spans, compounded by the demands of our full-time jobs. We must embrace the complexity of these issues and start working towards solutions.

Chicago and Chicago Land are good place to raise a family

Background, definitions, and assumptions

• For a place to be considered good, it must be better than average. 
• Chicago land is, of course, Chicago and the surrounding suburbs.

Reasons to agree: +10

1. Chicago has lots of stuff to do, that don't cost too much money. 
2. Trips to the zoo are good for kids (+1). Chicago has good zoos. 
3. Chicago has good mass transportation (+2). 
4. Chicago has good architecture (+0). Its cool to live near good architecture. 
5. You can leave near Chicago, and still have a back yard. Despite criticism of suburban sprawl kids have fun in their back yards (+0).
6. Bolingbrook, a typical suburb of Chicago, has pretty good parks.
7. Kids like fireworks, and there are often good fire works shows around Chicago. For instance Navy Pier has free fireworks during the summer, their are good firework shows across the suburbs on the 4rth of July, and the Chicago Air Water show has good fireworks.
8. Numbers are what matter, and on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being best and 10 being worst) Bolingbrook, a typical Chicago suburb, is a 4 on property crime, and a 5 on violent crime, which is about average for the USA. 
9. You should make wherever you are home. 
10. Chicago has a lot of stuff to do.

Reasons to disagree: -6

1. Hiking is a good pastime. Hiking is only fun in the mountains. There are no mountains in Illinois. There is no good hiking near Chicago. City walking is not as cool as hiking in the mountains. Sure, Boise is hot during the summer, but its cooler in the mountains. It is hot everywhere in Illinois in the summer. It is too humid in the summer to hike. There are too many bugs, and the forest have too much undergrowth. 
2. State Parks in Illinois are anticlimactic (compared to Idaho).
3. There is a culture of corruption in Chicago, that rewards people based on who they know.
4. In Illinois kids from worse neighborhood go to much worse schools than those who are from better neighborhoods. 
5. A good place to raise a family is close to extended family. It is hard to go from a place you grew up in, and then just live somewhere else. It may always feel unlike home. 
6. Shooting is fun, but you have to pay to go shooting around Chicago. 

Total Score:

• Reasons to agree: +10
• Reasons to disagree: -6
• Net reasons to agree with reasons to agree minus reasons to disagree: +1+2
• Total: 

Images that agree: +3