Having recently finished The Three-Body Problem
series, one key insight struck me: even with godlike technologies, humanity’s
propensity for poor collective decisions remains a significant risk. The
novels—and the Netflix adaptation—underscore a profound truth: survival and
progress are less about the sophistication of our tools and more about our
ability to make better collective choices. Scientific and technological
advancements alone are insufficient to save us. Without a systematic approach
to improving group decision-making, our increasing power might lead us to
engineer our own downfall.
We need a framework to address this challenge—one that
includes public participation and harnesses the wisdom of crowds to mitigate
biases. Humanity can confront critical issues threatening our survival by
fostering an open, rational, and evidence-based approach to cost-benefit
analysis. With the right tools, we can navigate these challenges and,
ultimately, position ourselves to thrive among the stars.
Tomorrow’s Disasters Begin Today
The Three-Body Problem series spans billions of
years, chronicling humanity’s rise to interstellar prominence. Yet, despite
mastering faster-than-light travel, humanity repeatedly makes devastating
mistakes—errors born not of ignorance, but of flawed judgment. The parallels to
our world are striking.
We stand on the brink of monumental achievements, yet
history shows how poor decisions have undermined even the greatest advances:
- Napoleon’s
doomed invasion of Russia—hubris erasing an empire.
- The
systemic evil of slavery—moral failure entrenched for economic gain.
- Columbus’s
genocidal conquest—prejudice and ambition masquerading as progress.
- The
Cuban Missile Crisis—intelligence missteps bringing the world to the brink
of nuclear war.
- The
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—catastrophic costs in lives and resources,
driven by flawed intelligence and untested assumptions.
- World
War I and II’s missed opportunities for diplomacy—miscalculations and
nationalist fervor fueling avoidable global catastrophes.
A lack of information didn’t cause these historical disasters
and won’t cause our future destruction. As Lincoln said, “If destruction be our
lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation[s] of free[people],
we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Our problems arise when
decision-makers are isolated from detailed, systematic analyses of their flawed
assumptions. Our destruction will come if we fail to develop algorithms that
tie the strength of our beliefs to the result of rigorous evaluations of the
supporting and weakening evidence and tie our actions to a review of the likelihood
of each potential cost and benefit.
The Misuse of Collective Intelligence Tools
Here’s a revised version that integrates your suggestions
while keeping it concise and action-oriented:
Unlocking Collective Intelligence
Instead of developing platforms like Wikipedia that focus
crowdsourced potential on efforts like outlining our problems, their causes, and
potential solutions, we've amplified misinformation, manipulation, distortion,
and echo chambers.
The Problem: Short-Term Profit-Driven Design
Social media platforms prioritize short-term profits over
meaningful engagement and long-term value. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter
deploy algorithms that exploit emotional triggers, tribal biases, and outrage.
True, this does drive short-term attention. However, like junk food, it is not satisfying
in the long run. It divides society, is not satisfying in the long run, and
prevents reasonable perspectives that support progress and functional
societies. Their current business model depends on provoking reaction rather
than reflection. This approach fuels harm, squanders the potential to make
smarter, more informed choices, and prevents long-term satisfactory engagement.
Social media is replacing our society and has become a sad,
unfulfilling place because it doesn’t help us resolve our conflicts, let alone find
productive perspectives.
A New Vision: Algorithmic Evidence-Based Decision Making
Imagine a platform beyond clickbait and reactionary posts
where beliefs are measured against evidence. This platform could provide a
structured way to weigh pros and cons, empowering deeper, fulfilling engagement,
connections, innovation, and informed approaches for all personal,
professional, philosophical, or political beliefs.
This platform would help individuals, communities, and
businesses thrive by providing a well-organized system for evaluating every
aspect of life, turning fragmented data into actionable wisdom.
By shifting to platforms that promote statements based on
the strength of the evidence rather than the strength of the reason, we can
unlock the full potential of human connection and innovation, driving economic
growth and creating a more enlightened and prosperous world. Like the field of
dreams, if you build a system that promotes valid arguments, and reasonable
perspectives, they will come.
We need a relational database approach to organizing human arguments
and evidence, from economic issues to what we should buy, what our nations
should do, and why. Imagine a platform where we could systematically map the
relationships between evidence, statements, and conclusions instead of having
the same climate change argument and product reviews scattered across millions
of disconnected tweets and reviews. This structured framework would allow us to
build upon existing insights rather than constantly reinventing the wheel,
enabling us to tackle complex challenges like sustainable energy development or
healthcare reform with the full benefit of our collective wisdom.
Toward a New Framework for Decision-Making
It doesn't have to be this way. We now possess the
technological capacity to create decision-making frameworks that systematically
break down beliefs, evaluate the strength of supporting evidence, and harness
collective intelligence to drive better outcomes. By organizing reasoning into
granular, interconnected components and tying conclusions to the performance of
underlying arguments, we can transcend the flawed, opaque processes that have
led to catastrophic failures in the past. With the right tools, we can rise
above the flawed decision-making that has plagued humanity for centuries.
Imagine a platform—a “Wikipedia for collective reasoning”—that systematically
organizes and evaluates arguments to drive better decisions.
Preserving progress in decision-making isn’t about storing
paragraphs of debates but about systematically tracking the evolution of
reasoning itself. This framework would:
- Breaking
Down Arguments: Decompose debates into core beliefs, supporting and
opposing arguments, and sub-arguments.
- Eliminating
Redundancy: Group similar ideas to focus on unique contributions,
consolidating reasoning across debates.
- Mapping
Costs and Benefits: Tie each predicted outcome to the performance of
supporting evidence, dynamically updating as new information emerges.
- Crowdsourced
Analysis: Harness collective intelligence to evaluate, refine, and
strengthen arguments.
- Scoring
Arguments: Assess each argument and sub-argument by criteria such as
logical coherence, evidence strength, and relevance, creating an adaptive evaluation
system.
- Branch
debates into smaller, manageable parts, connecting beliefs to their
supporting and weakening arguments.
- Score
arguments based on their logical coherence, evidence strength, and
importance.
- Update
evaluations dynamically as new evidence or reasoning emerges, creating a
living, adaptive knowledge base.
- Help
you integrate what you say into what has been said before and tie the
acceptance and rejection of different beliefs to the most likely
consequences
This structured approach ensures decisions are always built
on the strongest available foundation of reasoning and evidence.
