Deliberative Consensus Protocols - Social Protocols

🌈 Abstract

The article discusses a deliberative consensus protocol, which is a process that online groups can use to make decisions in a fair and scalable manner. The protocol aims to produce good decisions that represent the collective intelligence of the group, while addressing challenges such as manipulation by bad-faith actors and the difficulty of scaling collective intelligence.

🙋 Q&A

[01] Introduction: Scalable Group Decision-Making

1. What is a deliberative consensus protocol?

• A deliberative consensus protocol is a process that online groups can use to make decisions.
• It is designed to produce good decisions that are fair and manifest the collective intelligence of the group.
• It is designed to work at scale, even on the internet where bad-faith actors can try to manipulate the results.

2. What are the challenges of scaling collective intelligence?

• Large groups often fail to come to consensus on even basic facts, let alone optimal actions.
• Collective intelligence does not always scale well.

3. How does the article argue that intelligent group decision-making can scale?

• The article argues that with the right process, intelligent group decision-making can scale.
• The process involves a deliberative consensus protocol that uses various technologies to address the challenges of dishonesty, ignorance, and bias.

[02] Fair Decisions

1. What constitutes a fair decision according to the article?

• A fair decision is one that discovers the 1) honest and 2) fully-informed opinion of an 3) unbiased jury or group.

2. How does a deliberative consensus protocol aim to produce fair decisions?

• It uses a deliberative process to discover what an unbiased (e.g. representative) sample of the group would honestly believe after considering all the most informative or convincing comments made by other users.
• It employs three different technologies to correct for dishonesty, ignorance, and bias.

[03] Correcting for Dishonesty using Game Theory

1. How does a deliberative consensus protocol address the problem of dishonesty and manipulation?

• It can use game-theoretical mechanisms such as the Bayesian Truth Serum to reward users for giving honest answers, even if they believe most people disagree with them.
• By using a reputation system where reputation translates to the ability to influence the attention of other users, the protocol can create an equilibrium where everyone answers honestly.

[04] Correcting for Ignorance using Deliberation

1. How does a deliberative consensus protocol address the problem of ignorance?

• It can use an algorithm such as the Global Brain Algorithm to curate conversations and discover the most convincing arguments on each side of a question.
• This helps determine the opinion of users who have considered all the relevant arguments.

2. How does the integration of a truthtelling protocol and a deliberative protocol create an equilibrium of informed honesty?

• Users are incentivized to vote according to their honest opinion given the information that has been shown to them, as this maximizes their influence on the platform.
• This is the opposite of the effect of many social media algorithms, which create an equilibrium of dishonest conformity.

[05] Correcting for Bias using Machine Learning

1. How does a deliberative consensus protocol address the problem of bias?

• It can use an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm to discover latent factors that predictably affect users' votes and adjust for these biases, so that the results are representative of the overall opinions of the group.

[06] Summary

1. What are the limitations of a deliberative consensus protocol?

• It does not solve all the problems of group decision-making, such as the dilemmas in designing fair democratic voting mechanisms addressed by social choice theory.

2. What are the potential benefits of a deliberative consensus protocol?

• It can enhance online group decision-making processes by more effectively distributing information and producing a fair decision that represents the collective intelligence of the group.
• The most important potential benefit may be the improvement in discourse, as the protocol can focus attention on the most informative conversation threads and comments that stand up to scrutiny, promoting deep, honest, informed, and intelligent conversations.