A lot of serious thought has obviously gone into creating the Swarm System. I was excited that fine tuning seems to have considered every possibility and seemed ready to tackle our most basic issue: corruption in government.
The idea of creating a way for people to work through all possibilities and filter out the lumps of greed and power that would otherwise take over at the expense of humanity sounded almost miraculous. A method for integrity to stand ready to replace our crumbling corrupt political system and give power back to the people offers desperately needed hope when all seems lost.
But then money comes in as a first step. Heartbreaking! Opening a door to money in any form is what corrupted our existing power structure. It’s how power plays the game. It appeals to humanity’s greedy dark side that loves “power over” through deception, cruelty, fear and confusion.
Money is a fact of life as it now exists, but before we tackle a plan for equitably accumulating and wisely distributing money, we first need to create an alternative to a Congress motivated by greed. How competitive would politics be without the attraction of excessive wealth, power and perks not available to those they are elected to represent?
Is it possible the Swarm System could actually find candidates motivated by a sense of integrity, responsibility, respect and devotion, willing to share their wisdom and constructive ideas with like minded members for the betterment of society? People who see true service as its own reward without requiring bribes, recognition or any advantages not equally available to those they represent?
I believe people like this exist and work quietly under the radar while greed loudly claims credit and monetizes it for themselves. Finding these heroes and giving them a platform would give Swarm a solid starting position.
Money gets things done. If we want to compete with the bad guys we need to use it for good. Money isn’t the problem. Lack of transparency in our systems is.
And again you don’t have to use money in the system. But you can.
We use swarm intelligence for businesses - with money involved / and greed does not overtake the system because we make it transparent. “Skin in the game” is quantifiable.
I did not read this article as about politics… rather new ways of decentralizing power… of idea generation and application. Of cooperative problem solving at all levels.
Reminds me of Buckminster Fuller&cos World Game developed in the 60’s…
I understand the value of “skin in the game” as a moderating influence on profit motivated business tendencies. And I do see how trying to run a government like a business was a big mistake.
It would still be a heavy lift to motivate a system using deception and blackmail as the tools of their trade to see transparency as an acceptable alternative. They are comfortable, secure and rewarded for keeping things the way they are.
Flushing out centuries of accrued corruption would call for a swarm of incorruptible new blood coming in from outside the existing one. Otherwise it’s just the same old “promise reform but first you’ve got to get elected” game in which wealth and perks inevitably smother good intentions.
Building that incorruptible swarm, if that is possible, could break the cycle. If not, government corruption will keep doubling down beyond imagination, as it has been.
This is an excellent idea! Safeguards against group think, transparency, trust tokens...all good stuff. I see room for additional tweaks, but this "use case" looks ready to give to a programmer (or AI to generate the code in a day.)
There is only one major drawback: because left hemisphere thinking is so dominant in society, the swarm will reflect that bias. The addition of a mechanism to demand more consideration of context and consequences could remedy that.
Thanks for feedback. Can you explain what you mean by “left hemisphere” thinking, and why you think it is dominant?
It is testable that swarms get better outcomes when there are diverse opinions in the make up. So you are right to have some concern if you think most of society has a similar bias. But what exactly do you mean by it?
A proper explanation would be better done by phone or zoom. I would appreciate an opportunity to have a short conversation about that. If you are open to that, if it is even possible for you, please send me an email so we can arrange that. I am in the Pacific Time zone.
I’ve been approached in a DM to work on building a law to get rid of gerrymandering. The person had done a great deal of work on the first pass, but Substack was changing all the time and the message disappeared. The point being, there are people who are willing to do some work on some major issues, but as you point out there is no organizing force. I’m assuming you’ve looked at bespoke mastodon or blue sky? Or is there enough privacy and security for either of them to allow for the kind of multiple personas (roles), scorekeeping and protocols you describe. I could think a bit.
Yes. They don’t have the required tools needed for good easy group problem solving. We the people. Red our own platform - open sourced code. 100% built and controlled by the people outside of government
Please keep watch for Joshua Ellis’ decentralized alt-social media platform, Kowloon, due for release soonish. A Pulitzer-nominated American married to a Brit a living in London, he’s among the sharpest, most intelligent, honest folk I’ve ever known. A true Renaissance person.
How far along in the design are you? And have you used a prototype using Google Docs (or something similar) to prototype your process for creating solutions and the software for facilitating their creation.
We have about $100k into making a general swarming software. But it isn’t good enough to use at scale yet. We are willing to turn it over to the people if we can find a way to bring it to life. The original code was done in Rust
I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this problem. I think there are ways to progress toward swarms as genies. The problem is the Golems as you've outlined. The financial chat board ceo.ca has penalty boxes for people who are reported to the moderators. It tends to keep people in line, and I've watched it function to do so. Yet still people wind up in various penalty boxes, Bad actors with bad goals or at least goals bad for society yet not for them and that's something else I explored a few years ago in a prednisone powered moments of inspiration that I Frozen digital Amber here: www.grite.ca. I'm trying to live that concept. Which is why when I realized how AiLlms actually function I had to share it with a Creative Commons license. Both good and right for society to understand the bill of Goods they're being sold. To recognize its Fool's Gold, extremely useful for they're phenomenal pattern matching ability, when you read the article when you finish laughing or crying you can share it onward, to at least make a swarm of awareness. I think covid gave us a chance to start over unfortunately the people with bad goals, like bad laws used to legitimize cruelty and Evil. Every guardrail imposed after the debauchery of world wars and then investment bubbles and the subprime Fiasco now being followed by an AI bubble, but this one has far wider reaching consequences. The plI've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this problem. I think there are ways to progress toward swarms as genies. The problem is the Golems as you've outlined. The financial chat board ceo.ca has penalty boxes for people who are reported to the moderators. It tends to keep people in line, and I've watched it function to do so. Yet still people wind up in various penalty boxes, Bad actors with bad goals or at least goals bad for society yet not for them and that's something else I explored a few years ago in a prednisone powered moments of inspiration that I Frozen digital Amber here: www.grite.ca. I'm trying to live that concept. Which is why when I realized how AiLlms actually function I had to share it with a Creative Commons license. Both good and right for society to understand the bill of Goods they're being sold. To recognize its Fool's Gold, extremely useful for they're phenomenal pattern matching ability, when you read the article when you finish laughing or crying you can share it onward, to at least make a swarm of awareness. I think covid gave us a chance to start over unfortunately the people with bad goals, like bad laws used to legitimize cruelty and Evil. Every guardrail imposed after the debauchery of world wars and then investment bubbles and the subprime Fiasco now being followed by an AI bubble, but this one has far wider reaching consequences. The planet and the people. Read it, test it, share it. That's why I gave it the creative commons license I gave it.anet and the people. Read it, test it, share it. That's why I gave it the creative commons license I used. Unless jergenfield version will be made in the relatively near future:
"ONE independent un-de-platformable-platform is all we needed."
There's an idea for an initial group project - creating such a platform from scratch. I would think part of the design would be to make it impossible to be constrained by a national government. Does anyone have any idea what such a program/platform might cost?
we have about $110k into building sswarming software. A real high trust platfrom to stand up on servers would cost millions. But if we had millions of users it would be cheap. This is our pitch deck (rough draft) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVXC5xnFik&t=48s
We have anice platform already built for inperson meet ups for about 500 people or less
Human -Clever -clean - and the absolute best moment for success ! I hope you thrive !
I find by traveling any street path country (working and living in 4 countries) gives deep knowledge of solutions never known before
The school system is dividing us from our children ( writing reading not happening) and failing the minds of our children .. creativities, deep interests not triggered, adapting math across subjects would help immensely..
Humanity has been walked dead -zombies in manny western countries
I would suggest looking into way of life of the Mormons / Shia Muslims / orthodox Russians
Incredible life knowledge
I would also find a spot for 99% granted solution to
If I read it correctly, you are literally merging the circles so every step of circles has more participants than the last right? If so, the big circles would need a system to merge and deliberate over complicated ideas that may already have been merged (and therefore expanded) a few times. Does "algorithmically merging ideas" mean you want to use some AI or you want to use some defined system to ask e.g. random people to provide arguments and votes to confirm a merger or small change?
(
If there is no discussion or manual merging, the system would still be amazing, and extremely quick, but limited to identifying ideas that can get overwhelming support on a first read. In that case I would make the AI merge general ideas with specific ideas such that the general statement almost disappears, or I would tell people to vote for specific solutions.
Also, the circles in early stages could be asked to serve some fact-checking function.
)(
If there is some deliberation in the large groups, It would be interested to know how. Is there something on this Substack?
At the moment i am trying to sum up a design for a deliberation system in large groups, so I am very interested in finding or giving more ideas.
No Thomas you are not understanding the system correctly. AI is not part of this - except we do see one use for it and that would simply be identifying similar answers to merge. But this can be manual as well, it just takes longer. The final decision is always manual. And the ideas come from the people.
This is not simply a way to make a decision (although it is a very good one when used correctly and we use confidence scores). What collective intelligence is - is a way to talk to many people as if they were one big brain. So that new brain can and should - come up with creative solutions, criticisms, and mediate ideas.
Here is a blueprint visual to help.
Also, each step isn’t a decision. It is just a conversation until the group decides to make a decision.
From the pictures it looks like every group sends forth one representative, in that case I think you might be able to get some code from People who made a version of the Evocracy Protocol. (It likely doesn't have the security and interface of a puplic facing platform, but might still help)
A representative doesn’t follow the idea. Everyone does. There is a very real possibility that when groups merge one of the answers from another group is more appealing. So the game resets each round. Creativity is only used in round one. But you should almost never stop a swarm after only one round.
This is an excellent approach to localized cooperative authority. It's very well thought out. Perhaps the thing that sets this concept apart from centralized manipulation is how you describe Trust.
To paraphrase:
"Verified peer-to-peer; Trust is earned socially, not issued centrally; The whole process is focused on the Ideas and not the Identity (that's a breath of fresh air).
Perhaps another important part is because each group is not just decentralized with Ideas as an address, there can be a way to prioritize various ideas depending on the importance level of those specific ideas. This is exactly how the concept of Heterarchy works, priority can create a temporary hierarchy among various nodes. Nodes are approximately equal in terms of input, when a priority is met, then priority can be adaptable and shift to other areas of focus. Am I right?
We need to build a platform. We aren’t sure how. We spent $110k of our own money so far and have a thing, but it only currently works for in person swarms of a few hundred people. So like at a big business conference or town hall meeting. A platform would cost millions that we don’t have to spend
So here's an idea I've been kicking around. Every city is full of college students, medicine, engineering, law, arts, business, science, who are sharp but graduate without ever touching a real problem. And every city has a pile of problems nobody has the time or money to fix.
So why not put the two together? Mix students from different fields into small teams and let them work on real city problems as a kind of internship. They get experience, the city gets help, and it costs almost nothing. And it's not one team, it's lots of them, year after year, with new students stepping in as others graduate, so the work never stops.
Each city sets its own rules for how it runs, but everyone shares a common system so they can trust each other. Everything important gets recorded out in the open so it stays honest, and a student's track record follows them wherever they go. And it organizes itself a bit like an ant colony, each team leaving notes for the next one to pick up, so even as people come and go, the system remembers and keeps going on its own.
The one rule I'd never break: let it organize itself freely, but always keep a real person in charge of the big decisions.
I love this idea. It would work great in a small town. In Vermont we have an annual town meeting day and various things get voted on right there and then in the town hall or school auditorium. Throughout the year, the town council works on diferent agendas and spending issues, the budget and such. Publishes an agenda and we vote yea or nay. Things like should we buy a new fire truck or wait till next year. Should we spend extra on the cemetery or wait and fix the park first. How much to spend on the library.?
Anyway, I always write to my representatives, local council to put under my 2 cents but using a swarm would give everyone a chance to voice their ideas.
Corruption needs to be squashed. Currently the grifters, political thieves, corrupt poluting corporations, are blatant and on the front lawn thumbing their noses at us like school bullies saying, "yeah I stole from you, i poluted your farm land for profit Iwhat are you going to do about it?"
The math ain't mathing
There is plenty of money for healthcare, education, safty nets for the disabled and elderly, but the goons take it all and increase the deficit to do so.
I'm in! I want to make change. Be part of the hive, be part of the solution. Upend the greedy rich old white men who have had power for way too long. They are destroying our planet, harming children with endless wars.
Trust before - I know you are a real dude because several of my homies know you. But anonymous during the problem solving process. Read our comment above about the Rand Corp Delphi method, it is an excerpt from our future book called Thinkers Unite!
In my last article I was writing about Habermas ideal speech situation and how it could be applied to online discussions as well. Your article outlines many ideas, some very related like "No single authority needs to purge them.". I will think more about total anonymity and if it is something I should consider
The anonymity is part of a chapter in our new book called THINKERS UNITE! Read about the Rand Corporation in it. Here is a sneak peek at the chapter that might help clarify why we think it is important:
“Things began to evolve in the early 1950s, with the Delphi Method. Developed at the RAND Corporation, the Delphi Method arose from a clear failure of traditional experts. When military and policy experts were asked to forecast unprecedented futures such as nuclear capabilities, technological breakthroughs, and geopolitical shifts, their predictions often worsened in face-to-face groups. Hierarchy, reputation, and social pressure pushed participants toward premature consensus, creating confidence without accuracy. In other words, the louder voices, or higher ranking officials often pushed the room towards decisions with poor outcomes for the group.
The Delphi Method was designed to remove these social distortions. Experts were separated from one another and asked to respond to the same questions independently and anonymously. Anonymity was central: without names, titles, or reputations attached to answers, participants could express uncertainty or unpopular views without fear of embarrassment or professional risk. The goal shifted from sounding credible to a room full of your peers, to being correct.
After each round, a neutral facilitator aggregated the responses.
By protecting independence while still allowing information to flow, the Delphi Method preserved disagreement without turning it into conflict. It effectively recreated the conditions behind Galton’s ox, and the ones mentioned here in chapter one in James Surowiecki’s book - diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation - inside a system. The deeper lesson was simple but powerful: collective intelligence does not emerge automatically; it must be designed for, and anonymity is often one of the keys that keeps groups honest. More on these ingredients later.”
A lot of serious thought has obviously gone into creating the Swarm System. I was excited that fine tuning seems to have considered every possibility and seemed ready to tackle our most basic issue: corruption in government.
The idea of creating a way for people to work through all possibilities and filter out the lumps of greed and power that would otherwise take over at the expense of humanity sounded almost miraculous. A method for integrity to stand ready to replace our crumbling corrupt political system and give power back to the people offers desperately needed hope when all seems lost.
But then money comes in as a first step. Heartbreaking! Opening a door to money in any form is what corrupted our existing power structure. It’s how power plays the game. It appeals to humanity’s greedy dark side that loves “power over” through deception, cruelty, fear and confusion.
Money is a fact of life as it now exists, but before we tackle a plan for equitably accumulating and wisely distributing money, we first need to create an alternative to a Congress motivated by greed. How competitive would politics be without the attraction of excessive wealth, power and perks not available to those they are elected to represent?
Is it possible the Swarm System could actually find candidates motivated by a sense of integrity, responsibility, respect and devotion, willing to share their wisdom and constructive ideas with like minded members for the betterment of society? People who see true service as its own reward without requiring bribes, recognition or any advantages not equally available to those they represent?
I believe people like this exist and work quietly under the radar while greed loudly claims credit and monetizes it for themselves. Finding these heroes and giving them a platform would give Swarm a solid starting position.
Money gets things done. If we want to compete with the bad guys we need to use it for good. Money isn’t the problem. Lack of transparency in our systems is.
And again you don’t have to use money in the system. But you can.
We use swarm intelligence for businesses - with money involved / and greed does not overtake the system because we make it transparent. “Skin in the game” is quantifiable.
Incorrect. The current money system is definitely a problem. It’s a debt instrument..
I did not read this article as about politics… rather new ways of decentralizing power… of idea generation and application. Of cooperative problem solving at all levels.
Reminds me of Buckminster Fuller&cos World Game developed in the 60’s…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Game
Thanks for reading and maybe the most complimentary comment ever on our threads. ⚔️❤️
Thanks
I understand the value of “skin in the game” as a moderating influence on profit motivated business tendencies. And I do see how trying to run a government like a business was a big mistake.
It would still be a heavy lift to motivate a system using deception and blackmail as the tools of their trade to see transparency as an acceptable alternative. They are comfortable, secure and rewarded for keeping things the way they are.
Flushing out centuries of accrued corruption would call for a swarm of incorruptible new blood coming in from outside the existing one. Otherwise it’s just the same old “promise reform but first you’ve got to get elected” game in which wealth and perks inevitably smother good intentions.
Building that incorruptible swarm, if that is possible, could break the cycle. If not, government corruption will keep doubling down beyond imagination, as it has been.
Agree! The only way out is to build something new.
"When something bad happens you have three choices.
You can either let it define you, let it destroy you,
or you can let it strengthen you."
~ DR.SEUSS
1:31am? Where you at Smacko? Its 9am in NY
Seattle ;-)
This is such a great idea all around, very well thought out! I think I know a group you might want to try and connect with.
Please connect us
The fact that we don’t already have this speaks to the corruption honestly. We definitely need to try out this kind of tech
This is an excellent idea! Safeguards against group think, transparency, trust tokens...all good stuff. I see room for additional tweaks, but this "use case" looks ready to give to a programmer (or AI to generate the code in a day.)
There is only one major drawback: because left hemisphere thinking is so dominant in society, the swarm will reflect that bias. The addition of a mechanism to demand more consideration of context and consequences could remedy that.
Thanks for feedback. Can you explain what you mean by “left hemisphere” thinking, and why you think it is dominant?
It is testable that swarms get better outcomes when there are diverse opinions in the make up. So you are right to have some concern if you think most of society has a similar bias. But what exactly do you mean by it?
A proper explanation would be better done by phone or zoom. I would appreciate an opportunity to have a short conversation about that. If you are open to that, if it is even possible for you, please send me an email so we can arrange that. I am in the Pacific Time zone.
For sure! Check inbox
Recommend you read Iain McGilchrist's book The Master and his Emissary, for a better understanding of right and left brain.
Also neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's book A Stroke of Insight
I’ve been approached in a DM to work on building a law to get rid of gerrymandering. The person had done a great deal of work on the first pass, but Substack was changing all the time and the message disappeared. The point being, there are people who are willing to do some work on some major issues, but as you point out there is no organizing force. I’m assuming you’ve looked at bespoke mastodon or blue sky? Or is there enough privacy and security for either of them to allow for the kind of multiple personas (roles), scorekeeping and protocols you describe. I could think a bit.
Yes. They don’t have the required tools needed for good easy group problem solving. We the people. Red our own platform - open sourced code. 100% built and controlled by the people outside of government
Please keep watch for Joshua Ellis’ decentralized alt-social media platform, Kowloon, due for release soonish. A Pulitzer-nominated American married to a Brit a living in London, he’s among the sharpest, most intelligent, honest folk I’ve ever known. A true Renaissance person.
How far along in the design are you? And have you used a prototype using Google Docs (or something similar) to prototype your process for creating solutions and the software for facilitating their creation.
We have about $100k into making a general swarming software. But it isn’t good enough to use at scale yet. We are willing to turn it over to the people if we can find a way to bring it to life. The original code was done in Rust
I've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this problem. I think there are ways to progress toward swarms as genies. The problem is the Golems as you've outlined. The financial chat board ceo.ca has penalty boxes for people who are reported to the moderators. It tends to keep people in line, and I've watched it function to do so. Yet still people wind up in various penalty boxes, Bad actors with bad goals or at least goals bad for society yet not for them and that's something else I explored a few years ago in a prednisone powered moments of inspiration that I Frozen digital Amber here: www.grite.ca. I'm trying to live that concept. Which is why when I realized how AiLlms actually function I had to share it with a Creative Commons license. Both good and right for society to understand the bill of Goods they're being sold. To recognize its Fool's Gold, extremely useful for they're phenomenal pattern matching ability, when you read the article when you finish laughing or crying you can share it onward, to at least make a swarm of awareness. I think covid gave us a chance to start over unfortunately the people with bad goals, like bad laws used to legitimize cruelty and Evil. Every guardrail imposed after the debauchery of world wars and then investment bubbles and the subprime Fiasco now being followed by an AI bubble, but this one has far wider reaching consequences. The plI've spent quite a bit of time thinking about this problem. I think there are ways to progress toward swarms as genies. The problem is the Golems as you've outlined. The financial chat board ceo.ca has penalty boxes for people who are reported to the moderators. It tends to keep people in line, and I've watched it function to do so. Yet still people wind up in various penalty boxes, Bad actors with bad goals or at least goals bad for society yet not for them and that's something else I explored a few years ago in a prednisone powered moments of inspiration that I Frozen digital Amber here: www.grite.ca. I'm trying to live that concept. Which is why when I realized how AiLlms actually function I had to share it with a Creative Commons license. Both good and right for society to understand the bill of Goods they're being sold. To recognize its Fool's Gold, extremely useful for they're phenomenal pattern matching ability, when you read the article when you finish laughing or crying you can share it onward, to at least make a swarm of awareness. I think covid gave us a chance to start over unfortunately the people with bad goals, like bad laws used to legitimize cruelty and Evil. Every guardrail imposed after the debauchery of world wars and then investment bubbles and the subprime Fiasco now being followed by an AI bubble, but this one has far wider reaching consequences. The planet and the people. Read it, test it, share it. That's why I gave it the creative commons license I gave it.anet and the people. Read it, test it, share it. That's why I gave it the creative commons license I used. Unless jergenfield version will be made in the relatively near future:
https://valoflynn.substack.com/p/the-simulacrums-library-dont-drop?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=fazvy
"ONE independent un-de-platformable-platform is all we needed."
There's an idea for an initial group project - creating such a platform from scratch. I would think part of the design would be to make it impossible to be constrained by a national government. Does anyone have any idea what such a program/platform might cost?
we have about $110k into building sswarming software. A real high trust platfrom to stand up on servers would cost millions. But if we had millions of users it would be cheap. This is our pitch deck (rough draft) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtVXC5xnFik&t=48s
We have anice platform already built for inperson meet ups for about 500 people or less
Human -Clever -clean - and the absolute best moment for success ! I hope you thrive !
I find by traveling any street path country (working and living in 4 countries) gives deep knowledge of solutions never known before
The school system is dividing us from our children ( writing reading not happening) and failing the minds of our children .. creativities, deep interests not triggered, adapting math across subjects would help immensely..
Humanity has been walked dead -zombies in manny western countries
I would suggest looking into way of life of the Mormons / Shia Muslims / orthodox Russians
Incredible life knowledge
I would also find a spot for 99% granted solution to
- human health
- animal health
-Plant health
Sections very very useful
Greets from a Croatian in Germany
If I read it correctly, you are literally merging the circles so every step of circles has more participants than the last right? If so, the big circles would need a system to merge and deliberate over complicated ideas that may already have been merged (and therefore expanded) a few times. Does "algorithmically merging ideas" mean you want to use some AI or you want to use some defined system to ask e.g. random people to provide arguments and votes to confirm a merger or small change?
(
If there is no discussion or manual merging, the system would still be amazing, and extremely quick, but limited to identifying ideas that can get overwhelming support on a first read. In that case I would make the AI merge general ideas with specific ideas such that the general statement almost disappears, or I would tell people to vote for specific solutions.
Also, the circles in early stages could be asked to serve some fact-checking function.
)(
If there is some deliberation in the large groups, It would be interested to know how. Is there something on this Substack?
At the moment i am trying to sum up a design for a deliberation system in large groups, so I am very interested in finding or giving more ideas.
)
No Thomas you are not understanding the system correctly. AI is not part of this - except we do see one use for it and that would simply be identifying similar answers to merge. But this can be manual as well, it just takes longer. The final decision is always manual. And the ideas come from the people.
This is not simply a way to make a decision (although it is a very good one when used correctly and we use confidence scores). What collective intelligence is - is a way to talk to many people as if they were one big brain. So that new brain can and should - come up with creative solutions, criticisms, and mediate ideas.
Here is a blueprint visual to help.
Also, each step isn’t a decision. It is just a conversation until the group decides to make a decision.
Here is the 101 basics
https://joshketry.substack.com/p/collective-swarm-intelligence-101-7d7?r=7oa9d&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
From the pictures it looks like every group sends forth one representative, in that case I think you might be able to get some code from People who made a version of the Evocracy Protocol. (It likely doesn't have the security and interface of a puplic facing platform, but might still help)
A representative doesn’t follow the idea. Everyone does. There is a very real possibility that when groups merge one of the answers from another group is more appealing. So the game resets each round. Creativity is only used in round one. But you should almost never stop a swarm after only one round.
This is an excellent approach to localized cooperative authority. It's very well thought out. Perhaps the thing that sets this concept apart from centralized manipulation is how you describe Trust.
To paraphrase:
"Verified peer-to-peer; Trust is earned socially, not issued centrally; The whole process is focused on the Ideas and not the Identity (that's a breath of fresh air).
Perhaps another important part is because each group is not just decentralized with Ideas as an address, there can be a way to prioritize various ideas depending on the importance level of those specific ideas. This is exactly how the concept of Heterarchy works, priority can create a temporary hierarchy among various nodes. Nodes are approximately equal in terms of input, when a priority is met, then priority can be adaptable and shift to other areas of focus. Am I right?
Indeed. Heirarchy can exist as long as the final say is with the decentralized group - in thecase of government, We The People
I am curious rather excited to understand what could be the first step to start implementing with current system?
We need to build a platform. We aren’t sure how. We spent $110k of our own money so far and have a thing, but it only currently works for in person swarms of a few hundred people. So like at a big business conference or town hall meeting. A platform would cost millions that we don’t have to spend
So here's an idea I've been kicking around. Every city is full of college students, medicine, engineering, law, arts, business, science, who are sharp but graduate without ever touching a real problem. And every city has a pile of problems nobody has the time or money to fix.
So why not put the two together? Mix students from different fields into small teams and let them work on real city problems as a kind of internship. They get experience, the city gets help, and it costs almost nothing. And it's not one team, it's lots of them, year after year, with new students stepping in as others graduate, so the work never stops.
Each city sets its own rules for how it runs, but everyone shares a common system so they can trust each other. Everything important gets recorded out in the open so it stays honest, and a student's track record follows them wherever they go. And it organizes itself a bit like an ant colony, each team leaving notes for the next one to pick up, so even as people come and go, the system remembers and keeps going on its own.
The one rule I'd never break: let it organize itself freely, but always keep a real person in charge of the big decisions.
Each swarm needs a coach. And all participants need training. Guaranteed a college group would solve more than the politicians do
I like the concepts in this...
I love this idea. It would work great in a small town. In Vermont we have an annual town meeting day and various things get voted on right there and then in the town hall or school auditorium. Throughout the year, the town council works on diferent agendas and spending issues, the budget and such. Publishes an agenda and we vote yea or nay. Things like should we buy a new fire truck or wait till next year. Should we spend extra on the cemetery or wait and fix the park first. How much to spend on the library.?
Anyway, I always write to my representatives, local council to put under my 2 cents but using a swarm would give everyone a chance to voice their ideas.
Corruption needs to be squashed. Currently the grifters, political thieves, corrupt poluting corporations, are blatant and on the front lawn thumbing their noses at us like school bullies saying, "yeah I stole from you, i poluted your farm land for profit Iwhat are you going to do about it?"
The math ain't mathing
There is plenty of money for healthcare, education, safty nets for the disabled and elderly, but the goons take it all and increase the deficit to do so.
I'm in! I want to make change. Be part of the hive, be part of the solution. Upend the greedy rich old white men who have had power for way too long. They are destroying our planet, harming children with endless wars.
Thanks for the kind words. We don’t know what our next steps should be . Any ideas?
Trust through ananimity. Or else know your neighbors.
Considering how many neighbors I have .... The anonymous option looks more expedient. And fair.
Trust before - I know you are a real dude because several of my homies know you. But anonymous during the problem solving process. Read our comment above about the Rand Corp Delphi method, it is an excerpt from our future book called Thinkers Unite!
In my last article I was writing about Habermas ideal speech situation and how it could be applied to online discussions as well. Your article outlines many ideas, some very related like "No single authority needs to purge them.". I will think more about total anonymity and if it is something I should consider
The anonymity is part of a chapter in our new book called THINKERS UNITE! Read about the Rand Corporation in it. Here is a sneak peek at the chapter that might help clarify why we think it is important:
“Things began to evolve in the early 1950s, with the Delphi Method. Developed at the RAND Corporation, the Delphi Method arose from a clear failure of traditional experts. When military and policy experts were asked to forecast unprecedented futures such as nuclear capabilities, technological breakthroughs, and geopolitical shifts, their predictions often worsened in face-to-face groups. Hierarchy, reputation, and social pressure pushed participants toward premature consensus, creating confidence without accuracy. In other words, the louder voices, or higher ranking officials often pushed the room towards decisions with poor outcomes for the group.
The Delphi Method was designed to remove these social distortions. Experts were separated from one another and asked to respond to the same questions independently and anonymously. Anonymity was central: without names, titles, or reputations attached to answers, participants could express uncertainty or unpopular views without fear of embarrassment or professional risk. The goal shifted from sounding credible to a room full of your peers, to being correct.
After each round, a neutral facilitator aggregated the responses.
By protecting independence while still allowing information to flow, the Delphi Method preserved disagreement without turning it into conflict. It effectively recreated the conditions behind Galton’s ox, and the ones mentioned here in chapter one in James Surowiecki’s book - diversity, independence, decentralization and aggregation - inside a system. The deeper lesson was simple but powerful: collective intelligence does not emerge automatically; it must be designed for, and anonymity is often one of the keys that keeps groups honest. More on these ingredients later.”