Concepts covered:  Power; Useful Information; Feedback; Group Structures; Privacy; Division of Labor; Focus Many on a Few; Pushing Others Uphill;  Building our own information filters with a GIG-type process.   (GIG = Group Information Gathering, a.k.a. Striker’s Game or Information Game)

 “Strikers Game by josuter”  (  https://youtu.be/6EPX8Jp-9Mc    ) is a simple Youtube video that covers some of these concepts.

One must talk about power.  Where does it come from?  Who has it?  How can power be used more creatively to address current situations?  The founding fathers of the US were not trying to empower the average citizen but rather looking for a way to prevent power from concentrating in another monarchy.

People with power don’t just give it up.  It was not surprising that the Icelandic Parliament did not agree to a new constitution drawn up by a body of citizens.  The United Nations seems to lack effectiveness in some areas because they have not considered their source of power.  Unlike the sovereigns they represent, they do not have the force of arms.  The power of the UN is rather in getting people together to talk and move ideas.

Having useful information or the ability to find useful information can be a great source of power.  This includes the concept of feedback, just like the thermostat that regulates the temperature of a room.  Feedback is another kind of information and the thermostat must be carefully constructed to give accurate information.   An important task of citizenship in a democracy is to give balanced feedback to leaders. 

Social structures and physical structures influence the flow of useful information.  The difficulty of moving useful information up a political power hierarchy is, in large part, due to the flow of power down from the top through a political power hierarchy.  Only people with money or those who represent a large organization can get ten minutes with their legislator.  This warps the feedback and tends to make the legislators more ignorant on those issues when they should be leading. 

Useful information does not have to parallel the flow of political power, but it may require some new social structures and maybe competition.  Nature, in many ways, is about competition.  We need to learn how to use it positively.

I agree with your idea that diversity is important, not simply to be fair to those who have traditionally been left out, but to bring new ideas and points of view.  This is especially true with the external environment seems to be changing.  Diversity increases the variety of feedback.  Feedback can also be a two-way street, with politicians challenging specific groups of citizens on specific questions and then follow-up at a later date. 

Privacy at some points of the conversation should be part of the process, even when the process itself is transparent.  It is essential for people to say what they feel without fear of repercussion.  Private meetings are common in government and industry.  They represent real power and citizens must design a process to make use of that power.  The process of being “open” all the time will not work.

The lottery system of the Greeks was a smart use of resources since it created a random sample.   Random samples will, on the average, be close to any other random sample, so the lottery is more about efficiency and division of labor than about fairness. 

How does one organize with no one in charge?  One can do an ad hoc division of labor and organize by birth day and month.  Use a Group Information Gathering (GIG) process or game with a starter Discussion Question and offer a prize – if needed.  Judging is done by people from the same pool so the process can be self-contained.  This can be used to find and filter Useful Information for ourselves or for other groups of people, pushing them up the hill.   Often there is no right answer, yet the right process will lead to similar outcomes.  We must challenge people to do real problem solving, not simply sell pre-packaged stuff. 

GIG allows for the discovery and development of better questions.  Public speakers often use rhetorical questions and even allow time for questions at the end of their presentation, but are these the best questions?  Do they facilitate a learning process, followed by action and then re-evaluation?   GIG can be efficient and self-sustaining.  Results can be reproduced and be useful to those who can create a balanced process.  It’s like baseball, a game once started by a few young people, now be played worldwide by any kid on any playground. 

In a “grand debate” the loudest voices control the agenda and results are more easily controlled by those in power.  On the other hand, a series of small debates that each build on the result of previous debates can be as accurate and useful, especially if participants can talk to others between each round of the game. 

The Global Citizen’s Assembly at COP26 will be ignored unless they can create an ad hoc division of labor, focus on a few issues, and push it toward a few chosen, key delegates. The process to do this can be started by anyone using a GIG game and a starter Discussion Question.  

We must re-establish the local, geographic community as the basis for morality because that is where our Maslow needs of food and shelter must be met.  This is opposed to an online community that can be very useful when searching for ideas and information, but the online community can also be dissolved at the click of a button. 

We citizens can build our own information filters.   We can control the structure of the feedback and GIG groups to tune up the integrity of the feedback process.

Updates from climate scientists always seem to bring worse news than the previous announcements.   They don’t want to be the bearer of bad news.  Scientists are generally reticent people who wait for someone in the media to give them a microphone.  Many of them are not able to think creatively about their own potential power.  They don’t look at the problem of finding and moving useful information as a research project in itself.

Focusing many on a few can be done by starting with a group of 100 or so, and together challenge a much smaller group, maybe a dozen people from one local community.  The small group is divided into several smaller teams, including a panel of judges, and given a starter Discussion Question (DQ).  This uses our love of games and competition to bring ideas to mind and engage in real problem-solving.  If there is no interest in the target community, then the prize money raised by the group of 100 can increase and/or move to another community as a matter of fact and without fanfare. 

Grass roots citizens can exercise this power, first by working apart from the established political power hierarchy.  One project could be creating low carbon communities (LCC).  Any result deemed invalid by officials or by opponents can be run by anyone through another one or more GIG processes.  Again, the process must be transparent even though there is some privacy and deniability for individual players. 

Would decision making on the Titanic have been better with a democratic process?  It depends on their ability to find useful information and have an efficient way of evaluating the risk.  If they find the risk too high and the captain still disagrees, they would have to force the captain to slow down and take a different course.  This scenario may seem far-fetched, but it is close to our situation in the climate crisis on a slightly different time scale.

At the moment, it seems democracy is struggling to find its feet.  People in Syria are grudgingly going back to Assad’s side because it seems more stable and predictable. 

Mass surveillance in a place like China is a power-play by a leader‘s Circle of Advisors and The Bureaucrats.  It may be that the Chinese leader Xi may not trust his own judgment.   Maybe he has lost confidence in himself because he has lost touch with grass roots citizens. 

So GIG offers a structure to Find, Filter, and Move Useful information.  It alternates periods of privacy in team meetings with public presentations and judging is done by people picked from the same pool of participants.  Still, experts and sponsors have input into the process.  GIG can be a tool for whistle blowers or dealing with Tyranny of the Majority.

Do we create processes that cause people to engage in the challenges ahead, or evade, like tax dodgers?  Playing games to push other people uphill can be played by anyone, no matter where they come from politically.