📚 Quinn's Highlights

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Adversarial instead of truth-seeking engagement is baked into so many aspects of our society Summary: Our society often relies on adversarial advocates for decision-making, but this approach doesn't lead to the truth. We need a cooperative effort where people are open to changing their minds and acknowledging different perspectives. This applies to civic organizations, legal systems, political systems, and even neighborhood associations. We tend to punish those who disagree with the established opinion, leading to a lack of pluralism. We should strive for diverse viewpoints and a cooperative search for the truth. Transcript: Speaker 1 There's a thing wrong with our society which is we have even the institutions that work reasonably well in our society are still often built around adversarial advocates in which the Idea is i will argue as passionately as possible for one side you will argue as passionately as possible for the other side we will deploy whatever resources we can rhetoric money etc And somehow we like to think that by i don't know interpolation that will arrive at the truth and that's totally not true right i mean i we know that there are lots of types of decision-making Where that's a disaster where what you need is not these two sides each of which are deliberately undercutting the other as effectively and including viciously as they can but you want Everybody to be willing to change their mind openly publicly to be willing to publicly acknowledge the point that the other person is making and you want to sense that people are cooperatively Working together toward the truth but that's not how most civic organizations work it's not how our legal system works it's not our political system works nowadays maybe there was Some golden age in the past but it did probably not it's not even how neighborhood associations work right i mean there may be some diversity in how homeowners associations work internally Although i regret to say i don't think that's usually true because they're usually very self-selected groups of people who are quite vocal but once they arrive at a decision they're Like good old-fashioned Maoist democratic centralists you know like well we represent the neighborhood and this is our monolithic opinion and if somebody shows up and says well i Live in that neighborhood but i i actually don't agree then they they get piled on and punished and if somebody says i'm an environmentalist but this environmental organization doesn't Speak for me or i belong to this racial or ethnic group but i don't necessarily agree with what the claimed representatives of that group say that group wants they get punished again A lack of pluralism but i think it's not just a lack of diversity it's this notion that the way to get make decisions is for everybody to hammer their stake as firmly into the ground as they Can

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

The people with the most accurate models of others tend to have diverse social networks Summary: To correct for this handicap, we need to listen to the oppressed in the population. This includes laborers, students, and others who are usually not given a political voice. By expanding our social networks to include more diverse perspectives, policymakers can make better decisions based on a deeper understanding of societal trends and people's desires. Transcript: Speaker 1 But it sounds like this gives us a really clear pointer on how to correct for this handicap. And that we really ought to be like, perhaps when it comes time to make decisions on behalf of everyone, we should really be listening to whomever the oppressed are in that population. We should be really paying attention, for example, to laborers and students and people that are ordinarily not historically, not given a lot of political voice. And what you're saying, yeah, it's in other words, what we need to do is broader our social networks include in our social networks, those people who are typically not there. So if the policymakers who are making these important decisions should know as many different people as possible. And we show in related studies that people who have most diverse social circles are also best able to predict societal trends and to understand how the overall population lives and What people want.

Mirta Galesic on Social Learning & Decision-Making

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

The Self-Reinforcing Stigmatization of Public Spaces (Like Libraries) Summary: Public libraries are facing various physical problems due to under-investment. They are often the last option for people who lack access to basic services. Libraries are used as shelters for the homeless, warm places for those suffering from addiction, and even childcare centers. This over-reliance on libraries to solve societal issues has stigmatized these public spaces. The lack of investment in addressing core problems has turned libraries into spaces of last resort. This sends a message to affluent Americans that if they want a gathering place, they should build their own in the private sector. Transcript: Speaker 1 One of the problems we have now is most cities, suburbs, towns in America have public libraries there. There's neighborhood libraries. The building is there. The buildings are generally not updated. They need to have new HVACs. They need new bathrooms. They need new furniture, but a lot of new books. Stomachs still not accessible to people in wheelchairs. There's all kinds of problems with libraries, just physically because we've under-invested in them. Libraries, unfortunately, have become the place of last resort for everyone who falls through the safety net. If you wake up in the morning in the American city and you don't have a home, you're told to go to a library. If you wake up in the morning and you're suffering from an addiction problem, you need a warm place. They'll send you to a library. If you need to use a bathroom, you'll go to a library. If you don't have child care for your kid, you might send your kid to a library. If you're old and you're alone, you might go to the library. We've used the library to try to solve all these problems that deserve actual treatment. How many times have you talked to someone who said it's basically a homeless shelter? What's happened is we've stigmatized our public spaces because we've done so little to address core problems that we've turned them into spaces of last resort for people who need a Hand. As we do that, we send another message to affluent middle-class Americans, and that is if you want a gathering place, build your own in the private sector.

The Infrastructure of Community

How to Know What’s Real

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