I'm seeking practitioners to collaborate on a second Knight News Challenge proposal. Again, this year's challenge is, "How might we improve the way citizens and governments interact?" https://www.newschallenge.org/ The submission deadline is March 18. Below is a rough draft of the proposal. Aside from practitioners, we might also need organizational support (in part because there's financing if we win). Please let me know if you can help. My contact details are at: http://zelea.com/ PROJECT TITLE Pioneering the practice of public autonomy MAIN IMAGE http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/2-grow/validity/seeking.png DESCRIPTION We aren't quite free if we live under laws and other norms that we cannot reasonably agree with. To be free in a social world that regulates itself by norms (to have public autonomy), we must be able to amend and correct those norms that offend us on this principle. As the social theorist and philosopher Habermas puts it, "Just those action norms are valid to which all possibly affected persons could agree as participants in rational discourses." Taking this discourse principle as our guiding star, we aim to pioneer a practice of public autonomy based on the continual exposure of draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. We'll simultaneously run electoral primaries based on open, transitive voting to put our most qualified practitioners on the ballot and into office. There they'll continue to work with us, their un-elected peers. Together we'll use this improved mechanism of interaction between citizens and government to ratchet up the legitimacy of statutes and other regulatory norms. On the technical side, we'll use MediaWiki for the drafting medium; Semantic MediaWiki as an open database and voter registry (streetwiki); existing public forums as the discussion media; Votorola's prototype toolset for transitive voting and recombinant text; plus any other suitable tools and technical projects that we pick up along the way. Already we have enough to support a crude practice. Pioneering that practice is the topic of this proposal. There are two things to understand about this from the outset. The first is that, despite the proliferation of designs for participatory democracy that are flawed in terms of legitimacy and efficacy, nobody has yet found such a fundamental flaw in the design of this particular practice. The acid test is to locate the single person who cannot reasonably assent to a law, then evolve that law in a direction to which all can assent. Second, it appears that the core of this practice can be developed and proven by a small group of pioneers. The core is the process of validity seeking (main figure). It is conducted by small "leaf groups" of typically 2-5 practitioners who continually join with the public in discourse. These discourses are structured not only to guide the would-be normative action in the direction of validity, but also to provide the human resources that are necessary to carry out that action. This implies that *if* a pioneering leaf group ever succeeds in getting the design and performance of this core process right, delivering on both its purposes, then the entire population will be led into freedom by that success. To achieve that success will require special skills. We're looking for people who have the capacity to critique the design of the practice and to expose any flaws, while also being resourceful enough to handle a toolset that is only partly implemented and may yet require some re-design work. The technical designs cannot be allowed to harden into finished tools until we have a better understanding of the hands-on practice. We're also looking for people with imagination. When your hands are engaged in a nascent practice such as this, and your mind is equipped to make up for the missing parts, then it becomes like a lense into the future; you're out in front thinking for all the others who will follow. If you know of anyone possessing these skills who might be interested, please point them to this proposal. WHAT IS YOUR PROJECT? (1 sentence max) To pioneer a practice of public autonomy that interrelates citizens and government via mechanisms of transitive primary voting, recombinant text, and the continual exposure of legislative bills and other draft norms to the guidance of rational discourses. LINKS http://www.mediawiki.org/ http://semantic-mediawiki.org/ http://zelea.com/project/votorola/home.html http://zelea.com/w/Stuff:Votorola/p/validity_seeking OTHER IMAGES http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleNominate.p... http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/election/singleElect.png http://zelea.com/project/votorola/d/practice/3-act/law/prepare.png The latest copy of this draft is at: http://zelea.com/w/User:Mike-ZeleaCom/Knight -- Michael Allan Toronto, +1 416-699-9528 http://zelea.com/
