If you want an open society where everyone gets to participate in choice-making then everyone has to do a good job at sense-making (and meaning-making) - Daniel Schmachtenberger
Many of our biggest global problems are coordination failures - multipolar traps (Moloch). If we’re not able to make sense of the world in a coherent way, we won’t be able to make the right decisions, particularly since the issues we face are complex and can’t simply be solved analytically.
Collective sense-making is the precursor to Collective Decision-Making. You need to make sense of the World before you can make proper decisions.
For effective sense-making, we have to be able to pick up and put down different ways of looking at issues from different perspectives.
Why is Sense-Making an Issue?
- Sense making should be the job of science and journalism.
- Perverse incentives of capitalism (win-lose game) cause actors to withhold or create fake information to deceive other actors.
- we’re being optimized for the extraction of our attention
- The stories that get most engagement are those that reinforce existing prejudices and inspire emotional reactions, whether or not they are accurate
- Bad-faith actors, can easily harness social media platforms to spread information that is dangerous and false.
- Sense-making authorities are also driven by profit more than true information
- Universities rely on corporate funding
- Pharma companies won’t invest in research unless it’s something they can make money from
- e.g. no research done on Psychedelics
- Pharma companies won’t invest in research unless it’s something they can make money from
- Idea of Information Commons, as a “Commons” to be protected (Tragedy of the Commons)
Optimism and Sense-Making
- We don’t want optimism to influence our sense-making
- The sense-making process should be as clear as it can be
- We want optimism to come in the phase in which we try to come up with solutions
- Then use your pessimism to judge your solutions, think of possible negative 2nd and 3rd order effects
- Go back and try to make it better based on the flaws you found
Created on: 2020-10-07 Inspired by: Daniel Schmachtenberger Related Topics: Systems Thinking | complex adaptive systems | economics | Ethical Tech | Deliberative Digital Democracy | Governance