DEMOCRATIC REASON:the Mechanisms of Collective

Intelligence in Politics

Hélène LandemoreHarvard University/Collège de France

Introduction

• How much does knowledge play a role in our justifications for democracy?

• Including all people in the decision-process means including a lot of “dumb” people

• Rule of experts seems more conducive to intelligent decisions

• Comparison rule of one, few, many

Introduction (cont.)

Three parts:

I Main concepts

II Mechanisms of democratic reason:

1. First mechanism: deliberation2. Second mechanism: majority rule

III Conclusion: the epistemic edge of democracy

I. Main concepts

Democratic reason: collective distributed intelligence of the people

Mechanisms: political cognitive artifacts

Cognitive diversity: plurality of cognitive “tools”

Epistemic competence

• Not virtue (or civic duty or impartiality)

• Not information (raw data)

• Individual vs. collective competence

CoEC= f(iEC, cognitive diversity of the group)

II. Mechanisms of democratic reason

1. Deliberation

Epistemic properties comes from:

1) Enlarging the pool of ideas and information2) Weeding out the good arguments from the bad3) Leading to consensus on better

solution“the forceless force of the better argument”

(Habermas)

Condition of optimal deliberation

Cognitive diversity matters MORE than individual epistemic competence

“Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem” (Page 2007)

Better to have a random group of relatively smart people than two or three Einsteins

E.g. 1: “Twelve Angry Men” (Sidney Lumet 1957)

E.g. 2: Guiding each other to theglobal optimum

Calvados: (Marseille (7), Caen (10))Corrèze: (Paris (8), Grenoble (9), Caen (10))Pas de Calais: (Grenoble (9))

Problem: feasibility of deliberation with large numbers.

Solution: representation

by election: recurrence and accountability

(by lot: recurrence and random selection)

Hypothesis: democratic representation is meant to preserve cognitive diversity on a smaller scale, rather than select the “best and brightest”

2. Second mechanism of democratic reason: majority rule

Supplements deliberation

Has its own epistemic properties

3 theoretical arguments:

#1 Condorcet Jury Theorem #2 ‘Miracle of Aggregation’

#3 ‘The Crowd Beats the Average Law’

#1 Condorcet Jury Theorem (CJT)

Among large electorates voting on some yes or no question, majoritarian outcomes are virtually certain of tracking the “truth,” as long as three

conditions are verified:

1) ‘Enlightenment’ Assumption

2) Independence 3) Sincere voting

#2 The ‘Miracle of Aggregation’

E.g.: Galton’s weight-contest experiment; information-markets’ predictive accuracy

1) Elitist version

2) Democratic version

3) Distributed version

Key: errors cancel each other out

The ‘Miracle of Aggregation’

Advantage compared to CJT: the average voter need not be epistemically competent at all

Problems:

1) The rationally irrational voter and systematic cognitive biases (Caplan 2007)

2) Empirical implausibility of an infinity of independent signals

#3 ‘The Crowd Beats the Average Law’ (Page 2007)

Given any collection of diverse predictive models,

Collective Prediction Error < Average Individual Error

Negative correlations, not independence

iEC matters AS MUCH as cognitive diversity

=>Democratic majority rule > rule of the random one, but not rule of the smart few

III Conclusion

1) Inclusive deliberation (direct or indirect) epistemically dominates deliberation among the smart few

2) Majority rule among the many epistemically matches majority rule among the smart few

1) + 2) = democracy epistemically dominates oligarchy

And economizes on virtue too!

Preconditions for Democratic Reason:

Correlation between numbers and cognitive diversity implies a certain kind of (liberal) society

Free market of ideasDiverse economyLiberal education fostering autonomy and individuality

New story about democracy’s value