EDAS/ EDADEnhanced Digital Argumentation Spaces/

Espacios digitales para la argumentación y el debatejalvarez@fsof.uned.es

jalvarez@cibersociedad.net@alvarezuned

http://es.slideshare.net/FALVAREZUNED

7 July 2015- Brussels

#caps15eu

A practice example and some theoretical background

• The new social operating system• Oxford debates style• Others :– Catalyst http://catalyst-fp7.eu/– http://www.speakerscornertrust.org

• Nudges• Bounded rationality• Collective Wisdom• Aristotle• Condorcet (Theorem of jury)

The new social operating system

The intertwined society produces the affordances to facilitate expansion of collective wisdom built upon networked individualism

Álvarez, J Francisco. "Networked: The New Social Operating System by Lee Rainie and Barry Wellman." Science and Public Policy 40.6 (2013): 823-824.

Networked individualism

Argumentation and debates as “nudges” to enhance social capabilities

To structure the digital space as an intentional affordance to improve human decisions

Oxford Debates Style: a very simple structure to improve collective wisdom

• oxfordstyledebate.com

• #ciber_ocs @danidominguez

• Enhanced Digital Argumentative Spaces

Bounded rational agentsThe adoption of a formalistic and individualistic perspective on

reasoning, choice and decision is a spring of paradoxes and conflicts, because agents immersed in conflicts are drawn or modelled as rational individuals with well-defined targets and full capabilities to access information. It isn't taken into account (as Herbert Simon has said long time ago) that the agents don't have all the time needed, their capabilities of calculation and memory are limited, and as such they can't make their preferences be taken fully into consideration.

Amartya K. Sen“The formulation of maximizing behaviour in economics has often

paralleled the modelling of maximization in physics and related disciplines. But maximizing behaviour differs from nonvolitional maximizing because of the fundamental relevance of the choice act, which has to be placed in a central position in analyzing maximizing behaviour” (Sen, 1997, p. 745)

Sen, Amartya. "Maximization and the Act of Choice." Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1997): 745-779.

Buridan´s ass

“(i) maximization can save your life and (ii) only an ass will wait for optimization” (A.K. Sen)

Sperber, Dan et al. "Epistemic vigilance." Mind & Language 25.4 (2010): 359-393.

“No act of communication among humans, even if it is only of local relevance to the interlocutors at the time, is ever totally disconnected from the flow of information in the whole social group” (H. Mercier and D.Sperber, 2010, p. 379).

Open government and crowd expertise

.“Crowd expertise” is emerging as an actual possibility, and it

must be incorporated to confront conflicts. The expertise function works in deliberative, argumentative and motivational contexts and courses of action; it is not an isolated activity.

The masses as a source of collective intelligence

“We are learning, including in a practical way, that the grouping of human beings can produce results we didn't expect and that, as a product of the interaction, the action of collectives goes much further than the capabilities that each one of its members has”.Álvarez, J. F. (2014). La irrupción de las

masas y la sabiduría colectiva (The inrushing of masses and the collective wisdom). Investigación y ciencia, (454), 50-51.

Madrid 15-M 2011

Collective Wisdom?

“We allow that each individual knows less of these affairs than those who have given particular attention to them, yet when they come together they will know them better” Aristotle Política (III, 10, 1282a15)

“The diverse many are often smarter than a group of select elites because of the different cognitive tools, perspectives, heuristics, and knowledge they bring to political problem solving and prediction”(H. Landemore, 2014, “Yes, We Can (Make it up on Volume): Answers to Critics” Critical Review, 1-2, pág. 184

Collective Wisdom

Madrid 15-M 2011

Argumentation and debats: One small step

“Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot