Systems for incentivising maturity in political discourse

Information distribution paradigms and passive content consumption

It is clear that the circulation of information regarding public affairs (politics, economics, and other issues that affect the majority of a country’s population —and very often the world in our globalised era) is far less centralised than it was with the mass media model. This was the model dominated by newspapers, television, radio, and publishing houses.

Nowadays we consume information within a decentralised model that nonetheless tends to facilitate access to some media much more than others. It is a model of algorithmic curation, of metrics based on popularity, paid advertisement, ranking systems, and the classification of content according to calculated personal preferences. Recently, a new model is also entering the scene: that of AI synthesising information from multiple sources and responding with accuracy and in real-time to questions asked by the audience.

Regardless of which of these three models a given user consults most often, there is always one kind of information that will tend appear more often than others. For instance, in the algorithmic model, ‘mainstream’ information might not be what a user regularly consumes. Expressing a slight interest down this route will result in a large amount of exposure to ‘mainstream’ information. Conversely, showing a similar level of interest to a more uncommon type of information would produce a proportionally lesser degree of exposure to it.

The exception of this is information that is compatible with a particular well-established niche interest. Still, in these cases, the user’s identity would be categorised as likely having affinity with a subculture, and they would receive streams of information that is non-relevant to them. Thus, a user who is not actively tending to their media consumption will, on average, be mostly exposed to mainstream information —or bundles of information attached to statistical presumptions about their niche interest.

The situation is different with AI. Yet, it does require a higher degree of active consumption than regular algorithmic curation, as the user must actively engage with a language model to get answers from it.

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Information valves: conceptual systems for media curation

Media curation projects are crucial tools to counteract this phenomenon, especially when the current dynamics of mainstream information —this includes information from popular social media influencers and many of the derivatives building upon the intellectual trends that they engender— seem to hit an impasse regarding how conducive they are to productive public discourse and the generation of constructive incentives for public figures.

A particular type of media curation project could be called a information valve project (IVP). A IVP is the combination of three elements: a particular conviction on a different way that information could flow; experimenting with mechanisms that systematise these flows and make them accessible; and actively educating the public on this particular take on better information flows.

Thus, a different information flow involves a particular regulation of information balances —what information should be more readily available, and what other excessively present information should be less facilitated. At the same time, each information flow has its own principles regarding how information could be organised: how it is classified, from primary to secondary types of information, how it is sequenced, what conditions a narrative needs to fulfil in order to be valid as such, whether it is hierarchical or not, checklists of prerequisites, etc.

Each of the paradigms described above also functions by its own information flow principles. The difference is that they often remain unstated, inaccessible, and are designed by centralised entities (such as corporations) over which the regular consumer has no agency whatsoever. In other words, they are flow and organisation principles subtly, and gradually —perhaps insidiously?— imposed upon the passive consumer.

Then, the education of the public consists of developing ideas, concepts, and discourse in general so that it is easier for people to discuss this issue and be better equipped to navigate the intricate waters of conscious media consumption, which includes the design, implementation, and constant refinement of personal information diets.

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An example of a media curation project: incentivising public figures to admit that they made mistakes and have learned lessons

This IVP would compile claims by public figures that turned out to be not fully accurate, or that when analysed in depth were not the most congruent with their overall position.

It would comprise a virtual space —or knowledge space— that would trace how that public figure learned from that mistake and evolved their thinking, showcasing their capacity to evolve. This media project should be easily accessible. It should be easily findable and accessed through a centralised entry point, so that consulting it can become an automatic habit, just as the usual news portals or social media sources are so adept at inducing.

The key function that would underpin this IVP would its specificity in how it organises information. It would first curate content pertaining a particular public figure —or why not an entity, such as a political party— and then arrange that content chronologically, thematically, or conceptually to portray the evolution of that person’s thinking, how their current claims, actions, mission statements, and so on have changed compared to their positions in the past. It would not necessarily do so in an accusatory tone, as it would first and foremost focus on normalising the notion that it is laudable to make one’s mistakes and lessons learned from them loud and clear.

After all, the purpose of this IVP is to incentivise a constructive attitude toward dissonances with our past selves, and make visible these instances when they represent personal growth.

This process of organising information does not have to be fully automated, in fact, the hand of patient human work from committed participants in peer-relations would be indispensable.

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The underserved virtue of publicly being a work in progress

It incentivises public figures to admit when they are wrong and not fear that their thinking is not static, but constantly open to evolution, without needing to be a perfect finished product the moment they cross that threshold into public exposition and accountability.

If there are no incentives for admitting that our past rationale was not optimal, a natural consequence is that exhibiting an evolving thought-process, a permanent state of learning in good faith, a realisation that something in our past declarations did not quite click with the directions their project would take over time, will not be a widespread practice among people in prominent roles. These are people with large amounts of responsibility and leverage in the shaping of societal discourse, the allocation of public attention toward certain issues over others, the production and implementation of policy, the safeguarding of the credibility of public institutions, and the formation of social values and norms.

It is a pity that what amounts to an important sign of maturity in regular civilian contexts is rather an anomaly in politics -where it matters just as much or even more in some instances. It goes without saying that the opposite of such displays of maturity is childishness, even puerility.

Public figures need to be able to signal that their thinking is evolving without fearing hasty accusations of dishonesty, manipulation, hypocrisy, incompetence, or stupidity that catch momentum at a speed almost impossible to dispel in the current informational landscape. Such impossibility creates an incentive for counterproductive obstinacy and the degradation of verbal discourse to a shadow of itself: just another shallow ornament to pure power play, which for some seems to be the supreme metric for political efficacy (and not necessarily in service to the governed people, much less to humanity as a whole).

The expression of ideas is important not only as a way of introducing accountability for public figures (i.e., are they a person of their word?) but also for giving names to problems and opening avenues for finding solutions to them.

This ultimately facilitates the process of collectively figuring problems out. While public figures do so in a top-down fashion through their work, other actors, including regular people, becoming aware of these problems, discuss them, dig deeper into them, and possibly also initiate the implementation of solutions but from the ground up.

It is a truism to say that we learn lessons along the way and we correct course accordingly. Yet, when it comes to the reputation of public figures, their ability to do so transparently is not observed and discussed as commonly as one should reasonable expect. And unfortunately, the presence of clear praise for this in public discussions is even less common. The incentives simply are not there.

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