Thwarting The Power Addicts by Thwarting Goebbelsology
In my previous article I showed that how goebbelsology, that is, manipulation of the perceptions of whole populations using mendacious techniques, is at work serving the ambitions of power addicts. Goebbelsology accounts for much of the dysfunctional governance we see around the world.
Historically, how do we fix dysfunctional governance?
Generally, we don’t.
That’s because governance is assumed to be about politics. Systems of governance are left to be managed by a Darwinian system of survival of the politically fittest power grabbers who know how to work the emotions of that part of the constituency that is most susceptible to goebbelsology.
We’ll call that constituency the seventy-fives.
While the seventy-fives may be less than half of a voting population, it’s a minority of sufficient size to control the outcome of an election when added to a few coinciding votes from another part of the population, which we will call the one hundreds.
How might one design a system of governance that allows anyone to participate, but whose design inherently discourages the seventy-fives from participating? Specifically, how would an engineer address this?
Occasionally throughout recorded history, systems of governance have been conceived and implemented by people who, while they may have been politicians, happened to have the benefit of an engineer’s mindset.
While we attribute big advances in technology to the work of scientists and engineers, it happens that people with a scientific or engineering mindset are also responsible for advances in human governance. From the writing of the Magna Carta to the Icelandic Constitution to the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution, we owe whatever freedoms we have from despotism to people with an engineering mindset. Systems that deliver liberty have come from those who were able to step back, define the problem including its modes of failure, and then set out to write specifications - textual engineering drawings if you will - that define structures that preclude known sources of failure. In this case, the primary mode of failure is the accumulation of excessive power by one person through the use of goebbelsoology.
That is engineering.
Engineers, and those who have an engineering mindset, tend to understand the role of constraints in systems. They understand the tendency of systems to fail in specific ways if constraints are not properly engineered. A system of checks and balances (what Lawrence Lundy-Bryan calls trias politica) is engineered to prevent the consequences of the built-in tendency of power to corrupt. It's no coincidence that Jefferson and Washington and Franklin et al were engineers, even though the term was not widely used in their day.
Politicians have learned how to play electorates with instantly-provoked passion about fictional distinctions such as right-vs-left, Democrat-vs-Republican, libertarian-vs-governed. Those political passions have repeatedly led us into wars, depressions, and generally avoidable misery. It's time for an end to bumper-sticker politics and demagoguery, otherwise known as campaigning. Let’s apply the engineering mindset to reduce the effect of the modes of failure that we are calling “campaigning” and “goebbelsology”.
If your inclination is to say “that can’t be done” or “that’s not the way it works, forget it” then you do not have an engineering mindset. Here, let’s enroll you in a course with Dr. Dionysus Lardner (1793-1859), a professor at University College, London, who proclaimed that “Men might as well project a voyage to the Moon as attempt to employ steam navigation against the stormy North Atlantic Ocean." That’ll keep you occupied and out of our hair while we get on with our agenda, inspired by Bucky Fuller:
(I wonder whether Professor Lardner later expressed embarrassment at the sight of transatlantic steamships. Probably not. That’s the way the Lardners are – they avoid confronting events that would reveal their dismal batting averages. They habitually get it all wrong, but their comfort is strength in numbers. (For those outside North America, a batting average is a success metric from the game of baseball.))
Now that we’ve got the Lardners thus preoccupied, the rest of us who understand that engineers love challenges – the more “impossible” the challenge the better – can get on with the business of actually changing things. Because, you know, the one thing the Lardners will never understand is that tomorrow is always different from today. Things always change. Things change for the better or worse, but they always change. And there are always fun and exciting challenges that provide opportunities to nudge the course of humanity toward better outcomes. Goebbelsology and campaigning in politics is exactly one such challenge.
Applying the engineering mindset to governance itself requires a change in mindset, because it just hasn’t been done since the time of Jefferson and Madison. Trias politica has worked reasonably well, but in the age of goebbelsology amplified by social media we need to add some features to trias politica. We need apply an engineering mindset to the development of a trias politica 2.0.
We also need a new term for the discipline of applying the engineering mindset to non-engineering domains, that is, things social rather than circuits and energy production and transportatioon, etc.
So what’s the fundamental difference between the way we are able to make our physical devices work for us on the one hand, and the way we are unable to make our governance devices work at all? A brilliant professor of statistics, Sir David Spiegelhalter, has addressed this question. I met him a few years ago when he spoke at a salon at the home of Manolis Kellis. We corresponded for a while after that.
Using the field of statistics as the starting point, Professor Spiegelhalter stresses that the knowledge we gain from the study of abstractions in academia ought to be brought directly to bear on solving problems. That may seem obvious, but his point is that it should be treated as a discipline that is separate from the discipline of studying the abstractions.
He calls this new discipline “Problem Solving.”
What is Problem Solving? In an email I offered him my take on it:
Problem Solving is to Philosophy as Engineering is to Science.
His one word answer: “Nice.”
While I’m pleased to get that note of confirmation from someone whom I respect immensely, there remains a problem with “Problem Solving.” I noted to him that it’s hardly a memorable name or brand, and that the phrase is so commonly used that it doesn’t call attention to itself as something that’s worthy of new attention, a new field of study.
So I sent him a message rashly suggesting that the parallel of “engineering” would be “spiegelhaltering.” That ill-advised branding effort abruptly ended our discussion on the subject.
Nevertheless, this practice of applying engineering thinking and methods to governance and social problems needs a better name. I invite suggestions. Four now we can call it Problem Solving.
The problem to be solved is that democracy invites everyone to participate in governance, but one third of any population – the seventy-fives – is not equipped to deal with the increasingly complex challenges of governance in today’s world.
As Dan Geer wrote in his foreword to my book, “The single most important step in engineering is to get the problem statement right.” That takes thought. It requires dispassion. It means putting one’s ego aside and drilling down until the real nature of the problem is uncovered. A motto of the engineering mindset could be “Passionate About Dispassion.”
Problem Statement The biggest challenge in thwarting the power addicts is the one third of any population that is particularly susceptible to goebbelsology techniques. This demographic can be convinced of anything. Whether it’s due to cognitive limitations or lack of mental discipline, they’re just not critical thinkers. They tend not to be able to weigh the merits of opposing sides of an argument but will emotionally jump in to whatever echo chamber is sold to them using goebbelsology techniques.
This demographic presents an existential challenge to participatory democracy. All a despot needs to do is find another eighteen percent from the rest of the population – mostly the one hundreds – who find some advantage in allying with the despot. That quickly turns the democracy into a mafiocracy.
But democracy is democracy. Everyone may participate, Everyone may vote. You can’t just administer IQ tests or subjectively evaluate who is and who is not a sufficiently patient, disciplined and smart thinker to participate. You can’t shut them out by edict from above.
Following the problem statement in engineering methodology are proposed solutions. Applying Problem Solving, that is, the engineering mindset, to the challenge of encouraging the thinking impaired to opt out of participating in governance, we follow with a What If statement, a proposed solution.
In this case the solution must point the way to get the seventy-fives to self-select out of the process of participating in governance decisions in a world whose increasing complexity calls for thoughtful decision making processes.
You may have guessed that I have a suggested solution to this particular mode of governance failure.
Of course you’re right.
I’ll tell you about it in my next article.