Four Steps for Deliberative Discussion

Keynote for LibreCon 2016 from Audrey Tang

• 
• video
• https://youtu.be/ukna6wZg-8A?t=697
• Audrey Tang Keynote for LibreCon 2016

SUMMARY

.

First step: objective stage (or fact)

.

• Collect observable facts from all stakeholders
• I’m not POLLING, I also said. Some people may be surprised here.
  • My interpretation:.
    • Collecting data in a survey-like manner is already trapped in an Existing framework of thought at the stage of determining the questions to be asked in the survey. - Open up agenda-setting authority to people
    • So they fail to collect information that does not fit into that frame, and they focus only on what they were able to collect, which at first glance acts objectively, but actually reproduces the subjective assumptions of the person who decided on the questions.
    • Rather, “what people think might be relevant to the topic” should be collected unconditionally first. - Concepts similar to [I’ll write anything.

Second step: emotion

.

• Listen to how people feel
• Different people have different feelings about the same fact.
  • I’m happy, I’m sad, I’m angry.
• There is no good or bad emotion.
  • When a person Y subjectively feels a certain emotion Z about an objective fact X, this triad (X, Y, Z) is an objective observed fact and should be collected for deliberation.
• Gathering [a lot of subjectivity

Step 3: Idea

.

• Which idea is best depends on how many people’s emotions are taken care of
  • This tends to inadvertently “ask for requests”.
    • The truth is, we should understand the whole problem to be solved before we come up with a solution.
    • Most people can’t come up with good solutions because they only observe the problem from a very limited perspective around them.
      • From another point of view, they would come up with a proposal that would be immediately rejected, saying, “No, that method is not good enough for these reasons.
    • It is often said in software development
      • Even if we listen to a user’s request and implement it accordingly, the user’s problem is not solved, or the problem occurs at another user’s place.
      • In that sense, these “four steps of deliberation” would mean “first we all grasp the problem together.

Step 4: Decision

.

• As for the public sector, the minister is responsible for making decisions, but at least he can make them with people’s facts, feelings and ideas in mind.
  • Some people hear talk about gathering people’s opinions and mistakenly think that the final decision will be made by a majority vote by ballot.
    • But the final decision-making mechanism has nothing to do with whether deliberations take place.
    • Even if one person decides on his or her own, if the decision is made after understanding the arguments from many people’s viewpoints, it can be expected to be a better decision.

The whole idea of the deliberation

4 step process for deliberation

• deliberation
  • careful deliberation

---

This page is auto-translated from /nishio/熟議のための4つのステップ using DeepL. If you looks something interesting but the auto-translated English is not good enough to understand it, feel free to let me know at @nishio_en. I’m very happy to spread my thought to non-Japanese readers.