group size and collective decision-making When there is one, of course ā€œone person decidesā€ (dictatorship). The time of two is special, and majority rule and unanimous are equal.

  • I donā€™t think there is much difference between two people talking and making a unanimous decision and one person making a decision after listening to the other person carefully. I feel like when you get up to 10 or so people, one person should make the decision.
  • Why is that?
  • One person listens to N people to make a decision, O(N), and N people talk to each other, O(N^2), because the cost of the latter increases faster. The problem starts to appear after 30 people.
  • Because it would be too much for one person to ask, even if it is O(N).
    • When a majority of people feel that their opinions are not being heard or ignored, they begin to oppose the dictatorship.
  • So we needed a mechanism to make decisions in a way that wasnā€™t just one person.
    • One example of its implementation is majority voting.
    • Indirect democracy is one of them.
      • Assumption that elected officials will deliberate?
      • If so, then the limit is about 30 senators.

If ā€œone person becomes unreasonable to listenā€ is a factor preventing one person from making decisions, then AIā€™s enhancement of human cognitive abilities would increase the number of areas in which a dictatorship would be preferable.

Well, either way, at the level of tens of thousands of people, you need a non-human mechanism.


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