I was talking to halsk and he said, “participatory budgeting is easier to do than participatory policymaking,” and I thought, “I see.
Let’s inflate it with AI.
There are several reasons why participatory budgeting is easier than participatory policymaking.
- Specificity and scope limitation:
- Budgeting concerns the allocation of concrete funds and is clear in scope. Policymaking, on the other hand, often deals with broad, abstract ideas and can easily complicate discussions.
- visible results:
- In budgeting, the specifics of how funds will be spent are determined, so participants can easily intuitively understand how their input will be reflected. In policy making, the results are sometimes difficult to see and feel.
- Participant incentive:
- Because participants can be directly involved in how the money is spent, they are more likely to be interested and motivated. Policymaking is highly abstract and can be difficult to interest participants.
- Decision-making process:
- The budgeting process is relatively standardized and can easily incorporate participatory processes. Policymaking requires bringing together diverse opinions, and consensus can be difficult to achieve. For these reasons, participatory budgeting is often felt to be easier than participatory policymaking.
I see.
- In policy making, you set policies, plans, and rules, so you have to think about “cases that could occur in the future,” not specific cases that exist today.
- But this set of “cases that could occur in the future” is discrepant to begin with.
- Unless you’re gathering information professionally, it’s hard for people to imagine only their own familiar cases.
- The level of abstraction makes it easy to get into an ideological fight.
- AI is bad” or “I don’t understand AI, I’m worried about it” or “AI will be detrimental to my current job” can turn into “AI is bad.
- Ideological battles tend to be watertight.
- It’s a struggle for “rightness.”
I remember when I interviewed Linux committer Kozaki, Tomohiro (2014).
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Yes, yes. If you stick to an ideology, people who don’t understand the ideology won’t be able to follow you at all, but if you insist that “this one is obviously more convenient,” you can break down the argument by saying “no, no, this one is more convenient” or by bringing up a different use case, so even the same stubborn person can make a big difference. --- Nothing can be dug deeper with “peer pressure” ── kernel hacker, Tomohiro Kozaki (6) | Cybozu-style
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At the time, I also wrote: “I was also
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Pragmatism as a philosophical term refers to the idea that “there are no universal truths, and that one’s own truths are determined by whether they are useful to him or her. This idea is very useful in avoiding sterile disputes.
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Participatory budgeting asks, “Would it be beneficial to me to spend my budget on this?” and elicits a pragmatist pattern of thinking that says, “Is it beneficial to me to spend my budget on this?
- Unlike “correctness,” it is natural for everyone to be different.
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