Polis Experiment in Nishio 2023-04-16

I want to try Polis with my own theme.

• I was checking to see if I could install it myself since it’s open source, and realized I could try it right away without having to host it myself.
• https://compdemocracy.org/Quickstart
• Let’s do a few casual experiments with this first.

Need to write an explanatory note.

explanation

• The Polis was created as a tool for better democracy, but Nishio feels that it works as a tool that gives people the opportunity to think better. In order to verbalize this hunch in more detail, we decided that we needed to experience Polis more.
• Not all of the following questions are Nishio’s opinion, some of which Nishio voted against.
• You can vote anonymously. You can post a new comment when you have voted for all of them. You must be connected to a social networking site to post.
• At the appropriate time, terminate and start the next experiment.

Initial list of opinions prepared

• Good democracy requires good debate before voting
• Tools that support good discussion are useful even if there is no vote afterwards
• If 100 people try to have a productive discussion, each individual must hear 100 times as much as he or she speaks, but not in a naive way
• Free social networking sites like Twitter that are paid for and maintained by advertisers are not a forum for better discussion.
• Instead of attacking those who submit opinions that differ from yours, it is better to submit a better opinion
• When AI becomes smarter than a majority of humans, majority rule by voting will be a foolish way to govern.
• An environment where it is difficult to see opinions that differ from one’s own accelerates the belief that one’s own opinion is correct.
• Should not be able to write long sentences
• You should be able to add links to external sites.
• After voting (like Kotonoha), you should be able to add a comment about it.
• You want to talk about why you voted the way you did because it promotes verbalization, so you should let people verbalize without hindering them.
• It’s better to be able to express opposition to the proposal anonymously.
• Some people change their opinions when they are made visible that they are a minority.
• It is unnecessarily burdensome to read a lengthy proposal written by one person and then respond to it with a verbal opinion.
• Besides “for” and “against,” I’d like to see “moyamoya.”
• It’s better to disclose to yourself and only yourself where your opinion stands.
• Voting should be able to be changed later.

Published!

• https://pol.is/9zcd4ktce5

Let GPT4 answer prompt: Answer Yes/No/Neutral to the following.

• Good democracy requires good debate before voting: Yes
• Tools to support good discussion are useful even if there is no vote afterwards: Yes
• If 100 people try to have a productive discussion, each individual must listen 100 times as much as he/she speaks, but not in a naive way: Neutral
• Free social networking sites maintained by advertisers’ payments, like Twitter, are not a forum for better discussion: no
• Instead of attacking those who submit opinions that differ from yours, it is better to submit a better opinion: Yes
• When AI becomes smarter than a majority of humans, majority rule by voting will be a foolish way to govern: Neutral
• An environment where it is difficult to see opinions that differ from one’s own accelerates the belief that one’s own opinion is correct: Yes
• Should not be able to write long sentences: No
• It should be possible to add links to external sites: Yes
• After voting (like Kotonoha), it would be nice to be able to add comments about it: Yes
• It is the promotion of verbalization that makes people want to talk about why they voted, so we should let them verbalize without hindering them: Yes
• It is better to be able to express opposition to the proposal anonymously: Neutral
• Some people change their opinions when they are made visible that they are a minority: Yes
• It is unnecessarily burdensome to read a lengthy proposal written by one person and then respond to it with a verbal opinion: No
• In addition to “yes” and “no,” it would be nice to have “moyamoya”: Yes
• It is better to disclose only to yourself where your opinion stands: Neutral
• Voting should be able to be changed later: Yes

20 people in phases

Already at about 20 people, there was a realization that “I see. - Similar to User testing with five people finds 85% of usability problems…, “major disagreements” can be found quickly without thousands of people.

• Useful if there is a large variance in opinion among a small group of people.
• If it is to be used for national politics, it is useful to pose that “I have heard many people’s opinions”, but if the purpose is to “increase my intellectual productivity”, which is my current interest, it would be good to have a closed polis with a few people whom I trust.

report in progress

majority opinion

First, the majority opinion, the one that says, “I guess we’re all on the same page when it comes to this opinion. I saw this and thought, “Okay, so everyone agrees on the point that ‘some people will change their opinions if they are made visible that they are a minority’, so the question we should ask is whether that is a good thing or a bad thing?” so I added the question.

Cluster of Opinions

. Next, for each cluster of opinions

• This shows that A’s are of the opinion that we should not prevent people from using language, that we should be able to add links to external sites, that we should add moyamoya buttons other than for and against, and that we should be able to write long sentences.
  • C, on the other hand, has almost the exact opposite opinion
  • By the way, I’m a C, so I thought, “Oh, I’m in the minority,” and “I need to verbalize exactly why I think it’s better not to do that.

I didn’t think the report was going to be updated, so I didn’t have any screenshots taken at a specific point in time.

• Group 2 versions
• 
• I should have taken a scribble and written a commentary as soon as I thought it was interesting.
  • The function of this opinion group was more fluid than expected
  • We had the ability to add questions to anyone’s list, so the dynamic changes in response to new questions.
    • Groups can go to four or back to two.
  • It’s not so much a partisan thing as it is a temporary visualization of the opposing sides of the debate.

Unknown area

Opinions of more than 30% of the population pass I thought the description was spot on: “It will be a catalyst for education and dialogue with the community.” The good thing is that “I don’t know” is a voting option, and it visualizes how many people chose it.

Tweets

nishio Uh, if you’re doing it from an iPhone, it looks like it’s better to do it in Safari than from Twitter’s in-app browser (I’m having trouble operating it myself right now. )

nishio I notice a typo after the fact >“statement of opposition in favor of” → “statement of opposition against”

nishio Wow, the shapes are updated in real time!

• nishio Whoa, I saw two groups moving and suddenly they disappeared? I thought so, but then it split into three groups!

• 

nishio

nishio current report https://pol.is/report/r8dfkakrzfjxbdpuh9cjs… (Will it be updated? Will they not?)

• nishio I found that it updates when I reload it. Already interesting at this point.

nishio I had three groups, reloaded and now I have two.

nishio I answered a new question that came in. Maybe this will change the composition again.

nishio It was four!

nishio I made a mistake with my social networking ties and now I can’t post with my own icons, which hurts.

sou7___ I wonder if this can see my location…? The one circled in blue?

• nishio I know that the icon should appear when you connect to SNS, but this time I made a mistake and couldn’t get mine to appear.

• sou7___ Okay, thank you.

nishio How to see this diagram, if you click on a group, you can see that “this one is against this agenda and this one is for it”. This is split into two groups, the don’t let me write a long sentence group, and the don’t let me write a long sentence group, and the don’t let me write a long sentence group.

nishio It might be important to have automatic updates. I woke up in the morning and there was a new opinion posted on my screen.

nishio I like the design of the “only those who responded to all the opinions can submit new opinions” mechanism. The “write an opposing opinion to an opinion you happen to see” behavior that is often seen on Twitter is blocked. It avoids the problem that radical opinions with a lenient side can be plugged a lot and propagated widely because there are a lot of tweaking points.

• nishio Quadratic Voting in the vocabulary, it can be interpreted that “Speaking Credits” are granted only to those who have paid for the public service activity of “visualizing the distribution of everyone’s opinions” with something that cannot be bought with money, namely their time. Speaking Credits]” are given only to those who have paid for the public service activity of “visualizing the distribution of everyone’s opinions,” which cannot be bought with money. Then, “Wouldn’t it be better if speaking credits were consumed for speaking?” The idea that “speaking credits should be consumed by speaking” is born.

• nishio The abstract structure is “Voting earns Speaking Credits”. I like this. You’re creating a quid pro quo for voting, rather than “voting is a right, so I’ll give it up if I don’t get anything in return” or “voting is a duty, so I should do it even if I don’t get anything in return.”

@teramotodaiki: i get it. I imagined an OSS issue. I first search for similar issues, and if there is no similar issue, I create a new one. The simple interface of answering questions seems to be very good, I have the feeling that my thoughts will emerge when I look at about 10 cases.

nishio It’s easy to do a new Polis yourself, just create an account on this service, so if you’re interested, please give it a try. Also, I’m currently looking for “more Polis experience” so let me know and I’ll go vote for you!

more questions

.

uchan_nos I tried it, but the number of questions made me tired. It seemed like a nice mechanism to allow everyone to post questions, but it’s not only a good thing.

• nishio This time, I’m going to try to do it with the most governed operation for now, so I’m setting the posted opinions to be published without moderation, I think it would be a good idea to moderate systematically or not to add questions.

• nishio I noticed since I started that the order of questions is shuffled. I’ve noticed since I started that the order of the questions is shuffled, so if a user leaves without answering all of them, there is no harm done.

• nishio On the other hand, this randomness also presents “opinions written by people after reading all the opinions and inspired by them” to people who haven’t seen the whole thing yet, so “hmm. ? I don’t understand the context? I think this is what happens.

• uchan_nos I see that this is a random question. It seems to me that we need some guidelines for writing questions, such as making the question text context-independent. It may be technically difficult, but I thought it might be a good idea to arrange the questions in the direction of the vector, starting with the questions with the highest impact.

@noharra: I casually clicked on it, and there was a question, so I answered it, and then the next question came up. It is easy to answer because it is “agree/disagree/neither. I also thought it would be a good exercise in “thinking” because there are so many questions, so the answers are less partisan.

ringo This could be very useful for game management.

• nishio It was easy to get started by just creating an account with this service, so you can try it if you want!

kawahiii I tried Polis! There are a lot of difficulties when you actually try it. It seems like you need to be proficient in using the tools. I wonder how they actually cleared it in Taiwan? I’ll look into it again.

• kawahiii

• 

@sou7___: it’s funny how many different people answer when I add a question to try and answer it in a way I don’t understand.

@lempiji: I requested an additional question about the practical difficulties of democratic decision making in the atmosphere in a way that I don’t understand the main point of the question. But I’m kind of hovering around the middle without being grouped…

----2023-04-16 1pm

• The far right is the most divisive opinion.
  • Split on “long sentences yes or no.”

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This page is auto-translated from /nishio/西尾のPolis実験2023-04-16 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.