Deliberative Consensus Protocols - Social Protocols

Good protocols, in short, manage to catalyze good enough outcomes with respect to a variety of contending criteria, via surprisingly limited and compact interventions.

Good protocols do not just treat solutions to problems as works-in-progress, with bugs and imperfections to be worked out over the long term, but the specifications of the problems as works-in-progress as well. Good protocols learn, grow, and mature in ways that catalyze thoughtful stewardship and sustained generativity. Bad protocols on the other

Even when consensus is achieved, the result is often a watered-down group decision that becomes very difficult to change, saddling would-be innovators with less-than-ideal entrenched structures to navigate. While consensus-based approaches are

Good protocols, in short, are the embodiments of A. N. Whitehead’s famous assertion that “civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.” Not only do good protocols deliver civilizational advances, they do so in sustainable ways. “Stability without stagnation” (a guiding principl

All of these examples are grappling with how the insights of a large group can lead to wiser decisions. However, what’s surprising is how few of the methods that evidence suggests are most effective are used in those meetings that we most rely on to be wise, including around topics such as science policy or the generation of global consensus on com