I've been thinking about how our public discord is going to work when the internet is flooded by AI chatbots. I've heard people express concern that we are going to be constantly battling misinformation from badactors. The worry is that if people are being mislead now by propoganda and manipulative influencers, it will only get worse with the proliferation of AI.

I see it a different way.

I think that there are very important lessons that we will all be forced to learn about our interaction with the people around us and the world at large. I believe that living in a world where we are exposed to innumerable competing, conflicing ideas will help us realize that consensus is unreachable much of the time, but consensus isn't needed most of the time.

I'll try to illustrate what I mean.

Let's say you live in a very rural location and you only have one neighbor. You and your neighbor want to hang out occasionally, but it's inconvenient because, though your homes are close, they are on either side of a river.So, you and your neighbor decide one day that you are going to pitch in together and build a bridge across the river so you can interact more easily.

In this situation, consensus is easy to reach, because you are the only two relevant to the situation.

This is all politics is. People trying to come to a consensus. This is something that the political system in the US, and probably in many democratic system is bad at.

You see, democracy is the rule of all the people, not the rule of relevant people. So often when you want to come to a consensus about something, many irrelevant parties butt their head into the conversation.

Imagine the bridge building neighbors if instead they were living in a city. How would the same situation play out? Chances are, you would have other neighbors to convince and consult. That seems resonable, since theyis bridge is going to affect their lives, perhaps their access to the river, there might be nimbys who don't like bridges, or environmentalists concerned about the local trout population. There might be drama about the creation of the bridge because it will affect peoples lives.

I've never been to a city council meeting discussing a small bridge, but I'm guessing it would include more people than those living in that neighborhood. City planners and council members that might live in various different neighborhoods. Perhaps some consultants would be brought in, engineers and architects that understand the construction of bridges very well. City design experts that will have opinions of how the bridge will affect the traffic flow of the city. There could be hundreds of people in attendance, many of them will claim that their opinions are most pertinent to whether the bridge should be built.

People will claim all sorts of authority. That they are elected officials. That they are experts. That they have the most ethical worldview.

And you and your neighbor have a choice. Do you listen to them or do you make a decision based on your own judgment?

How does this apply to the multiplication of bots on social media apps?

In many ways, social media has become the place where public discord happens in our modern world. At least in terms of things that people are concerned about. Most people aren't concerned about misinformation regarding cat memes, they are concerned with political topics: Elections, Public Health, Social issues, etc. In many ways, social media can act as a stand in for that city council meeting, just on a bigger scale. It's just the conversation part, but it has a big effect on the general zeitgeist of the nation.

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So, I want to introduce a thought experiment:

Imagine you are attending your city council meeting to speak regarding your bridge you want to build, but your particular city is special in that it has infinite, or innumerable, citizens. How would that change the conversation about your bridge?

First, I'd venture to guess that there would be innumerable issues to discuss at the meeting, so they probably would never get to your bridge conversation. But, assuming that they could get get to your bridge discussion, the number of individuals that could bring up issues with the proposal would be innumerable as well. There would be no shortage of experts and special interests that could oppose the construction of the bridge for there own seemingly arbitrary reason. Bridges are evil. Bridges should only be made of gold. Bridges don't cover enough of the river and rivers are evil. These are all silly reasons, but remember, there are infinite citizens in your city and each of these kooky positions have a broad coalition.

In the case of the hypothetical city, what is the solution to this situation? How do you operate in a world where there are always opinions that outweigh your own? Think about it.

We have a mechanism for resolving stalemates in our current system. It's called voting. What would voting look like in our hypothetical city? If your bridge was put to a referendum, of the infinite citizens, how many would care about the outcome? How many of their votes would be relevant to the bridge? Remember, you are building the bridge to connect your house to your neighbor's. I'd argue that none of their votes are relevant.

I think this realization is freeing.

This begs a follow up question. In a city with a finite number of citizens, how many of their votes are relevant to your decision? How about a state? How about a city? Why are other people's votes ever relevant to what you can and can't do?

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This brings us back to social media and the army of AI super-bots that everyone is worried about. Social media isn't democracy. Our country isn't run on Twitter, Instagram, or Tiktok. But that is becoming our public square, it's like our city council meetings in a way. We don't get to vote online, but we discuss things. It has a huge effect on the zeitgeist of our nation.

There will never be infinite citizens in our cities or our nation, but there very well could be innumerable voices on our social media platforms. There will be armies of AI bots masquerading as citizens. Which of them are real? Whose opinions are legitimate? We are going to be forces to think about this.

I think the answer is the same as my conclusion above. I think none of their opinions are relevant to you.

I'm not worried about the army of AI bots poisoning public discourse. I think that it will just help people see what is already the case: the only person that can make decisions for your life is you. There will always be innumerable voices that will try to tell you what to do. Their opnions are equally relevant to the opinions of these bots.

I think this realization is freeing.

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What does this mean for democracy?

I hope you can come to your own conclusion about that.