The Challenges of Consensus and Quadratic Voting w/ Sam Schikowitz (#FutureOfWork)

Sam Schikowitz discusses the importance of sense-making and decision-making in governance and collaborative decision-making. He introduces ForBy, a platform that supports better sense-making and decision-making within groups. ForBy allows individuals to give reasons for their votes and prioritize evidence. Sam also discusses the importance of expertise in decision-making and how ForBy allows individuals to delegate decision-making to experts in specific domains. He acknowledges the challenges of defining expertise and taxonomy within the platform. The conversation explores the topics of hierarchies, trust, expertise, and different voting systems. Sam discusses his experience with decision-making groups and hierarchical governance, highlighting the benefits and limitations of hierarchies. He emphasizes the importance of natural hierarchies based on merit and respect. The concept of liquid democracy is introduced to empower natural hierarchies and facilitate decision-making. The discussion also touches on measuring trust, the role of decay in governance, and the challenges of consensus and quadratic voting. Overall, the conversation revolves around the problem of coordinating and making decisions at different scales.

This conversation was an installment of Quorum1’s Future of Work Series: Exploring the future of business, employment, emerging tech, org design, capitalism, and participatory governance structures.

More about Sam: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-schikowitz/

"Rethink decision-making": https://Forby.io

Holistic Practice Management: https://holisticpracticemanagement.com/

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Chapters:

00:00 Introduction and Context

00:29 Sam's Background and Introduction to Forby

07:36 What is Forby?

12:12 Sense-Making in Forby

20:33 Reducing Noise and Amplifying Voices of Domain Experts

24:47 Challenges of Defining Expertise and Taxonomy in Forby

26:53 Moving Beyond Hierarchy: Forby as an Alternative Approach

29:20 The Benefits of Natural Hierarchies

34:49 Measuring Trust and Expertise in Decision-Making

43:56 The Challenges of Different Voting Systems

49:13 The Limitations of Quadratic Voting

53:15 Coordinating and Making Decisions at Different Scales ---

Takeaways

• Forby is a sense-making and decision-making tool for groups of all sizes
• Forby allows individuals to give reasons for their votes and prioritize evidence
• Forby enables individuals to delegate decision-making to experts in specific domains
• Defining expertise and taxonomy within the platform is a challenge
• Most organizations are governed by hierarchies, but Forby offers an alternative approach *Hierarchies can be effective in decision-making, but rigid hierarchies can lead to problems such as myopia and neglect of externalities.
• Natural hierarchies that emerge based on merit and respect are preferable, as they allow for expertise and insight to guide decision-making.
• Liquid democracy is a potential solution to empower natural hierarchies and facilitate decision-making by allowing for easy delegation and experimentation with different hierarchies.
• Measuring trust and expertise is challenging, but it can be done through third-party verification, trust networks, and community opinions.
• Different voting systems, such as score voting, rank choice voting, and approval voting, offer varying levels of granularity, and can be used in different contexts.
• Quadratic voting has limitations and may not solve the problems addressed by othe