Cognitocracy
There are several primary objectives of cognitocracy. First, it is to form an elitogenesis sequence where the elite of the society is formed through demonstrating creative brilliance that evolves into real-world benefits. Second, to create a just competitive ecosystem for specialists that would constantly drive creativity and innovation to higher levels. Third, to make sure that there is a separation of power based on proof of knowledge and specialization, rather than a popularity contest. Fourth, to foster a cooperative environment that drives optimization and creativity to its highest potential. Fifth, to create an evolving intellectual barrier for obtaining voting rights and legislative mandate.
This will be an ongoing research for quite some time, so please consider everything laid out in this paper to be hypothetical and highly experimental as there is an absolute lack of any empirical evidence or data to back up most of the hypotheses. This paper will go through a tremendous update after a real-life cognitocratic system will have been built and functioned for quite some time to gather data.
Delving into the philosophical base we can outline five major principles that molded into the approach behind the design of cognitocracy.
Technocracy
Meritocracy
Intellectual qualifications for obtaining voting rights
Hybrid of direct and representative democracies
Liquid democracy
Undeniably technological development is one of the most influential processes that affects human species. Arguably, the most pivotal moments in our history were determined by our technological evolution. Technocracy implies that the decision-makers are selected based on their technological knowledge and technology-oriented methods of solving issues. It is often criticized for being elitist in nature as technocracy is closely associated with technological oligarchs that concentrate capital and emerging tech to get a grasp on the future development of their systems and thus have an undisputed rule over critical governing instruments or bodies. Cognitocracy inherits the principles of technological innovation and concentration of power in the hands of those who strive for innovation and technological development but puts aside the plutocratic trait of a common technocracy.
Meritocracy has always been described as an ultimate form of governance. From Aristotle and Plato to Oliver Cromwell and Tomas Jefferson, hundreds of philosophers and key historical figures throughout history have claimed that merit must be the decisive factor in determining who is fit to rule. Unfortunately, as with any other idealistic philosophy, the world has never seen a real meritocracy in action. Favoritism, nepotism, blood-based capital inheritance and some other factors have been obstructing meritocracy from being enacted for a prolonged period of time. Cognitocracy cannot function without meritocracy. Cognitocracy derives from the very principle of merit but with a strong inclination towards creativity and innovation rather than functionality and working experience. The relationship between the two models isof the utmost importance for Humanode governance and will shape how the future governing apparatus is formed and is regulated.
Introducing intellectual qualifications for obtaining voting rights has been a long-standing theme of debates all over the democratic world since the widespread adoption of democracy. There are two different cases here. First, the baseline intellectual tests for admittance of voters to broader elections. Second, the proof of expertise in a certain field to be eligible for a legislative position. The first case doesn’t concern cognitocracy, as there are no elections and no voting rights for those who haven’t proven their creative merit. The second one is where the challenge stands. Usually, this problem is addressed through obtaining diplomas in universities that satisfy unwritten requirements to enroll into a legislative body, but on paper not a single leading democracy of the modern world requires proof of one's intellectual capabilities in any form, while an overwhelming quantity of MP’s have some kind of higher education. Due to how most of the educational systems function, in today's world, ownership of a diploma of a higher education is in no way evidence of possession of innovative brilliance or decision-making capabilities which are necessary for effective legislature. Cognitocracy aims to establish intellectual barriers for obtaining voting rights in legislation with the difference that the test to understand one’s merit is conducted on the spot through proposals and not through a third-party institution of any kind. More about the enrollment procedure can be read below.
Cognitocracy aims to maximize the direct participation of eligible voters in the governing process while acknowledging the delegation of vote as a necessary instrument to express political will without constant participation. Delegation is a critical variable, implementing a cognitocratic system without this instrument makes the system explicitly elitist. This question is addressed in more detail in a separate section below.
In the case of cognitocracy, liquid democracy is applied to voice delegation, as there are no elections. Cognitocracts can only delegate their power to other cognitocrats. Such an approach makes the voting system more dynamic and reactive. The voice can be retracted at any given moment. Compared to elective mandate one's voice is not burnt away if their candidate loses the race. Utilization of liquid democracy brings other benefits such as reduced polarization as it allows voters to support representatives based on specific issues rather than aligning with a particular party or ideology. This can lead to more professional and issue-specific decision-making. The ability to change delegation at any time allows voters to respond dynamically to changing circumstances or evolving opinions. This adaptability ensures that representation remains aligned with the cognitocrats' current preferences.
Cognitocracy blends various underlying principles of the abovementioned postulates but puts the prevalence of an inventive, decisive, rational and intelligent mind above all else.
Chambers of Vortex
Specialization Chambers
Cognitocracy functions through Specialization Chambers (SC) each representing a distinct field of expertise. These Chambers are governed by specialists - human nodes who had their innovative proposal accepted by a qualified majority of voters within a specific chamber. The fundamental principle of the Chambers is that only those who have convincingly demonstrated their creative merit to the majority of specialists in their respective field are granted the right to vote on matters related to that field. SCs aim to shard the legislative process to make it more professional and efficient giving the decision-making capabilities only to those who have undisputedly proven their intellectual properties to the majority of specialists.
An egalitarian cognitocracy that follows the original postulates of Humanode would have a strict invariant of 1 governor-cognitocract = 1 vote so that scales of power remain balanced and so that the voting power is distributed and decentralized as much as possible. 1 human = 1 node = 1 cognitocrat = 1 vote.
Let’s go over an example. Consider, for instance, the Programming chamber. While various subdivisions exist such as protocol, front-end, cryptobiometrics, etc., their consideration is presently omitted. To attain the status of a legitimate governor in the Programming chamber, one must present a proposal characterized by innovativeness, practicality, and realistic achievability for approval by the governors. The governors involved in the voting procedure have previously demonstrated their intellectual capabilities and field expertise through the approval of their own proposals and thus are cognitocrats. Consequently, only engineers with established specialization are granted the privilege to vote, thereby notably mitigating the probability of endorsing flawed or non-professional proposals.
This approach sets a system where only those Humanode validators who can pass the intellectual barrier get the right to vote and become governors, but at the same time all governors are always equal in terms of voting power.
The design of the SC suggests that their main purposes are:
Parallelisation of consensus without losing the quality of decision-making
Egalitarian distribution of decision-making power among the cognitocrats
Maintenance of an intellectual barrier for emancipation of voters
Dynamic distribution of vote delegation
This structure in some way might resemble ministries but has three major differences. First, usually ministries are a part of an executive branch while chambers are a legislative one. Second, ministries are formed from the outside, either a parliament or a president or a governing body sets their structure, while branches in cognitocracy are self-formed and self-regulated. Third, every ministry might have its own unique structure while chambers in cognitocracy maintain a uniform hierarchy structure.
The voting thresholds for accepting a proposal will be set at a qualified majority of 66% + 1 vote. Meaning that 66% + 1 casted vote including delegated ones are in favor of a proposal. The quorum will be considered assembled if 33% of active governors of the chamber partake in the voting.
The voting procedure, various thresholds and quorum mechanics are described in more detail below.
Cognitocracy strives to be a dynamic system. With chambers arising only as a necessity to address a rising throughput of challenges and proposals from the same field.
General Chamber
Besides SCs there exists a General Chamber (GC) that incorporates all cognitocrat-governors that reside in a system regardless of their field of expertise. A GC acts as a venue for proposal submissions that affect a system as a whole. Any ruling of a GC is absolute and must surpass SCs in its legislative power as it would represent a democratic consensus of the whole system.
In rare cases, a GC can also be used as a method for forced admittance of a proposal to a SC. For example, if a SC proposal was locally declined several times then a proposer could submit it to a GC and if the cognitocrats vote to accept it then it will be enforced upon the SC and this proposer would still become a cognitocrat. The difficulty in this is that getting the quorum in a GC is much harder than in a SC and cognitocrats will be reluctant to contradict the opinion of experts in the respective SCs to enforce a proposal that was declined by the experts locally.
Sub-chambers
Any SC might have a multitude of sub-chambers (SSC) based on the necessity and size of a respective chamber. For example, an SC of Engineering can have SSCs like Mechanical Engineering and Industrial Engineering. Furthermore, Mechanical Engineering SSC can have its own SSCs in the form of Robotics, Biomed or Nanotechnology, etc. Regardless of the depth, each SSC is in the same relationship status with their SCs as SCs are with a GC.
Creation of such a chamber can be beneficial if there are a lot of cognitocracts of the same profession in a chamber and if there is a need to constantly make decisions precisely connected with the respective sub-field. Sub-chambers offer even more parallelisation of consensus and admittance happens the very same way as to any SC.
Chamber inception
SC creation follows the same steps as any other voting process - a proposal must be made and voted upon. There are several small differences though. First, only an established governor-cognitocrat can propose to form an SC. Second, a number of cognitocrats must be nominated to become the first cognitocrats in that chamber. Third, an approach to receive Cognitocratic Measure must be chosen. Read in detail below. After the chamber is created the newly established cognitocracts can admit new members as usual.
Chamber dissolution
There are two ways to dissolve a chamber. First, through a proposal inside the SC. Second, through a proposal in the GC. Same as with inception, only cognitocrats can make such a proposal. The dissolution can be purely functional, when cognitocrats decide that an SC has become irrelevant, or it can be a vote of censure. If there is suspicion about a chamber being corrupt or some other malicious reason, a GC vote can decide to implement a motion of non-confidence.
For all types of dissolution the procedure follows the guidelines of the ordinary voting procedure. With a small exception that during a GC vote of censure the cognitocrats who are a part of the targeted SC can’t partake in the voting and are not counted in the quorum.
The penalties for residing in the dissolved SC are contextual and should take into consideration not only the properties of the system itself but also the actual case of why the chamber is dissolved.
Proposal Pools
Proposal pools act as means to filter out crucial proposals and implement the quorum of attention. As mentioned before, every chamber has a proposal pool attached to it. The General Chamber also has its own proposal pool.
Proposals are submitted in a free form to the proposal pool of a respective SC. Active governors act as scouts that go through the submitted proposals and either upvote or downvote those proposals that they consider to be either useful or harmful. As soon as a proposal receives attention from 22% of active governors in a chamber, but not less than 10% of upvotes from governors, it gets propelled to a chamber where the voting procedure begins.
Unless a proposal passes the necessary threshold to move onto the SC it remains in the proposal pool. The proposer is able to withdraw the proposal from the pool at any time, but receives a certain cooldown before being able to cast the same proposal once again. Every voting chamber is able to determine the cooldown necessary for various types of proposals submitted into its proposal pool.
The biggest distinction between the Voting Chambers and the proposal pool is the fact that delegated votes are not counted in the proposal pool. Thus 22% quorum of attention casted would come from real human active governors only. Such an approach curtails the ability of popular governors with a big following and a lot of delegated voices to drive the narrative and the agenda of a chamber.
Proposal pools act as drivers of the attention of the ecosystem participants. They allow for the community of governors to decide which proposals must be voted upon urgently and which proposals should be revised.
Last updated
