Nicholas Thompson wrote circa 10-05-17 11:13 AM: > This sounds like a problem for complexitists and control system theorists.
Right. And although Russ A has come closest to an "evidence-based" proposal for CU vs. FEC, with the following two injections: Russ Abbott wrote circa 10-05-15 02:02 PM: > It seems to me a similar problem happens with free speech. When some > of the speakers get so loud that they effectively drown out the rest, > free speech does not work as intended. Russ Abbott wrote circa 10-05-17 03:09 PM: > From a complexity perspective libertarianism is aligned with favoring > a diversity of autonomous agents -- as in a complex system. > > It seems to me that a complex system can reasonably be characterized > as one in which there are many autonomous agents, and there is a > reasonable diversity among them with respect to how they act. I don't think that takes us far enough. A diversity of autonomous agents is a bit too vague, especially given the dialog about fear, power, corruption, selfish vs. common (obfuscated selfishness), etc. I think there is something to be gained by examining the CU vs. FEC decision in the context of a scale-free network of "freely" speaking agents. I've heard effective rhetoric that claims that most businesses don't engage in political speech AT ALL because it's not good for business. Like all simplifications, this has a lot of truth to it. Go into a local business and ask the manager whether s/he advocates for gay marriage and see what type of response you get. But there's also plenty of anecdotal evidence that many (smaller) businesses regularly engage in political speech (like the doctor who put the sign in his window telling people who voted for Obama to find another doctor). Ultimately, I think we might design a study that sampled organizations (profit and non-profit), with investigations of things both inside and outside their specific domains, all across the spectrum, from huge multinational corporations down to mom-and-pop shops, to try to find out a little more about how "free speech" really plays out in such organizations. My guess is that "corporations as we the people" has little to do with it and the controversy is really about "organizations _designed_ specifically _for_ rhetoric." Perhaps a good example might be the likes of the National Milk Producers Federation and the International Dairy Foods Association. The purposes of groups like these seems to be pure rhetoric. Again, on the one hand, the abstraction provided by professional persuaders like those at the NMPF is a good thing because it is difficult and expensive to develop rhetoric good enough to persuade bunches of lawyers (especially all the way up to the SCOTUS). No single dairy farmer, no matter how bright or wealthy, can develop that rhetoric. So, accumulation of resources is systemically _necessary_ to construct the salient rhetoric. I.e. we _must_ have organizations at this level of abstraction. It's the only way to do it in a byzantine rule of law system like the one we have. And, hence, such organizations _must_ be able to spread their rhetoric freely, otherwise, we'd be defeating our own purposes, working against the system of law we claim to facilitate. On the other hand, such accumulation of resources and the sophisticated, arcane, knowledge it takes to generate such rhetoric presents a risk that, as RussA says, can produce rhetoric so LOUD that it drowns out any "little guys" who may have a rhetoric-busting point to make. My conjecture would be, then, that a robust organization for "free speech" would target a scale-free network of rhetorical agents, many small quiet agents and only a few big loud agents. This is a bit more refined than RussA's conjecture that it might consist of a simple diversity of agents. I guess I'd also want to specify that the diversity exists in all dimensions, not just which rhetoric (political party), purpose (branches of gov't), size, or power. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://tempusdictum.com -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
