Hélène Landemore

Do you want a hard test and not an easy test?

Okay. Okay. So I have some ideas. I wouldn’t recommend starting there because I actually think (laughter) that we wanna go step by step. But I think probably the hardest step in Europe, for example, would be around issues of immigration. Immigration, European identity, the place of, you know, Islam in Europe, it’s a huge issue right now that it’s like the third rail of politics, you know, and it’s going to be defining of the kind of communities we build. But we don’t let people talk about it. It’s too dangerous. There’s a total fear and distrust of ordinary citizens around those issues. Accusation of, you know, fascism, racism, Islamo-leftism, whatnot. In France, it is awful. So that would be the hardest test for me.

I don’t think I would recommend starting there, but I actually believe that, you know, if we road tested this format on other issues like we currently are in France, for example, with climate change, I think eventually we could get there and get to much more satisfactory solution. For example, around separatism, you know, between the Muslim community and the French community right now. So the only solution that the government has come up with is some kind of like redistricting of schools to make sure populations are mixed. So basically we’re forcing the kids who have asked, you know, for nothing to change school to be reallocated. Meanwhile, the parents don’t talk to each other.

Like, why don’t we start with a conversation between the parents about ways they could live better in, you know, together in neighborhoods that are 50% Muslim, but, and then asking people who are, you know, in a neighborhood that are very white, like, why is that? And having an open, trustful, considerate, respectful conversation about what it means to be French, what it is to live together, what it is to live in a plural society. I suspect similar issues around race in the US would be really complicated and issues of reparation, issues of, you know, like all that legacy is still so raw. So I think for me, this would be the hardest test. So I wouldn’t necessarily start there.

And I would say also that one hard question that was a high priority for example, the French public was the environment and climate change, and that’s actually a hard test that was kind of, I mean, to my mind, successfully passed by the French Convention for Climate just recently. They came up with 149 very elaborate proposals, almost bills, you know, not technically because they constitutionally cannot pass bills, but they were like bills, on ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions, you know, by 40% in a socially fair way. And so they were able to do that even though we have a lot of climate skeptics in our population, even though they came from all kinds of horizons and party, you know, partisan beliefs and so it’s been done.

What’s not been so successful is the articulation of their recommendations and their work to the traditional representative system because what happened is that once their proposals went to parliament and to the government ministers and now parliament, they basically diluted and watered down the content of the law. So it’s really this question of how to reconcile the two logics, the new participatory logic and the established, you know, group interest-based logic, the lobbies, the — it’s much — it’s not quite, I mean, it seems to be quite successful in Taiwan, but in France we haven’t cracked that nut yet.

Yeah. And I would say there’s a trade-off between, you know, we wanna go slow enough that we can convince everyone that these things work and we can transition smoothly from one system to the other. At the same time, on some issues, you might say there’s no time, and so we need to do this right away. And for example, I’m thinking this climate change, you know, stuff, there is, as I said, a global climate assembly in the works that’s going to meet starting in September, I believe, with a thousand people.

We need — this needs to be successful because ideally this would become part of the political institutional, institutionalized apparatus of a global governance if it proves successful, and then they would reiterate it every year until, you know, it’s smoothly running, well articulated to the other governance, you know, paths. So yeah, I think it’s hard. You wanna go find the right pace and meet the right trade-offs.

Can I — actually, on this, I think that there’s a difference between issues where there’s an actual disagreement and one where there’s just a capture of the issue by interest groups that make it look as if there’s a disagreement when in fact the vast majority of people have already made up their mind. Gun regulation in the US, there’s a vast majority in favor of much more aggressive regulation, but it’s not happening because the system doesn’t allow for it. So here, that’s a low-hanging fruit for me. I’m sure if you did a vTaiwan type of process on this combined with a deliberative assembly, it’s done. It’s a done deal in three months, if Congress commits to passing whatever recommendation they make. Of course, which again is gonna be the key problem and the key bottleneck.

Then there’s the question of real disagreements, maybe on, you know, a reparations or something like that. At the same time, what we know from experiments in Ireland recently on abortion, very divisive issue, very, about very fundamental values. When confronted, when the problem is framed as a problem rather than as a value disagreement, even pro-life can converge on the idea that, well, you know what? When it comes to the law, we should decriminalize abortion. I’m still against it. I still think it’s a tragedy, it’s a crime, this and that, but the life of women, you know, is in the balance and I have to set aside some of my private beliefs to, you know, converge towards the disposition.

So if we can do that on a fundamental value like that or, you know, a set of questions like that, why can’t we do it on almost anything else? I just think that we have yet to touch the frontier of what’s possible. Yeah.

Yeah. On this, I would say that it sounds like a, you know, either/or type of question. Either you’re fast or you’re inclusive, but oftentimes processes that claim to be fast and sacrifice inclusiveness in the name of speed end up delivering terrible results. So it’s perhaps better to be a little slower and making sure everybody’s on board and in the end save time compared — because you will deliver better results in the end.

I see it a little bit in, well, I mean, the contrast between Taiwan and France on the management of the pandemic is very telling. Oh, we have a very, you know, active, vertical sort of government which took charge and like, you know, implemented, without any kind of deliberation, confinement after confinement, curfews, this and that, followed the experts very deferentially for a while. Well, in the end, we’re doing much worse than Taiwan did. So how is that, you know, how is — how was speed so great in our case?

And maybe we had some other issues. I’m sure it’s not all things equal otherwise, the comparison, but still, I suspect that had we been a lot more deliberative, slow and inclusive in the beginning, had we sort of taken the temperature of various communities, listened to different groups instead of just following experts, I think we’d be in a better shape now. Same on the vaccination campaign.

Cool. So my own view is that I think it’s gonna be unavoidable to use some kind of automated facilitators at some point because if we’re gonna have conversation at the planet scale, the cost of micro-facilitating each group of six or seven people is — it’s just too much, so. And this task doesn’t seem too hard to automate, I think so. I imagine this would be a great way to augment democracy in the future.

And then the way I see AI, I mean, again, I’m not an expert at all, but it to me it’s like an improved mirror that we can hold to ourselves to explore our collective psyche a lot better and, you know, our history, the facts about our culture in relation to other cultures. I think it’s an amazing tool that as long as we keep it as a tool is, you know, same way that experts should be on tap and not on top, I think AI should be available, but not in control of our lives. So I think this is the fate of every technology. From that point of view, I don’t think it’s very different.

Thank you, Allan. Thank you.

Live long and prosperity, yes.