This document discusses using digital spaces to enhance argumentation and debate. It proposes using a structure like the Oxford debate style to improve collective wisdom. Key concepts discussed include networked individualism, bounded rationality, collective wisdom, and crowd expertise. Argumentation and debates can act as "nudges" to enhance social capabilities and improve human decisions. The masses may be a source of unexpected collective intelligence through interaction that exceeds individual capabilities.

1. EDAS/ EDAD
Enhanced Digital Argumentation Spaces/
Espacios digitales para la argumentación y el debate
jalvarez@fsof.uned.es
jalvarez@cibersociedad.net
@alvarezuned
http://es.slideshare.net/FALVAREZUNED
7 July 2015- Brussels
#caps15eu

2. A practice example and some
theoretical background
• The new social operating system
• Oxford debates style
• Others :
– Catalyst http://catalyst-fp7.eu/
– http://www.speakerscornertrust.org
• Nudges
• Bounded rationality
• Collective Wisdom
• Aristotle
• Condorcet (Theorem of jury)

3. The new social operating system
The intertwined society produces the affordances to facilitate expansion of collective wisdom
built upon networked individualism
Álvarez, J Francisco. "Networked: The New
Social Operating System by Lee Rainie and
Barry Wellman." Science and Public Policy
40.6 (2013): 823-824.
Networked individualism

4. Argumentation and debates as “nudges” to
enhance social capabilities
To structure the digital
space as an intentional
affordance to improve
human decisions

5. Oxford Debates Style: a very simple structure to
improve collective wisdom
• oxfordstyledebate.com
• #ciber_ocs @danidominguez
• Enhanced Digital Argumentative Spaces

6. Bounded rational agents
The adoption of a formalistic and individualistic perspective on
reasoning, choice and decision is a spring of paradoxes and
conflicts, because agents immersed in conflicts are drawn or
modelled as rational individuals with well-defined targets and
full capabilities to access information. It isn't taken into
account (as Herbert Simon has said long time ago) that the
agents don't have all the time needed, their capabilities of
calculation and memory are limited, and as such they can't
make their preferences be taken fully into consideration.

7. Amartya K. Sen
“The formulation of maximizing behaviour in economics has often
paralleled the modelling of maximization in physics and related
disciplines. But maximizing behaviour differs from nonvolitional
maximizing because of the fundamental relevance of the choice
act, which has to be placed in a central position in analyzing
maximizing behaviour” (Sen, 1997, p. 745)
Sen, Amartya. "Maximization and the Act of Choice."
Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society (1997): 745-779.

8. Buridan´s ass
“(i) maximization can save your life and (ii) only an ass will
wait for optimization” (A.K. Sen)

9. Sperber, Dan et al. "Epistemic vigilance." Mind &
Language 25.4 (2010): 359-393.
“No act of communication among humans, even if it is only of
local relevance to the interlocutors at the time, is ever totally
disconnected from the flow of information in the whole social
group” (H. Mercier and D.Sperber, 2010, p. 379).

10. Open government and crowd expertise
.
“Crowd expertise” is emerging as an actual possibility, and it
must be incorporated to confront conflicts. The expertise function
works in deliberative, argumentative and motivational contexts and
courses of action; it is not an isolated activity.

11. The masses as a source of collective intelligence
“We are learning, including in a practical
way, that the grouping of human beings
can produce results we didn't expect
and that, as a product of the interaction,
the action of collectives goes much
further than the capabilities that each
one of its members has”.
Álvarez, J. F. (2014). La irrupción de las
masas y la sabiduría colectiva (The
inrushing of masses and the collective
wisdom). Investigación y ciencia,
(454), 50-51.
Madrid 15-M 2011

12. Collective Wisdom?
“We allow that each individual knows less of these affairs than those
who have given particular attention to them, yet when they come
together they will know them better” Aristotle Política (III, 10,
1282a15)
“The diverse many are often smarter than a group of select elites
because of the different cognitive tools, perspectives, heuristics,
and knowledge they bring to political problem solving and
prediction”(H. Landemore, 2014, “Yes, We Can (Make it up on
Volume): Answers to Critics” Critical Review, 1-2, pág. 184

13. Collective Wisdom
Madrid 15-M 2011

14. Argumentation and debats: One small
step

15. “Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are
usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our
subsequent explanations of them.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot