A framing that helps me is that -voting maps individual signals into a collective commitment (who counts, what’s at stake, how signals are sent/weighted/aggregated, when valid, what’s disclosed, who executes/appeals).
Coordination of commitments is the matching grammar that turns promises into flow (clear commitments, valuation, limits, settlement, and routes). In practice, a pool of commitments makes that grammar operational via interfaces so plural paths can run in parallel without sharing a stack or ideology.
Where this meets practice for me is to treat a pool as the metabolic layer (it only moves what clears); treat governance as tuning the grammar; treat voting as choosing priorities.
I think of using QV when intensity matters (budgeting, which pools to seed), conviction voting for slow, durable parameter shifts (indexes, listings), consent for reversible ops, and sortition for legitimacy-sensitive reviews.
And notice the space between pools: no one votes there directly ... routes emerge wherever interfaces align, limits permit, and capacity exists. ... pluralism with teeth: forks that learn, routes that adapt, memory that keep us honest.
I’d put “mechanism” in the of a tool, not the ground. The ground for me is the grammar/protocol/interfaces and the practice.
Mechanisms (QV, conviction voting, multisig, auctions) only tune priorities; they don’t create capacity, legitimacy, or trust by themselves.
So ... protocol sets what’s real (interfaceable), stewards supply the ethics, mechanisms adjust the dials.
I try to avoid avoid mechanism(plurality)-worship and keep the interfaces that connect (and the people who honor them) at the center.
“Write programs to work together… using a universal interface.” - Doug McIlroy (Unix philosophy)
&
“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” - Edsger W. Dijkstra
I launched a functionally plural funding mechanism this year called "Updraft" https://updraft.fund . It's easier to spin up than QF rounds. Unlike QF, it's always "on." Ideas naturally grow and recede as people move deposits to increase their opportunities. "Solutions" attach to ideas and are naturally pluralistic: there can be several competing/cooperating solutions for each idea. A project could create several ideas representing possible directions in a roadmap and have interested people vote to earn by depositing, becoming co-owners of ideas instead of passive users of the project.
I appreciate this post and it's got me thinking about different ways we could implement "shared learning" between related ideas and solutions. Forking is nice, but forking with shared learning is even better; you have me convinced.
Love this perspective! Thank you for articulating so clearly why the traditional "one path" approach in organizations is often flawed. It's definitly crucial to re-think how we approach decision-making to avoid losing good ideas and people.
This is very much in the mould of - well, mould! And nature in general, of course. The idea that we make multiple forays to determine the best single course of action or combination is everywhere in nature. We humans seem to be unique in adding layers of complication to our lives by adopting almost every new thing that comes along and embedding it in already complicated lives.
The cost argument is also predicated on our blind and relentless adoption of every shiny new bauble that we find. A slower approach in which we evaluated potential adoptions against a set of values that put human welfare as a whole at the top could save billions from not adopting self-defeating ones. Imagine if we had had this in place when oil was discovered.
Excellent article presenting how functional pluralism can help navigate strategic differences. I am curious what your thoughts are about how functional pluralism can help navigate value differences? If a cancer nonprofit for example has coalitions divided between supporting patients or funding research, this is a difference in perceived objectives / values. Sure they can divide funds between them, but if possible, it would be better for them to split into different orgs. In situations where there is a common good that prevents a split, would quadratic voting truly be superior to participatory budgeting (without quadratic elements)?
I have been working on a project I call Public Planning Discourse Platform, which is based on many of the same principles as this work. Aimed at planning for ‘non-local’ and ‘global’ problems that affect people in many governance domains with different decision-making rules, it can of course be applied to individual groups and companies, Adding evaluation tools whose results can be used to develop better decision guidelines and also provisions (accounts) for more transparent ‘accountability’ (can thhere be accountbility without soe account?). The work is spread around on substack, Academia. edu, researchgate, Facebook Linked In (systems thinking) groups. Let me know if this is of interest four your group:
What I hear is that as a neurodivergent human, that this is actually how I function internally.
Externally, when this is combined with a strategy that says we as a human collective need to jump into the unknown in order to get out of the fucktangle we've created for ourselves ecologically, we have a method that creates multiple forks through which we can determine the best pathways forward while developing a VAST knowledge base on mistakes and successes.
This was a puzzle piece that I was very glad to find on a snowy sunday up north. Deep gratitude.
I’m so happy this puzzle piece found its way into your snowy Sunday. I was thinking about dropping it tomorrow but I know how much I love to curl up with a good read on a slow Sunday afternoon so I decided to drop it today. It means a lot to imagine you resonating with these words as a neurodivergent human on a quiet Sunday.
Loving functional pluralism. Thanks Benjamin.
A framing that helps me is that -voting maps individual signals into a collective commitment (who counts, what’s at stake, how signals are sent/weighted/aggregated, when valid, what’s disclosed, who executes/appeals).
Coordination of commitments is the matching grammar that turns promises into flow (clear commitments, valuation, limits, settlement, and routes). In practice, a pool of commitments makes that grammar operational via interfaces so plural paths can run in parallel without sharing a stack or ideology.
Where this meets practice for me is to treat a pool as the metabolic layer (it only moves what clears); treat governance as tuning the grammar; treat voting as choosing priorities.
I think of using QV when intensity matters (budgeting, which pools to seed), conviction voting for slow, durable parameter shifts (indexes, listings), consent for reversible ops, and sortition for legitimacy-sensitive reviews.
And notice the space between pools: no one votes there directly ... routes emerge wherever interfaces align, limits permit, and capacity exists. ... pluralism with teeth: forks that learn, routes that adapt, memory that keep us honest.
I’d put “mechanism” in the of a tool, not the ground. The ground for me is the grammar/protocol/interfaces and the practice.
Mechanisms (QV, conviction voting, multisig, auctions) only tune priorities; they don’t create capacity, legitimacy, or trust by themselves.
So ... protocol sets what’s real (interfaceable), stewards supply the ethics, mechanisms adjust the dials.
I try to avoid avoid mechanism(plurality)-worship and keep the interfaces that connect (and the people who honor them) at the center.
“Write programs to work together… using a universal interface.” - Doug McIlroy (Unix philosophy)
&
“Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability.” - Edsger W. Dijkstra
I launched a functionally plural funding mechanism this year called "Updraft" https://updraft.fund . It's easier to spin up than QF rounds. Unlike QF, it's always "on." Ideas naturally grow and recede as people move deposits to increase their opportunities. "Solutions" attach to ideas and are naturally pluralistic: there can be several competing/cooperating solutions for each idea. A project could create several ideas representing possible directions in a roadmap and have interested people vote to earn by depositing, becoming co-owners of ideas instead of passive users of the project.
I appreciate this post and it's got me thinking about different ways we could implement "shared learning" between related ideas and solutions. Forking is nice, but forking with shared learning is even better; you have me convinced.
Love this perspective! Thank you for articulating so clearly why the traditional "one path" approach in organizations is often flawed. It's definitly crucial to re-think how we approach decision-making to avoid losing good ideas and people.
This is very much in the mould of - well, mould! And nature in general, of course. The idea that we make multiple forays to determine the best single course of action or combination is everywhere in nature. We humans seem to be unique in adding layers of complication to our lives by adopting almost every new thing that comes along and embedding it in already complicated lives.
The cost argument is also predicated on our blind and relentless adoption of every shiny new bauble that we find. A slower approach in which we evaluated potential adoptions against a set of values that put human welfare as a whole at the top could save billions from not adopting self-defeating ones. Imagine if we had had this in place when oil was discovered.
Excellent article presenting how functional pluralism can help navigate strategic differences. I am curious what your thoughts are about how functional pluralism can help navigate value differences? If a cancer nonprofit for example has coalitions divided between supporting patients or funding research, this is a difference in perceived objectives / values. Sure they can divide funds between them, but if possible, it would be better for them to split into different orgs. In situations where there is a common good that prevents a split, would quadratic voting truly be superior to participatory budgeting (without quadratic elements)?
I have been working on a project I call Public Planning Discourse Platform, which is based on many of the same principles as this work. Aimed at planning for ‘non-local’ and ‘global’ problems that affect people in many governance domains with different decision-making rules, it can of course be applied to individual groups and companies, Adding evaluation tools whose results can be used to develop better decision guidelines and also provisions (accounts) for more transparent ‘accountability’ (can thhere be accountbility without soe account?). The work is spread around on substack, Academia. edu, researchgate, Facebook Linked In (systems thinking) groups. Let me know if this is of interest four your group:
Thorbjørn Mann
<thorbjornmann@gmail.com>
Thank you for this excellent work.
What I hear is that as a neurodivergent human, that this is actually how I function internally.
Externally, when this is combined with a strategy that says we as a human collective need to jump into the unknown in order to get out of the fucktangle we've created for ourselves ecologically, we have a method that creates multiple forks through which we can determine the best pathways forward while developing a VAST knowledge base on mistakes and successes.
This was a puzzle piece that I was very glad to find on a snowy sunday up north. Deep gratitude.
I’m so happy this puzzle piece found its way into your snowy Sunday. I was thinking about dropping it tomorrow but I know how much I love to curl up with a good read on a slow Sunday afternoon so I decided to drop it today. It means a lot to imagine you resonating with these words as a neurodivergent human on a quiet Sunday.