A Non-Argumentative's Guide to Debate pt.1 - The importance of consensus building

The importance of consensus building

I know some people out there love heated debate. I am not one of them. I find a lot of people, especially westerners, engage in debate because they want to win at something. They may or may not actually have good ideas. They may or may not have anything constructive to add. Often they assume that they know best and are not opening to listening.

Still, I deeply believe in consensus building as being the ideal form of decision making. A vote, whether it be one-person-one-vote or staked voting like we have here, is really just a mechanism for making decisions when we fail to come to a full consensus, but full consensus is always an ideal we should strive to approach even when we know we'll never get there.

The process of building consensus is the most vital part of decision making. The mechanism for carrying out that consensus is important as well, but when you have a real effort to build consensus, that is a strong foundation which can lead to positive results that everyone is happy with regardless of what form of governance that takes.

An example of this is how I function at steem. I think DPoS is flawed. I think any code will be flawed. Human behavior is not so uniform that it can fit into a code. We follow patterns sure, and so it's nice to try and make the perfect code, we should. But it's never going to be perfect and that's ok.

This could easily double up as an informal response to @theycallmedan's "Why am I still here" contest except I don't want to change the title, so maybe not.

The reason I am still here is that I see this community constantly trying to build consensus. We discuss the platform more than we discuss anything else because it is a living entity that we have some level of influence over, however small. I've watched my ideas become mainstream after I made a post. I've seen how my actions influence others. When I listen in on the witness or community meetings, I feel a real attempt at building consensus. That's what makes this an amazing community. We are discussing the governance and implementation of decisions ourselves.

Now whether or not that is what we continue to be is up in the air but I hope that whoever officially "owns" the blockchain or it's largest stakeholders realizes that THAT is where it's value comes from, the fact that we have a wide variety of people from different backgrounds building consensus together to decide how to do things. If that gets taken away, we are really nothing special.

That means, I don't care much whether it's Ned or Justin or the witnesses calling the shots. It's all less than ideal because the decentralization of power requires more than a good code, it requires a new kind of community based culture. But we need some way to come to conclusions when we can't come to consensus, and I think we should put our weight behind whoever respects this consensus process the most.

It's important to remember that it's easy to claim to care about community and consensus, while also spreading the seeds of conflict, and that people with power always stand to gain more power from that, whether they are democratically (or semi-democratically) elected officials or witnesses, or someone who has amassed capital and has power through their capital. It's also important to remember that some people may not see the value in consensus building and community until they actually experience it.

We talk about trustless systems because we lack trust in our daily interactions. This causes fear and doubt in each other and leads to all kinds of ugliness. We can try and build a trustless system if we want, but it should be built with the intention of encouraging trust between individuals and communities.

This is a really nuanced topic that can go in many directions but that's all for today. ;-)

-I+Everything

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