It introduces this document, but I found the thread makes a compelling case to read this:

https://demos.co.uk/research/verification-deliberation-accountability-a-new-framework-for-tackling-epistemic-collapse-and-renewing-democracy/

@Migueldeicaza That quite fascinating. <warning brain dump> Iʻve been thinking about something in the same vein — communication and abstraction. The idea being that Humans are only capable of holding so much in their mind, and we are also limited by how "far” we can communicate.

By that I mean how far the telephone game works. There are only so many hops from one person to another, lets say 4 before the message is lost to entropy.

Because of these two limits - the mind and communication (which to be honest are really the same limit, the mind) - we build abstractions to help us deal with it.

If, however, these abstractions arenʻt good representations of their underlying content, we end up building unreliable layers.

Sometimes these abstractions are layers of software, sometimes they are Representative-style governments, sometimes theyʻre layers on our monetary system such as credit cards.

Abstractions all the way down.

IMHO, the "lack of trust" in government is a result of unreliable, opaque abstractions.

Each of Lippmanʻs “pseudo-environments” are just abstraction layers, and the limit of an environment is those mind and communication limits.

Anyway, amazing thread!!