It comes down to brass tacks: at the top of my game what I was doing was part of our over-throwing Allende's democratically elected government in Chile. (I had gone from infantry radio operator through airborne to "Comm Research", our name for "Signals Intelligence".)
So the best of my work went against my most basic principle; I was against the Soviets because they corrupted democracy ... but there we were, doing the same. (Sure sure sure, for totally different reasons and entirely sterling intentions. YR YR YR)

So the project became: how to apply the skill set in service of the public good?
To start at the beginning: what's public good? Well, how about public input into policy decisions.
1975 we set up a series of public consultations on GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade). This was long before all the talk about globalization, but it shared those roots: we knew that tariffs gave us cheap commodities (coffee and cocoa, for example) while keeping the growers and producers in abject poverty. (see above: over-throw of democratic movements for the sake of corporate interests).

I noticed something very interesting: first, discussion and debate often took off on weird tangents which effectively avoided key points and mooted key arguments ... so there were taboo at work. Second, often people came away with confident opinions that were actually and in fact not backed up by any sort of thorough understanding.

Decades later (DEC2004) I came up with a design that mitigated against those corrupt social dynamics. (Wanna argue? Answer me this: by what process was Socrates condemned to death? Don't fool yourself into thinking that politics has changed!)

In the moment, I'm wondering this ... and here's the point of this uber-tweet: given that folk have /absolutely no interest/ in "discourse-based decision support" (Give me a dozen expressions of interest and I'd still be $2 short of a cuppa coffee.) perhaps the #RuleMaking meme would tickle their fickle fancies?

It comes down to making better decisions. I think some folk care, regardless of evidence. Call me an optimist, but don't call me foolish! ;-)

--bdt

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