Autopoietic
From dKosopedia
The traditional notion of a database is an organized information store which can be queried and updated via a software application in a very controlled manner. It requires relying on very few types and even fewer verbs.
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debating politics consistently
A multiple point of view political wiki shared by many factions with positions that are not always in common, would seem to be an extremely difficult database in order to draw information from.
Even in open politics where people are trained to some common naming conventions and share a few political virtues, however, it often seems hopeless to derive any list of "what we mostly agree on here" and what can thus be moved forward, e.g. into a specific proposal for some legislature or platform.
In which case, agreeing on what is "official" or "published" data can be the major barrier to doing anything. But at an extreme, a network database utilizing an autopoietic conceptual scheme would not have a data store at all. Its network would be constructed ad hoc and constantly updated via a search engine. It would query the environment/knowledge domain directly, working with its instructional capital (recorded trusted knowledge), relying on clues about trustworthiness of authors, keywords, statistical knowledge about phrases, co-occurence and sequence based on concepts of grammar and (for the most difficult to discern relations) semantic links and other typed links of a more structural nature (especially for sequence and deadlining such as "next", "previous", "term", "as of", "was"). It could in extremis combine techniques to, for instance, rely on word frequency and other cues to presume authorship and in this way come to statistically upgrade or downgrade claims.
autopoietic methods relying on weak but consistent ontology
There would be no map, nor representation of the domain beyond the domain itself as expressed in the natural language instructions or assertions. The knowledge environment surrounding the application, probably just a minimal web with a weak ontology such as microformats, would itself be the only "database", and the autopoietic application would draw evidence for its arguments directly from a source via its structural coupling with that environment. The Living Ontology Web is an experiment in this approach.
Queries to search applications would return concerns and reflections of the ontology of the environment, that is, for instance, a question chain elaborated from each question to the next that it generates, at the borders. It would not require internally consistent conclusions (facts) generated in the domain, and would not be fragile if such facts were contradicted - instead it would just ask questions about that!
Such applications could be useful in evaluating systems where traditional predictive modeling data mining techniques are initially impractical. For instance, relating individual buying criteria to actual individual buying habits, or institutional buying criteria to actual institutional invoices.
"the use of non-model systems for the purposes of uncovering models, or querying uncertain or unexplored systems, may prove potentially useful in applications where uncertainty and instability in the solution domain obfuscate traditional approaches to problem solving. Such applications might apply to understanding and tracking semiotic or linguistic interactions between various entities that produce conversations, and exposing any potentially important but presently invisible meta-knowledge those materials might express over time. the use of non-model systems for the purposes of uncovering models, or querying uncertain or unexplored systems, may prove potentially useful in applications where uncertainty and instability in the solution domain obfuscate traditional approaches to problem solving. Such applications might apply to understanding and tracking semiotic or linguistic interactions between various entities that produce conversations, and exposing any potentially important but presently invisible meta-knowledge those materials might express over time." - Brett Stalbaum, Towards Autopoietic Database
heteropoietic methods relying on comparing/reconciling factions or multiple forums
While "such systems also exhibit great versatility and plasticity allowing expansion of possible behaviors", they, like neural networks, are also easy to challenged base on any lack of objectivity in their design or starting conditions of the initial database. In order to overcome these objections and achieve acceptance, some heteropoietic techniques might also be used to, for instance, validate claims per faction, to remove any objections that an arbitrary or deterministic method was used. If it is used only as argument and the actual position taken is taken by the factions, this is no different than the arguments coming from thin air - the only purpose of the database is to accelerate the decision making and achieve more consensus decision making on matters where the factions simply do not disagree seriously or don't care.
For instance, the approach taken by the Consumerium fair trade system (yet to be deployed, but fully designed already) where assertions regarding the ecological and social integrity of products and services are reconciled, and where factions are directly supported.
Or more rigorously, the approach described in the 1994 State of the Future report from the United Nations University Millenium Project, of separating semantic links into the ethos or ethical point of view that believes in them, e.g. a "kosher" view of food, or a "halal" view segmented by rules per branch of Islam, e.g. "Ismaili:halal", has already been adopted in a limited way by large public wikis that segment their policies into separate namespaces, e.g. Wikipedia:election versus election in Wikipedia:
The Wikipedia's own point of view is expressed in the former, while the latter is the neutral point of view formed by all factions who participate in it to share claims. Combining many databases such as the entire GFDL corpus would create many namespaces, one per ruleset at least, with corresponding names like DoWire:election indicating the point of view involved. This is quite easy to reconcile with Shia:election and the expression of various views from Iraq and Iran about democracy and elections.
What seems harder, is trying to reconcile this with Sunni:election, Diebold:election or Republican:election! Over time, the non-ideological forum viewpoints such as that of Wikipedia, may dominate if only because they are a neutral arbiter. Or, a Democratic:election view from Jimmy Carter might dominate by its sheer scientific rationality and credibility: after all, what other President lost an election due to high treason? The autopoietic way of combining election data and claims may come even to be accepted by the more repressive regimes, and they may begin to compete to be viewed as "more democratic", starting a virtuous cycle:
(re)defining 'democracy'
For a budget much less than the Iraq occupation, rational visions and policies might emerge:
for Iran
For instance, consider a project that would cost much less than any planned invasion of Iran:
Since Farsi is already the fourth most used language on blogs, it seems simple to put a clone of dkosopedia itself into use to compile the views of all the bloggers who, thanks to the initiative of a former Vice-President of that country, include all recent Presidential candidates. Since Wikipedia stores cross-links to all translated versions of articles, it is relatively simple to discover and import articles on all democracy related concepts, so that these debates proceed in an informed way, perhaps eventually using open politics argument standards and avoiding MemeTank style rhetoric. See issue/position/argument for more.
for America
Or, consider using a similar technique to agree on a Vision for America that can be put forth as the shared consensus of dkosopedia itself, as if it actually had some shared creativity.
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