Disputation Arenas:

Harnessing Conflict and Competitiveness for Society's Benefit

an article by David Brin, Ph.D.

This unusual article looks at how truth is determined in our four "accountability arenas" -- science, democracy, courts and markets. It was lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000.

Copyright © 2000 by David Brin. All rights reserved. No duplication or resale without permission.

Nowadays you hear a lot about how the Internet is going to transform society, and people living in it, more than any innovation since the printing press. Beyond all the trendy applications in art and commerce, the electronic realm is seen as a vital locus for developing new kinds of dispute resolution, and even law. Some enthusiasts perceive it as a way to bypass older systems of social authority, allowing users to create their own self-organizing structures. Indeed, the Internet's rapid development seems only surpassed by its potential.

Still, far too many enthusiasts focus on just one side of the equation... the technology. The other half -- the human half -- is more important, believe it or not.

How do real people behave, when confronted by opportunities and capabilities they never imagined? History shows that new media don't always liberate. At first, printing enflamed Europe's 16th Century religious hatreds. In the 1930s, burgeoning exposure to radio and loudspeakers helped consolidate the power of tyrants. Only time, and the development of user maturity in a competitive environment, eventually made these media capable of fostering cooperative citizenship.

In the long run, the Internet will serve us best if it enhances two seemingly contradictory traits -- individualism and accountability. This may seem an odd blend, but their synergy is what brought us nearly everything we cherish about the modern era. Exploring ways to utilize this synergy, in order to create new systems of dispute resolution, will be the aim of this article.

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First, if you want to see clues about our future, step away from your computer screen. Go outside and stand near a four-way intersection that's regulated only by stop signs.

Watch for a while as drivers take turns, not-quite-stopping while they gauge each others' intentions, negotiating rapid deals with nods and flashes of eye-contact. You'll spot some rudeness, certainly. But exceptions seldom rattle this silent dance of brief courtesies and tacit bargains -- a strange mixture of competition and cooperation.

The four-way stop doesn't work in some cultures, and it's hard to picture anything like it functioning in times past, when mostly-illiterate humans lived in steep social hierarchies and "right of-way" was a matter of status, not fair play. Nor would robots, adhering to rigid laws, handle traffic half so well as the drivers I see, dealing with a myriad fuzzy situations, making up micro rules and exceptions on the spot, even as they talk on cell phones or quell squabbles among kids riding in the back seat. This phenomenon visibly illustrates how simple rules can be used by sophisticated autonomous systems (e.g., modern citizens) to solve intricate problems without any authority figures present to enforce obedience.

How does it happen? Experts in complexity theory coined a term -- emergent properties -- to describe new levels of order that seem to arise out of chaos, when conditions are right. For example, Kevin Kelly's book, Out of Control, depicts how rudimentary genetic drives coalesce into the fantastic flocking behavior of birds. When intelligence extends this process to higher levels, the result -- our own unique kind of flocking -- is called civilization.

Can the Internet enhance and extend this self-organizing marvel to untold heights? Alas, despite the glad cries of cyber-utopians, today's Net just doesn't look ready. Not yet.

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No complex entity can survive for long without a way to combat internal flaws, or repair damage that might otherwise cause ruin. Our bodies do this with an immune system. Cultures throughout history tried to accomplish the same thing through rulership -- exhorting people to live by rigid principles, then squelching deviations with the sword.

That approach never worked well, and it's not how nature does it. There is no map inside you, depicting your ideal, healthy self. Instead, our bodies throng with semi-independent agents, caroming randomly through blood and lymph, sniffing for trouble like lone marshals of the Old West. Chief among these roving deputies are T Cells, assigned to detect threats and emit chemical summons for help. Our lives count on having a variety of these little trouble-shooters, each alert for something different. If one agent fails to catch a problem, the next might. This system, half a billion years old, is more flexible than any kind of central control.

Can societies emulate it? In fact, we've already spent generations moving gradually away from old centralized prescriptions, toward a program that is much more like nature's. Forget all the noise about "Big Government." It has only marginal importance, up or down, compared to society's true immune system against error -- fierce and reciprocal criticism.

Our neo-western civilization throngs with "human T Cells" -- educated, skeptical, independent-minded and ego-driven to pounce on some terrible mistake or nefarious scheme. Some are in government, but most aren't. In fact, this description enfolds far more than news reporters, activists, and muckrakers. Any of you reading this can envision friends who exhibit certain traits:

• Strongly held opinions.

• Claiming to see patterns that others cannot.

• Distrust of some (or all) authority.

• Profound faith in their unique individuality.

• Utter dependence on freedom of speech.

Perhaps you proudly avow these traits in yourself. If so, you're not exceptional. They were drilled into millions of us from an early age by one of the most pervasive (and weirdly ironic) ongoing propaganda campaigns of all time. The characters we admire in books and films -- from Mad Max and E.T. to the literary novels of Pynchon and Wolfe -- nearly always exhibit traits of driven individualism. Irked by limiting routines, they sniff for mistakes or dubious plots by those in charge. Above all, these fictional protagonists display suspicion toward authority. Authority in all shapes and sizes. Such heroes -- rare in times past -- throng every popular medium today. Can you deny they played a role in shaping the individualist you are?

Is it any wonder that millions of us choose some subject to get irate about, or some cause to champion, making noise until the error gets fixed, or at least discussed?

Many social thinkers decry this combatively personal way of confronting a complex world. In The Argument Culture, Deborah Tannen defines agonism as "...a prepatterned, unthinking use of fighting to accomplish goals that do not necessarily require it." USC Professor Barry Glassner sees much of today's relentless criticism as unbalanced and needlessly dispiriting. In The Culture of Fear, he claims that exaggerated doom-mongering misleads Americans into believing things are much worse than they really are.

I don't completely disagree with Tannen and Glassner. Indeed, the media do sensationalize. And Hollywood's reflexively upthrust finger toward all authority can become a tedious cliche, making movies far dumber than they need to be. When this endlessly repeated sermon is taken too seriously and simplistically by some people, the result can be a perversion of individualism that approaches paranoia, even solipsism.

And yet, as I discuss in some detail elsewhere, the astonishing thing about all this raging individualism is how well it works at generating mutual and reciprocal criticism that is unavoidable even by elites. It is by far the best system ever created for discovering -- and even preventing -- errors that might cause real harm.

For every crisis that takes us by surprise, there are a thousand bullets we seem to have dodged because someone hollered in time.

It makes for a noisy society -- and an uncommonly successful one.

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New technologies like the Internet have many traits that could enhance the effects I just described, or perhaps ruin them. To see how it can go either way, take a look at what already works for us.

Despite an appearance of raucous chaos, society's vigorous exchange of criticism isn't without pattern. It's not just a maelstrom of screaming egotists. You'll recall that I claimed a second ingredient -- accountability -- actually complements individualism, helping it to truly flower.

Consider four marvels of our age -- science, democracy, the justice system and fair markets. In each case the participants (scientists, litigants, politicians and capitalists) are driven by selfish goals. That won't change; not till we redefine human nature. But for years, rules have been fine-tuned in each of these fields of endeavor, to reduce cheating and let quality or truth win much of the time. By harnessing human competitiveness, instead of suppressing it, these "accountability arenas" nourished much of our unprecedented wealth and freedom.

The four arenas aren't always fair or efficient! A good theory, law or commercial product may flounder, or else face many trials before prevailing. But remember that organic systems needn't be efficient, only robust. Likewise, our core institutions have to keep functioning despite individual incompetence, or the most everlasting human temptation-- to cheat. In achieving this, the four old accountability arenas have done pretty well by us, so far.

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Here's my key point: I think the Net has potential for creating a fifth great arena, equal to the others. Many of the traits it would need are already there, online. Vast troves of information. The freedom to make, break and reform associations. Relatively low cost-and-skill barriers to access. A potential for every fallible idea to face relentless scrutiny.

But something is also missing. Take a closer look at how science, courts, democracy and markets actually work. In each arena, the process has two phases.

First, centrifugal structures help participants go off on their own, to organize and prepare in safety. Scientists have their labs, lawyers and their clients get confidentiality, politicians rally their parties, and businessfolk lead companies. People need secure enclaves to gather allies, make plans, and prepare for coming battles.

The Net has already proved magnificent at emulating this phase! On Usenet and the Web, interests groups coalesce around any topic imaginable. Minority and fringe groups take shelter behind password-protected walls where members may organize safely, even separated by oceans. My 1980's novel, Earth, foresaw something like this, though the overwhelming fecundity of it all goes beyond what I imagined.

Alas, centrifugal effects, are only half of the process. All by themselves, they guarantee only dispersal, isolation, mutual-suspicion and eventually war. Nowadays we see the Web fostering miniature rallies of the faithful. Insular tribes where commitment to dogma is paramount, and our ancient nemesis -- self-deception -- reigns supreme. Within these perfect sanctums, true-believers grow used to demonizing their opponents, replacing their true identities and arguments with easily despised caricatures.

What each of the older accountability arenas has -- and today's Internet lacks -- is centripetal focus. A counterbalancing inward pull. Something that acts to draw foes together for fair confrontation, after making their preparations in safe seclusion.

No, I'm not talking about goody-goody communitarianism and "getting along." Far from it. Elections, courtrooms, retail stores and scientific conferences all provide fierce testing grounds, where adversaries come together to have it out... and where civilization ultimately profits from their passion and hard work.

This process may not be entirely nice. But it is the best way we ever found to learn, through fair competition, who may be right and who is wrong.

Yes, counter to the fashion of postmodernism, I posit the existence and pertinence of "true and false" -- better and worse -- needing no more justification than the pragmatic value these concepts have long provided. In science you compare theory to nature's laws. In democracy you try policies until one works. Markets test products and services that entrepreneurs proclaim "best," while catering to varied tastes. In a myriad fields, this process slowly results in better theories, notions, laws and products. Again, it is murky and inefficient... and it works.

My point is that today's Internet currently lacks good processes for drawing interest groups -- many of them bitterly adversarial -- out of those passworded castles to arenas where their champions can have it out, where ideas may be tested and useful notions get absorbed into an amorphous-but-growing general wisdom.

Some claim that such arenas do exist on the Net -- in a million chat rooms and Usenet discussion groups -- but I find these venues lacking in dozens of ways. Many wonderful and eloquent arguments are raised, only to float away like ghosts, seldom to join any coalescing model. Rabid statements that are decisively refuted simply bounce off the ground, springing back like the undead. Reputations only glancingly correlate with proof or ability. Imagine anything good coming out of science, law, or markets if the old arenas ran that way!

Opinions rage and spume with utter freedom and abandon -- a good thing, I suppose. But down at rock bottom I am selfish and practical. I want something more out of all the noise.

Eventually, I want good ideas to win. Foolish ones should gradually fade, making room for lots of new ideas -- both good and bad -- to test all over again.

No king or sage or jury is qualified to decide such things... but we are. Over time. That is, if we hope to keep growing better.

Next... hot new ideas emerge from the primordial ooze!

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