The metaethical dilemma of epistemic democracy

Epistemic democracy aims to show, often by appeal to the Condorcet Jury Theorem, that democracy has a high chance of reaching correct decisions. It has been argued that epistemic democracy is compatible with various metaethical accounts, such as moral realism, conventionalism and majoritarianism. This paper casts doubt on that thesis and reveals the following metaethical dilemma: if we adopt moral realism, it is doubtful that voters are, on average, more than 0.5 likely to track moral facts and identify the correct alternative. By contrast, if we adopt conventionalism or majoritarianism, we cannot expect that voters are both competent and sincere. Either way, the conditions for the application of Condorcet’s theorem are not met.

The Condorcet Jury Theorem with Information Acquisition

We analyze a committee decision in which individuals with common preferences are uncertain which of two alternatives is better for them. Members can acquire costly information. Private signals and information choice are both continuous. As is consistent with Down’s rational ignorance hypothesis, each member acquires less information in a larger committee and tends to acquire zero information when the committee size goes to infinity. However, with more members, a larger committee can gather more aggregate information in equilibrium. The aggregate information is infinite with the size going to infinity if and only if marginal cost at “zero information acquisition” is zero. When the marginal cost at “zero information acquisition” is positive, the probability of making an appropriate decision tends to be less than one.

Development of a System for Measuring the Intellectual Power of Actors

The problem of determining an accurate assessment of the actor’s ability to solve a problem of a certain degree of difficulty is considered in this work. The assessment is determined by a group of actors in the process of solving local problems, while the tasks are included in the competence of this group. Actors can be carriers of both natural and artificial intelligence. Condorcet Jury Theorem, Georg Rasсh Model, method of the evolutionary decision reconciliation (EDR) are used in the process of solving the problem posed. Related Experiences Assessment Scale is given. The measure of academic success is better predicted not by those experiences that are manifested during study activities, but those that arise along on the way to university. There is a slight effect of the influence of time on the measure of effort.

Truth-tracing versus truth-tracking: Lafont, Landemore and epistemic democracy

Cognitivist theories of democratic decision-making come in two flavours, which I label transparently and intransparently epistemic. Lafont’s deliberative theory of democracy has strengths in accounting for the transparently truth-tracing power of justification but lacks a plausible account of the intransparently truth-tracking power of aggregative approaches highlighted by, among others, Hélène Landemore, such as the Condorcet Jury Theorem or the Diversity Trumps Ability Theorem. I suggest opting for an approach that includes semi-transparently epistemic mechanisms, that is, truth-tracking mechanisms, the workings of which can be explained, passing the public reason test, to all citizens.

Social Connectivity, Media Bias, and Correlation Neglect*

A biased newspaper aims to persuade voters to vote for the government. Voters are uncertain about the government’s competence. Each voter receives the newspaper’s report as well as independent private signals about the competence. Voters then exchange messages containing this information on social media and form posterior beliefs, neglecting correlation among messages. We show that greater social connectivity increases the probability of an efficient voting outcome if the prior favours the government; otherwise, efficiency decreases. The probability of an efficient outcome remains strictly below one even when connectivity becomes large, implying a failure of the Condorcet jury theorem.

A functional equation of tail-balance for continuous signals in the Condorcet Jury Theorem

Consider an odd-sized jury, which determines a majority verdict between two equiprobable states of Nature. If each juror independently receives a binary signal identifying the correct state with identical probability p, then the probability of a correct verdict tends to one as the jury size tends to infinity (Marquis de Condorcet in Essai sur l’application de l’analyse à la probabilité des décisions rendues à la pluralité des voix, Imprim. Royale, Paris, 1785). Recently, Alpern and Chen (Eur J Oper Res 258:1072–1081, 2017, Theory Decis 83:259–282, 2017) developed a model where jurors sequentially receive independent signals from an interval according to a distribution which depends on the state of Nature and on the juror’s “ability”, and vote sequentially. This paper shows that, to mimic Condorcet’s binary signal, such a distribution must satisfy a functional equation related to tail-balance, that is, to the ratio $$\alpha (t)$$ α ( t ) of the probability that a mean-zero random variable satisfies X$$>t$$ > t given that $$|X|>t$$ | X | > t . In particular, we show that under natural symmetry assumptions the tail-balances $$\alpha (t)$$ α ( t ) uniquely determine the signal distribution and so the distributions assumed in Alpern and Chen (Eur J Oper Res 258:1072–1081, 2017, Theory Decis 83:259–282, 2017) are uniquely determined for $$\alpha (t)$$ α ( t ) linear.

A Condorcet Jury Theorem for Large Poisson Elections with Multiple Alternatives

Herein, we prove a Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) for large elections with multiple alternatives. Voters have common interests that depend on an unknown state of nature. Each voter receives an imprecise private signal about the state of nature and then submits one vote (simple plurality rule). We also assume that this is a Poisson voting game with population uncertainty. The question is whether the simple plurality rule aggregates information efficiently so that the correct alternative is elected with probability tending to one when the number of voters tends to infinity. The previous literature shows that the CJT holds for large elections with two alternatives, but there is also an example of a large election with three alternatives that has an inefficient equilibrium. We show that there always exists an efficient equilibrium, independent of the number of alternatives. Under certain circumstances (informative types), it is unique in elections with two alternatives. The existence of inefficient equilibria in elections with more than two alternatives is generic.