Introduction by Blog Coordinator Darnell Lattal, Ph.D.
Dr. Francis Mechner has written an important and timely blog. It suggests that we consider how to create a more democratic society. It comes at a time of great trauma for our country when stories of dread are paramount in our news cycles and our private discourse about what is happening to the country we love (on all sides of our political lens). How do we apply what we know to the social/cultural world, the systems, and processes surrounding and shaping what we do? What about the rules, who is in charge, the bully or the pulpit in the room? This blog presents a technological and values-laden method to raise our sights to examine the context that currently surrounds us and consider what behavior analysis can do in designing new ways to experience an inclusive society governed by its people.
Among his many accomplishments, Francis Mechner has systematically examined what it takes to educate citizens to weigh the impact of their actions in furthering a society that expands or limits the potential of others. What does it take to allow for the full expression of ideas that also creates harmony, with the skills needed to manage with “patience” and “delight” the effects of cooperation and compromise among us, leading to a sense of belonging to a participatory society? Dr. Mechner trained first to 12th-grade students to consider early and throughout their maturity how what they do might benefit themselves against the potential effects on others and taught how to expand these skills to examine the larger social contract, a byproduct of wise acting and a bedrock skill in a thriving democracy. Much of the school’s design was to carefully arrange conditions that increased individual and group autonomy, arranging cultural contingencies reinforcing the benefits of participatory governance.
In this blog, Mechner suggests we design and implement a plan to move away from embedded control based on power nodes, where one group or individual sets the rules for what the rest of us do. Knowing why behavior operates as it does in its environment, how do we design conditions that better ensure that we act for the benefit of the group–and ourselves? Dr. Mechner proposes we look to technology as a potential partner in initiating such a shift and harness that technology to provide a framework to arrange conditions where cooperation and compromise govern our actions, reducing the central control of hierarchical or positional power. He invites us to get involved in questions of the larger society and to consider what behavior science has to offer that bigger world of influence, continuing to expand the capability of human behavior to shape a better world. He invites this community to take the first steps and offers a way to do just that.
Applying Our Science to the Design of Societies
Francis Mechner
The Mechner Foundation
Applying Our Science to the Design of Societies
B.F. Skinner predicted in many of his writings that the behavioral sciences would find a role in the design of communities, and by extension, societies. By harnessing modern technologies and applying behavioral science to create better governance systems—perhaps even genuine and stable democracy—we may be able to realize the hopes of our science’s visionaries. The project described here is intended to stimulate the new generation of behavioral scientists to consider the challenges and research opportunities that beckon.
The Challenge
The human species has populated Earth with groupings defined by behavioral characteristics—tribal, linguistic, cultural, and belief-based. Groups based on these characteristics have often coalesced into communities, societies, and nations. Within each of these groups are power nodes, groups that wield disproportionate power, be it economic, political, military, religious, or some other type.
Examples of present-day power nodes are political parties, large corporations, ultra-wealthy families, religions, ideologies, and militias. Power nodes generally strive to increase their power, usually at the expense of the larger society. Consider how certain power nodes frustrate efforts to respond to climate change because those efforts infringe upon their near-term interests.
Power tends to corrupt, and behavior theory tells us why: When a corrupt act’s near-term positive reinforcement outweighs the fear of a possible delayed (and therefore discounted) punishment, the corrupt act generally prevails.
None of this is new. What is new is how modern technologies amplify the power nodes’ rapacious behavior patterns into existential dangers to humanity. Imagine Genghis Khan or Adolf Hitler armed with nuclear and biological weapons, plus AI to disseminate disinformation. For a society committed to achieving the welfare of its citizens, the challenge is to rid their governance systems of the influence of power nodes.
Power node influence is a behavioral phenomenon, and addressing it must therefore enlist the behavioral sciences, including linguistics, sociology, economics, governance, jurisprudence, and public policy. Behavior analysis in particular brings to the table the research-based knowledge of some of its key disciplines: verbal behavior and linguistics, organizational behavior management, cognition, behavioral contingency analysis, behavioral research methodology, and behavior shaping.
I’ve spent the past few years trying to devise a governance system that is devoid of power node influence—one in which the populace governs directly. I will summarize some highlights of the latest version of this system and discuss how it proposes to address some societal problems. My subgoal is to demonstrate how behavioral science can find novel applications in important areas of human affairs.
The governance system
The infrastructure of the governance system design consists of a network of electronic platforms that read and “understand” text. Each platform performs a different set of ministerial functions, and the overall network operates a science-based form of governance that prioritizes the society’s long-term survival and welfare.
- Every member of the society’s populace and institutions contributes to the society’s governance agenda. They do so by filing petitions regarding matters they want to see resolved.
- Remote panels composed of randomly chosen members of the general populace evaluate and adjudicate the petitions. The panelists confer remotely and are assisted as needed by qualified experts who are on call to assist them.
- Panelists never meet face to face. They confer anonymously and remotely, with all interactions conducted by written text. This format is designed to prevent entrainment effects (face-to-face psychological pressures) among participants and the intrusion of power node influences.
- A facilitation platform moderates the conferences. It keeps the panelists on topic while ushering them toward a consensus. It does this by tracking a quantitative measure of the panelists’ level of agreement or disagreement, and by probing for qualms and supplying relevant information in response.
Where do behavioral scientists enter the picture?
Specifying, developing, and programming the required functionalities of a system of electronic platforms requires an empirically based understanding of the behavioral and linguistic processes that undergird the facilitation of a conference. Relevant disciplines include behavioral linguistics, group dynamics, sociology, organizational behavior management, contingency analysis, and related disciplines.
One major task is the development of a specialized textual discourse language for remote conferencing. That language’s vocabulary and syntax will reflect the factors that distinguish it from natural languages. Among these are the role of the electronic facilitator, the text-only medium, the varying number of conferees (from few to many), the consensus goal, the constant need to consider unintended collateral effects of panel actions, the availability of qualified technical experts and simulation models that can be consulted, and many other distinguishing factors.
The core of the research and development program for this language will be small test conferences; initially, say, eight conferees will participate from dispersed locations, equipped with keyboards and voice-to-text converters. The panelists will be given issues to resolve, and a facilitator will usher them toward a consensus on their resolution. Multiple rounds of test conferences will generate the discourse data that behavior analysts, aided by language analysis programs, will analyze, resulting in an ever-deepening understanding of the language’s features and requirements,
The facilitator will initially be a skilled human whose most effective techniques are identified, specified, and then coded. The resulting programs will be tested and debugged and progressively inserted to replace the human facilitator, thus building the facilitation platform’s repertoire of effective techniques.
A large component of the discourse language’s vocabulary will likely consist of common interactive verbal behavior concepts like probe, question, answer, response, context, argument, agree, disagree, contradict, power, suggest, opinion, qualm, evidence, and many other complex ones for which we don’t yet have names. The language’s syntax will evolve naturally as linguistic syntaxes do. Some form of supportive technology will help the platforms learn, use, and improve the language by analyzing the empirical data that the test conferences generate. Such technology will also be enlisted to identify and recognize the contexts in which the various discourse units occur, and to add modifiers to the language’s concepts accordingly.
Throughout the small-panel testing program, a team of programmers will code platform functionalities that are then tested in further test conferences, first in small and then in larger ones.
Testing will always consist of cycles of revisions and retesting as platform functionalities continue to become more effective and capable of handling conferences of gradually increasing size and issues of increasing complexity.
Back to the Big Picture
Behavioral scientists who are motivated by applications of our field’s theoretical resources to societal issues may be drawn to opportunities to forge new paths in relatively untrodden terrains. I envision the present project’s significance as extending beyond remote conferencing technology and governance. For instance, it may stimulate discussion of the possibility that human societies can become autonomous.
Autonomy refers to the ability to act without seeking authorization or permission from an external agency, authority, or leader. The potential acquisition of autonomy by societies may prove critical in the evolution of the human species, as autonomy often helps its possessor protect against threats that come its way. Nature has already demonstrated that in the evolution of plants and animals, the greater a life form’s autonomy—its degree of independence and self-determination—the greater its chances of survival and success. Might this principle apply to human societies as well?
The design and eventual implementation of viable and stable societies is surely one of humanity’s most important long-term challenges. However long that might take, I am suggesting that the time for taking the first steps is now.
Guest Author: Francis Mechner
Mechner obtained his PhD in 1957 from Columbia University under Professors Keller and Schoenfeld, and then served as Lecturer there. His academic work focused on basic research in behavioral science, publishing, lecturing, and teaching.
Mechner founded and built a series of organizations. Basic Systems, Inc. (sold to Xerox) introduced an instructional technology that was applied to the development of programs for schools and to the training of medical professionals and technical personnel for industry and government. Basic Systems also designed Job Corps Centers for the U.S. Office of Economic Opportunity. Mechner next founded Chyron Corporation, which serves the broadcast industry, followed by several other corporations, and a demonstration K-8 school.
In 1970-72 Mechner developed educational daycare programs for four American states. The White House invited him to participate in educational planning with Senator Patrick Moynihan and Representative John Brademas, and he testified before the Senate Finance Committee.
Mechner also worked with UNESCO on the modernization of science teaching in South American and Asian countries and simultaneously with Europe’s OECD to promote large-scale manpower development programs. One result: the Brazilian government’s Fundacao Cenafor and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro engaged Mechner to train Brazilian educators in training systems technology and the training of executives. With Brazil’s technological research institute he developed a computerized information storage and retrieval system.
In 1938 Mechner left his native Vienna after the Nazis marched in. From 1938 to 1944 he narrowly survived war, Nazi occupation, and persecution while living in a variety of cultures, and under several brands of fascism and military dictatorship.