The Consensus Engine – This is the idea as of 1/23/25

Forward

Welcome to the idea of the consensus engine. This paper is the outline for an idea that allows people to work together. It can be used for civic participation, it can be used by individuals to help them, and it can be used by a group or team for collaboration and research. And idea for a better way for people to vote and decide which could help reduce misinformation and promote scientific progress.

Done in the hopes of making things better than they currently are. A voting system that allowed different ways to vote on topics and also where votes had a weight that depended on user’s knowledge of a subject. Almost all of the parts of this paper are things that support this voting system, which is mentioned in the Example Uses below.

Preface

The idea of this system is for a better way to communicate and plan with one or many people. Because it allows a long term vision enaction of popular ideas we consider it to be a meta-material for society. It can allow people to make decisions by voting on specific aspects of just about anything. While it’s unlikely anything like this would be built anytime soon the idea of a way to make progress can hopefully help. There appear to be a lot of problems in the world and this could be one stepping stone towards making a better world.

It seems that by and large most people can get along with each other. Then why are so many people angry others. There is a culture in place which seems to exacerbates divisiveness in many walks of life. This idea is a way to try and curb that split and instead to try and bring people together by showing them how much they agree on, and also by finding where two people agree and disagree on a topic so they can work past that point.

People are stronger together and with a system such as the one described here we could have many people across cultures collaborating towards a better future for all human kind. This would could apply to research, politics, and social interaction. It is essentially a framework for a digital society. Built out of reproducible concepts with different applications the system reuses ideas like: digital discussion rooms, weighted values, and rated connections.

The Consensus Engine is a better way for people to vote, to help reach decisions, and to plan to large-scale and long-term projects. Think about how people live their lives and wonder, “Will those lives get better over time?” And not better by just a small amount but in a meaningful and significant way which will last. For humanity to improve we need something to accomplish what this system does which is cooperation and long term planning. If this is going to happen eventually somewhen in the world then why not start now. And if it will be someone who leads mankind to a better world as well, shouldn’t we try to make that be us?

One way forward with this idea is to ask for a handful of small districts who want to take a trial run to test the system. Make the requirements clear and let the citizens themselves decide. If such a method of agreement can function in a small area then let’s step that up in proportion and perhaps in the future the world can work in harmony.

If we envision the world we want the future to be, we can then think about what steps would be necessary to get there, and then work to do those things.

Introduction

The paper is organized by headers, if you enable navigation viewing on a document editor you should see the topics and nested subtopics.

The below summary is a brief overview of the main parts of the idea. The parts section discusses these parts in a little greater detail but in the sake of brevity leaves some things to be inferred. There were plans to write an expanded description of the parts and the examples but that did not happen yet. Most these parts were created to support the idea of the knowledge weighted voting system.

The example uses can show how the parts work together. Accomplishing the example uses was largely the reason for the idea in the first place. The discussion mentions more on this subject. In some of the example uses the CE would have to be used by many people worldwide and some can be accomplished with a local instance being run for a closed community like a club or university.

Summary

A communication platform that can be used for voting and planning. Users with proven knowledge of a subject have higher weight when voting on that subject. Similar and identical ideas are grouped together. Users work backwards in a disagreement to find the last common ground in the subject to better understand where their differences come from and how to move forward. Users provide feedback in exchange for posting to others which powers the consensus finding program.

Description

Users can make and view posts by others. By opening the discussion of a topic they can vote on that post. They can also read comments, reply to comments, vote on comments, and reply to the posted topic itself. Posts are made into specific communities but can be tagged as belonging to multiple categories with an adjustable value indicating how related they are.

When a user votes on a topic they do so via a number of categories such as ‘technically truthful’, ‘applicable to the topic’, ‘misleading’, or other user generated ‘voting types’. The topic that the user discusses can be a top level post, comment under that topic, or even part of a post/comment in that is can be about a phrase or word.

When a user goes to make their own post to a community they are shown similar posts and asked if those examples are similar or the same as the post the user is intending to make. If the user still makes a post then they can add an explanation to show why their post is different if they wish. If other users find they are being dishonest then punishment is applied by a lowering of the account’s weight in that category.

Users who get more approved comments raise a value called ‘weight’ which allows them to post more frequently and to increase the likelihood that others would see their post. Cumulative weight is gained for the username from all of the community-specific-weights which the user has gained. This can work in the negative direction as well.

Users must be verified users to gain or lose weight, rules for verification depend on the community. Ideally this confirmation of being a real human would be done in person similar to voter registration. Users can create child accounts as well as anonymous accounts that aren’t tied to their current screen name and temporary account which will be deleted after a set time.

When a user goes to vote on a topic or make a post they have to provide user feedback, most often in the form of judging how similar two (or more) things are to each other. Thus topics and posts are consolidated and slight deviations are discovered. Users have the option to support their post or comments with citations and the validity of those can be voted on.

When citations are found to be valid by the community they are given a higher rating than those of questionable or incorrect views. For scientific research reaching validity is often done through review as well as reproduction. By linking and following a chain of evidence we can build knowledge across disciplines and help everyone gain a better understanding. A chain of trust/citations is used to support usernames or experiments.

User answers to the feedback questions in addition to things they have expressed interest in are gathered as that entity’s preferences. The user can select what if any of these preferences they wish to share, and if they do elect to share any of this information then they can control what demographics and categories (like users that are members of a specific community or have liked certain tags) of users are able to find them.

A user who subscribes to a category or community can see posts with those topics on their home screen. They can adjust what they see on this screen and access their settings, history, preferences, and privacy levels from this screen as well.

Users can search for other users who have similar preferences in a specific or broad range. For example: Find anyone who likes your favorite band or find someone in the neighborhood who want to play in a soccer league.

When there is a disagreement in the comments between two or more users then we can try to work backwards to see what step of reasoning is different and what that step is based on; thereby identifying why the differences occur which can help plan a way around them.

Users should have total control over all their information, the system needs to be built in a way it can not be misused. They have control over what data types they will share and with who they share their data. For any advertisements that the registered user sees they should receive a small payment for in exchange of being advertised to.

The comments are made of the topic, which is a consensus statement that can be updated if enough votes are cast to do so. These comments are coupled with any citations for supporting evidence. Comments replies can paint another point of view or show a new source and usurp an old point of view over time. People can vote on and discuss these comments a well as to come to an agreement of the parent topic under discussion and find a consensus on it.

Topics are linked by similarity based on user responses, these connections are mapped for navigation. Categories are defined by way of with different concepts from a of multitude of users. The differing points of views can be used to support different thresholds of the defined line between topics and that same line can become defined over time with additional input. They can be surfed via graphical user interface in a web-of-connections view. There are different ways to visualize the relationship of these topics that the user can choose from in that page.

The topics which make up these categories have their own entity page that users can suggest an edit for and comment on. Topics are posted to a community which can enact and enforce its own rules. Topic pages don’t have messages are open for user editing including citations and other user approval.

An entity has their own page where they can interact with others and surf the network. Others can leave messages to the user here in public or private. The users can make posts on their own message board and anyone who has connected with the user and chosen to see their posts will get this post on visible at their own entity page.

When used as a voting system users are questioned on their knowledge of topics, their understanding of the agreed upon facts of any situation will influence how much their vote counts via a ‘weight’ metric. Users with higher tested knowledge on a subject have a higher weight their vote counts a little more than a user with a lower weight in that category.

Parts

Votes

When a user enters the page for discussion on a topic they can cast their votes on aspects of that post. The post which is being voted on can be a comment or a top level post, there are some differences in vote types between the two.

A bar slider over a 1-10 scale is used to pick the chosen value. If the scale is not moved then there is no value chosen for that vote type, the type can be reset to this ‘unmoved’ location with a button click as well.

The user can see an abridged view from the discussion page with at least one row of voting types. They can also click into a ‘voting view’ to see all the vote types that community has added. This can included user added vote types which are then suggested to others who view that comment, so they can get that vote type as well.

When in this expanded view the user can see comparable scale choices for each vote type. That is, they see an example of other thing(s) that were rated at the same level in that vote type. The user must hit submit for their vote block to be posted.

Topics will get a ‘overall consensus’ rating based on an agglomeration of the votes they receive.

Vote Types include:

Factual True / Incorrect
Relevant (to the conversation at hand) / applicable
Adds-to (to the conversation at hand)
Needs more information / insufficient
Misleading
Lacks critical points / skips reasoning steps / jumps to conclusions
Interesting
Fun
Hate Speech
Hurtful
Blaming
‘Absurd arguments’ and their sub-list
‘Logical fallacies’ and their sub-list
& an Agree/disagree value which will then used to update the user’s preferences

Weight

Weight is a metric that can be applied across the system. There are subclasses of weight types for specific uses. Users, posts, and comments all have weight. Users have a weight which is additive from their actions as perceived from all the users names they use as well as the actions within all the public communities which they have interacted with recently.

Weight affects visibility, higher weight items are shown to more people more often, and users with higher weigh make posts that have an initial higher weight than the community baseline; and vice versa.

Weight also affects how frequently a user can make posts or comments. In some cases it can be used to silence or ban communication with those that don’t follow the local rules.

When a user makes a child account then that new account is granted some of the parent account’s weight. If child user accounts get poorly rated posts that user name loses weight which drags down the weight of the parent account. Weight in a community also functions as a reputation score.

Weight changes quickly initially but has an asymptote like quality as it approaches either extreme value. This can be modified by communities so that weight gain is faster or slower.

Weight can only be modified for verified users. Users who are not verified cannot gain or lose weight from their posts.

Weight must be maintained and returns towards baseline slowly over time. Without input it will end near but not at where it started. Weight gain loss is similar to muscle growth and maintenance in mammals. One can earn weight but they can’t buy or steal it.

Weight has a memory feature where it is easier to return towards a level it once held. This is a modification of the point requirement index that modulates weight change.

Weight is represented as a number between -1 and 1.

In all public communities people get to judge comments from outside that community during the user feedback questions.

Weight goes to those that posted a comment. If Alice makes a comment and Bob replies with a modification of that comment and then other users like Bob’s comment more, then Alice can get a small amount of ‘splash’ weight from Bob’s popular comment if he uses her comment as a citation.

E.g. User Alice is new to a category and starts with the category baseline level of weight. In this case that is 0.00 because that is the basal level for this category. Alice makes a comment with a citation for a primary source to back up her claim. The users in the community react positively to this and she gets votes to that effect with one or more vote types. The weight of her post changes to reflect this and becomes 0.50 which results in the post being seen by more and disparate users.

If more people rate the post highly, if the post is shared within its bounds further, or it becomes used as a citation then at that point it can gain further weight as a discreet weight input. As the post ages it will lost some weight in the age-weight-type which will affect where it shows in a feed/list/page of topics but won’t affect the ultimate weight.

To further this example we look at how this post by Alice which got 0.50 weight would affect Alice’s current user name account’s weight in that same community. If the post was cross-posted to other relevant communities then Alice can get weight in that community as well.

These numbers could be modified depending on the community settings. At weight 0.00, or level 0, Alice needs 4 points to get to level 1, or weight 0.01. With the 0.5 weight from her comment she get 5 points and reaches this level 1. After any level change the score starts at that level and points do not carry over or through a level to other levels. Alice would now need to make a new comment with 7 points for her to reach level 2. These numbers are for illustration purposes only.

If Bob were to make a comment that was cruel and was poorly viewed by the community he might lose points and drop a level. There is an increasing amount of points needed to get past levels as the levels closer to the ends of the spectrum. Users who reach a community-set negative point value are temporarily banned. The user would get longer lasting bans if they continued to get negative points.

If Charlie posts a comment that he thinks improves upon Alice’s and cites her comment with his small change and that change becomes so popular it gains a 0.5 weight as well then 0.1 of that would go to Alice as a separate weight input.

Users

The user is the human being who creates a user profile. That user profile can be used to create accounts or screen names that the user can then use to discuss and vote on topics with. Users can create multiple accounts and of different types.

A chain of trust exists between users who are members of the same communities that can be used to transfer weight to specific subclasses of weight types. For example the President of a thing can appoint a user to a position that gives them higher authority and trust ratings within any communities which are under the main community which that president controls.

Users who have gotten poor ratings on their postings are limited in the accounts they can create. Well behaved users can create more screen names over time. Users who have been rated very low in the ‘alive’ vote weight can be considered dead after a certain period of time and their user page ceases to become an entity page and becomes a topic page. So it would lose the wall and ability to get messages.

New users as given a questionnaire to ascertain some of their preferences and interests.

New users must complete an ‘class’ to teach them how to use the CE. This would be required before the users can make any posts or comments anywhere within the system. Understanding the different aspects of the system, including the repercussions for any continued bad action, can be explained. The user would have to take tests and quizzes to ensure their understanding of the system. There should be periodic re-testing for users over time and if they experience weight loss past a value.

Verified users

User must be verified within a community in order for any of their posts there to change their weight. In some communities the user must be verified to even post. Communities can have levels of verification for users based on criteria. There can be distinctions among levels as well.

Verification for any government use of the system should be as simple as registering to vote. A confirmation code can be mailed to fully verify that user. For public and private communities a user can raise their level of verification through having an established (high weight) user vouch for them or by completing provable goals.

Security of the users details should be paramount when creating the handling these accounts. By hashing the data client side and only relaying hashed user data we can reduce man in the middle cyber attacks.

Non verified users

Non verified users have not met enough of the requirements to classify themselves as verified for any community. Or in the case of a government run engine, they have not verified themselves as a human being with an entity that can share with them a level of trust required to achieve that status.

NVUs can leave comments and can even vote in a special type of votes which are visible to users but that does not contribute to the overall weight. Verified users can create accounts with anonymous user names that are not verified they can also create timed-life accounts, which delete themselves and their history after a set time, and neither of these types has any weight to contribute.

Topics

The consensus of posts. When a user makes a post they are posting into a box saying “I think the consensus is ____” and users in the discussion of this post can escalate a comment to compete with this post title. Their own comment or one by someone else can be selected as the new consensus by the users, then it will be viewed in the pool against the main post. When a link is posted the consensus is still discussed below the link or its image/video/frame.

Topics are compared by users who mostly judge how similar two or more topics are rated to be and then those users can add explanations to justify this reasoning if they desire. Once tagged as similar these topics begin be defined by the relationship known here as a category.

Users can view topics in a feed on their own page, at a page for the category, or in a community. They can then click directly into a topic to view or participate in the discussion.

Topics are displayed to the user based on a weight like measure of how recent the post is combined with local (that community and category) and global (users who view the post from outside its community or categories) user reaction. Consensus contenders, the top level post, and comments all show user the fuzzed vote results.

A topic page is like an informational page in an encyclopedia that lists known information. There are a list of sources that support the reasoning in this page. It can be tagged with category tags and those can be voted on by users.

Accounts

Users have a main account page that contains the list of all their user names in an organized manner. If the user wishes to communicate with others, uses the CE to vote/judge/post, or contribute their ideas then they need an account name.

Account names

The user can decide how many account names they wish to have and manage. From their user page they can see and interact with all their different accounts. There are a few types of accounts the user can make. They are limited to a certain number of accounts at first but over time and with an average history of higher than baseline weight the user can make more screen names.

The user can make their main account name or names. They can change and abandon accounts over time or when desired; even deleting them (and the associated weight and preferences which they contribute) if wanted.

Child accounts

If the user has an account with preferences and/or weight they are happy with but want another screen name they can create a child account which inherits some, but not all, weight and preferences from the parent account.

They are usually created as a version of the parent account with a diminished weight and intensity of preference, though they retain a modifier that lets them gain weight and preference in the same categories or types which the parent account held until they are near the parent level. At that point, chosen pseudorandomly, the weight modifier reverts to the community settings. There is a semi-random factor that is applied when initially calculated that determines how close the child account has to get to the parent account’s level before their modifier is disabled.

The child accounts can also share the parent accounts settings and privacy choices.

Anonymous accounts

These are accounts which the user wants to hide the screen name when posting but still wants any responses to come to them. The user can reply to comments as well through this same user name, provided they are appropriately logged into it.

When other users see the posts/comments by this user name all they see is a jumble of characters. A special character that acts as a leading character only for these types may be helpful but is not necessary. This account would show no history to others and it would act like a NVA in that it would not affect weight at all.

Timed accounts

These accounts are trash-accounts, throw-away accounts, disposable accounts, etc. These accounts are made up to ask a question that the user does not want associated with their account similar to an anonymous account however anything by this account will disappear in 90 days or after a set time even to the posting user themselves. There is no weight or preference carry over to the user from these accounts.

Duress accounts

An account type that has no lasting weight with others and is accessed by the user with a second password. This accounts can be set up to show anything the user wants. In the case someone forces a user to show their account then that account can be a fake account.

Posting

Users can make posts to communities, comments in the discussion on a post or topic, to their own message board, or to the message board of another entity. Once a user makes a post then the system shows any posts which it thinks are similar and then the user is asked if their post is the same or similar as the listed ones. Then they still may have to answer a user feedback question before their post is submitted to the system and made live to others.

Users cannot delete posts but they can revise them by making a new post and tagging it as the child of the old post. They can also disassociate themselves with a post so they no longer get weight and that post can also no longer get weight and there is no weight appropriated to other users based on their interaction of that post, and the username of the post is changed or obfuscated like the anonymous user account.

Similarity judgment

When the user is ready to submit a post the system looks for similar posts and shows a few to the user. The user is asked to judge how similar these posts are to their own. They have the 1-10 slider scale where once a user selects a value the system can show examples of other things that have the same similarity scale. These other things can be the reasons which other users have given their votes that value in the same topic or a related subject. If the reasoning is similar to other past uses in other topics then those can be used here.

The user can always place more judgments but they are not required to interact with every example shown to them. In most cases the user is required to rate one of the shown items but their posting frequency and community weight may modify this.

When the posts are the same they are merged and there is a consensus value that increases as now more people have submitted the same statement. When the reasons are very similar but not the same then the system can try to find where the difference comes from by giving the users feedback questions that related to the last known thing the user with the though differences agreed upon.

The path towards consensus will have many chain of reasoning loops where two people agree on something at a level above and below a disagreement, but come together past that. This system can be used to identify common factors between populations with this divergence.

Feedback required

The user is asked for feedback to make a post. In some cases this is being asked to judge a comment or post that might have been flagged and needs more attention. Most of the time it’s a judgment on the similarity of a post to something else such as a known topic, statement, or other post. Users see feedback questions from categories they have interacted with as well as ones they never have. Users can control aspects of these questions such as how often they would prefer to get more relatable questions. Sometimes these questions are optional and sometimes one or more answers are required before being able to move on.

Much of the time this user feedback is to judge the similarity of at least two other statements before their own post is finished. How often this is required depends on the user’s past actions; like the above judgment. Communities can set their own modifiers for this feedback requirement as well so users don’t have to respond to the first feedback question if they haven’t posted in a while but may have to respond to more questions if their frequency increases over a set level.

Visibility

Posts have their overall consensus weight which can be used to sort them by that order, but what is shown on the page also incorporates a scoring system made of other influences. Things like: which and how many vote types are used by users, how many and how quickly users vote on a post once they see it, how long ago it was submitted, and other user-interaction metrics as needed.

The resulting weight that users see has a random component that is used to fuzz the visible score. There should also be a shot timer that has to run out before the data is updated to users on the platform.

Some vote types are more influential then others in determining visibility of a post to a user or category. Users who get low weighted posts frequently lose weight in those categories. E.g. having users vote a post as off topic will result in less visibility for that category.

Comments

The user can make a comment directly on the message wall of an entity or in a posting. Comments in a post can be made by a user in response to another comment or to the top level post itself. When in a post discussion the user can hit a ‘Submit for Consensus’ button to submit their comment to the post level consensus.

Users can vote on comments by other users or leave there own comments in the post page. Users can leave comments on the page for an entity or their own message board on their own page but cannot reply directly on entity pages. They can make a post and tag a user or category in that post in lieu of posting an in-line reply. The message board only shows top level posts.

Communities

Discussion areas for a topics or categories which can be create by users. A regularly updated list of recent posts, links, images, etc which are submitted by users and which have been voted on by other users to show preference for these links. Communities also have a chatroom page.

Users can tag their posts with category tags and can select on a 1-10 scale how related their post is to several categories. Other users can judge the validity of these tags as well. If two communities are related and they both share one or more of these added category tags then posts from one community can show up as related posts in another community, provided the user has their settings adjusted to view these related posts.

How quick users weight is modified can be modulated by the community. Or they can set automatic actions when certain weights are reached such as: what the rules for verification are, what users gain access to with different verification levels, and what their privacy settings are.

Communities can set up rules that should be followed when specific actions happen. There must be at least one person who performs the moderation duties that the rules dictate, but this power can be spread over multiple people or even the whole community or set to be auto applied. Weighted voting could be done for that community using the category specific weight that verified users have at different levels of verification.

Knowledge based voting, which is the entire reason for any of this, can be used for any group votes or decisions. The knowledge questions are agreed upon ahead of time, like the things in a math textbook are agreed upon but the math test can be just a small part of that which is relevant to the time.

Communities have public/private settings to adjust who can see and interact with the community. There is no affect on weight from posts or comments in communities that don’t let others see or vote on posts.

Special voting types or users weight classes can be made or used in communities and the community consensus can be used to give higher weight to users. Like users electing a president and giving them a high authority and high trust weight; this weight can then can transferred in part to other users via a chain of trust, in this example like the president electing a cabinet and giving them some power in the community.

Communities themselves can be voted on to describe them and users can add custom vote types to this. These communities would have a scale of how related the user thinks they are to things like politics, sports, news, local events, etc; as well as having other vote types like: serious, important, valuable, fun, helpful, annoying, etc. These are all subjective views.

If a user is making silly comments but it is in a community that is judged to be highly silly; then the user’s comments in that silly place won’t get as much scrutiny through the user feedback system than if the community was deemed highly important and serious.

The users who try to skit community rules or sow discord through multiple screen names are more likely to have their comments judged by others if they are making those comments in a place where there is less fun allowed.

If advertisements are allowed by the community and enacted by those moderating the community then some proceeds from these ads should be shared with these moderators as well as the users who have chosen to view ads. The historical posts to the community can be viewed and sorted in different ways.

Users can select, on a preference scale, how interested they are in a community and its subject matter and then that information can be applied to their preferences.

Users can create communities around any subject, but if it’s a nefarious subject then it will not be highly visible and weight gain is modified. This subject view is determined by the users who create it and then validated by the users at large.

Communities tag themselves with subjects, and other users can tag those communities as well. As part of the user feedback system the users will see a community and be asked to rate its similarity to other communities or subjects. If most of these responses have people acting against the community then that community will lose a type of community weight. If this weight type gets low enough then the community may not show up unless directly entered, may show warning banners on the page, or have the weight contributions of that community modified so that weight changed in the community has much less effect.

The community can even be a project or team working towards a goal. Software development, engineering, homework, a team name are all examples. A post about a section of code will track revisions and their reasoning. It can also enable defining sections for review by others as well as modifying, saving, copying, of code or work.

Community Decisions

Communities can be run by companies, a tree house club, fans of a musical artist, or any collection of users. Even a single user can run a community if it is a private community.

Public communities must be run by everyone, however there can be a community specific administration weight that users can have adjusted and only those over a certain level can make vote or the votes are weighted.

All rules must be agreed upon by the users, even the rules that govern what the criteria is for changing weight in the community and threshold levels. These rules can be set when the group is formed and later fine tuned to fit the changing needs of the community.

Users can petition for new rules to be taken to a vote. The system can initiate a vote for eligible users after a petition reaches a certain percentage of voters. In addition when users with voting weight or who started the community want to perform an action it is sent to all those who also vote for approval, and not ratified until it reaches a limit fo acceptance. This might be 3/5ths of voting users to have made a reply, or to have voted in favor.

For example the category “Clint’s Hot Air Ballon” can be made with 5 users all as full voting rights. Then when something is modified in the settings the button does not say ‘apply’ but ‘send for review’ so that the other 4 users are sent a copy of the change with approve/deny/abstain on it. If the users approves or denies then that is their vote, and they can mark abstain to not be counted.

So there is a baseline setting that the community is set at when it starts. The community can chose to modify these needed. A community can start with multiple user accounts at once and as long as the users agree to the new community guidelines then they can all vote on actions and the system will perform the action.

User Feedback

The User Feedback (UFB) is the questions that users are given when they go to make a post or comment.

The frequency and number of these UFB questions depends on the community settings and account weight of users as well as their post type and length. Often users can make a single post without any UFB but if they go to make a second post/comment within a refractory period then they have to responds to a UFB question before their second post will be approved. At times a user may face 2 or 3 UFB questions before their post can go through.

The user preferences are used to provide UFB which is relevant to the user, as well as things that are similar or related to categories which the users has interacted with or previously expressed interest in, and also things that are not related or are which have been judged to be opposed or dissimilar to the users stated preferences. Users can adjust these viewing probabilities but cannot make it fully set for any type.

The UFB questions are typically asking the users to make a judgment about few two statements or posts. The UFB questions are of a preset list, users have the limited ability to skip a UFB question and go to the next question instead. When there is a judgment to be made the users may also see the reasoning others have supplied for their decisions on the matter. They can vote on these reasoning like comments. When a user makes a judgment they can supply their own reason for their choice which is later shown to others. These results are added to the user’s preferences.

User Interface

There are a few things the user can look at when connected to the system.

The user has their own entity page for their screen names. There are entity pages for other people and topic pages. They can view a community with a list of trending posts and that community’s chat room. They can view a post itself and see the comments in discussion. And they can view the web-of-connections.

The user also has a home screen where they can display multiple things at once, similar to the 90’s home pages in the days when AOL mailed out dial up CDs.

Users can adjust a type of weight for other users. This won’t affect that users overall weight but it does influence how often the two users interact. If many people rate an entity it goes to a reputation weight type that can influence other weight types for that use.

Viewing an entity page

Entities can be users but also collectives of users in a community. Community run pages have administrative and moderation duties to perform.

These duties are optional things like adjusting the settings, making posts, and responding to posts or messages. When the community is run by more than one person these duties are voted on by all the users who have a high enough voting-weight.

Users can view the public history and preferences of entities, see their public message board, or send the entity a direct message. Users can also adjust a personal weight to other users, to increase or decrease the visibility of that user.

If the entity is a construct like a town or rugby club then other users can suggest preferences for the entity, those suggestions could of course be voted on by others.

If Bob goes to an entity page for Alice then he can see things that she has set to public view. This includes that account’s history such as comments, posts, and citations but also their preferences which are derived from public information. This visible history can be sorted by category tag(s) as well.

Bob can view anything Alice has posted in listed in her history but she can tape/pin/star posts so that they stay in a special area on this entity page and don’t go away until replaced manually. They can also include a biographical description of their accounts for others to read if they want.

Bob can use the slider to move his weighted view of Alice. If he adjusts the weight over the center then he’ll see posts and comments more often from Alice in his feed, even if those posts are not popular and are not as visible to others. He can also lower her weight so that posts from her don’t show up as often, even in categories and communities that he has high rating of or frequents.

Users have a communication threshold, where messages and posts from users with a weight below the set value don’t show up normally and instead they are collapsed and dwarfed versions.

For example: Bob is at this page for Alice and sets that user type weight class to 4 out of 10. Bob has his communication settings threshold for messages at a 6 but for his message board only at 3. So If Alice wanted to she could post a message on Bob’s board but could not send him a direct message.

If Alice had a weight of 3 or less so that she was caught by the weight requirement then her message would appears as a line stating that Alice had left a message and that you must click to view it. The message would still be posted, and others would see a collapsed post which they would have to click to expand in order to read.

Alignment trace

Users can do an ‘alignment trace’ to compare the users public histories and then see part of a compilation of the things they have in common and where these common values diverge.

Bob can click to do this procedure and he will see a screen showing the results. An overlay of the two preferences visible like the web-of-connections map can be seen as well. This procedure can be limited by category tag(s) so that they can see a more specific answer and only in the fields in question. Then users can see at which point they disagree with, what the reasoning is they use to support that decision. If there are any decisions that are part of that reasoning then the reasoning to support those decisions can be posted as well. Then the users can see what was the last point of view they had on this subject which was similar and what idea or step of reasoning caused them to diverge.

The users are exposed to multiple facets of any discussion and faced with the points of view that cause support of different sides. This is in the hopes that it will make it easier for people to learn how to get along by making it easier to be open minded since by making it easier to see other sides of the discussion.

User viewing their own entity page

Users can control what and how much information is shared with others.

They can see and respond to message that others send them by going into their message window. They can adjust the weight of users who have posted on their page. They can make a lasting post for their page that stays up until removed or post on their own wall which is ordered chronologically.

Settings

The user view and adjust their settings like privacy and data sharing. They can change what their personal weight requirement is for others to interact with them, what categories of information can be shared with others, what demographics can see their information when searching with the preference filter, and advertisement settings amongst all other options.

Users can adjust all child accounts below the one they are accessing.

They can download their own data and set their viewing preferences i.e. if they want to see a list of links, if they want to see images expanded inline, if they want clicks to open in the same or a new tab.

People should be made aware of how much public information they are showing, so they should get a a reading of a few metrics or a community-rated privacy-rating for their level of online security. We want to teach people to be better at online/computer security. The metrics that define the ‘privacy score’ can be user derived.

Preferences

Users can click into their own preference compass page where they can further explore topics. This lets them continue the initial baseline compass test with added data from the preferences obtained from their posts and comments. They can explore topics and rank how they feel about them, adding their own justification or agreeing with others using the 1-10 sliding scale.

History

This history is what they have posted, changed, cited, commented, linked, uploaded, etc.

Their subject preference history can also be seen. They can track their preferences in things over time and try to correlate multiple items. By selecting history with category tags the users can see their opinions on specific topics over time. Other users can search their visible history by category tag as well.

The users can see the history of their accounts. From their main page they can see the history of all their accounts and apply filters. Things like which accounts, what time, category, or type. Users in the entity page for a child account or any of those accounts children can only see the history of that account branch and not any sibling accounts.

There can be an award cabinet page where any special achievements can have little icons describing them. Participation, use, good guesses in the prediction market, high weight somewhere, there can be digital trophies for anything. These achievements can be easy or very difficult to get, but they cannot be transferred.

Weight

The user can examine their own weight and get a rundown of where their existing weight came from. If any weight came from a chain of trust weight transfer then that user can see the weight transfer history through other users for as far as they are permitted to in that community.

This can be in the form of a graph over time or a list of weight types in communities. They can see how others responded to their posts or comments sorted by community or weight type. Track preference and interest in preferences over time.

Users can see which communities they are verified in and at what level. Clicking a community weight icon will show a breakdown of the items that make up that weight.

Connections

Users can see themselves in a web-of-connections where they see what communities, categories, and topics they relate to and in what way.

This can be adjusted according to what weight the other users have been assigned. It can be adjusted as well through use. Similar to how a neuron will get stronger if it is used more often; users who interact more in what is perceived to be a positive way gain a conversation weight type between them.

If they have rated other users with a friend weight then they can see the users they are connected to along with the categories they have in common, like a group alignment trace.

Users can jump directly to viewing their subject page from this page.

The users can also send invite to new communities and set the quorum limits, so that a certain number of the invited users need to agree to join or the community won’t be created. This feature would time out if no one joins.

Message board

The users have a public message board where other users can leave messages on. The users can set limits for interaction based on a weight score that is given to other users manually by the antecedental user. They can also set the view to full public, so that all ‘direct messages’ go directly to the message wall and there is no mailbox to check.

They can manually lower the visible weight type of any comments on their message board so that they are collapsed and have to be manually enlarged to be viewed by most others.

Users cannot reply in-line to posts on entity walls but they can make a new post on their own wall or go to another entities page and leave them a message there. Posts and comments can tag uses as well as categories.

The users can modify weights for others users and set weight limits for direct messages and also for message board posts.

Direct Messages

The users can get direct messages that are not publicly posted. The users who receive these messages can post them publicly so these are not to be considered private messages. End to end encryption between all communication would be the safest option for the users’ privacy.

There is a mailbox like page that is accessed through a sidebar or user page and the user will see posts by those who are above the listed weight limit. If Alice sends Bob a message but her weight requirements for messages are above the weight she has for Bob then she only sees a line of debolded text saying there is a message from Bob, the message is not visible like normal, and she can click to expand the box and see the message. Just like in the message board.

Viewing a category

Topics are tagged with categories. Users can select a category and view all the topics in that category which are popular or are rising in popularity. These are ranked by a consensus level.

If a user clicks on a post they can then click again to see the contributions to the current score where they can see some of the accuracy-fuzzed statistics regarding the votes that topic has gotten so far minus the last X number of minutes. The exact number is not shown to the user and there is a certain cut off time where they don’t see any updates as well, this is to help undermine attempts to game the system. From the discussion page of any post they can vote or discuss the post by reading and replying to comments from others.

To view a category the user can click into it from a list on their home screen, from the web-of-connections, or enter the URL manually or from a link. Once there user should have an ‘ad’ toggle button in a sidebar with other hot buttons that turns advertisements on and off and refreshes the page to show the choice.

The list of posted topics can include images and videos hosted outside the site. There is a user can select if they want to see these images on the page or if they need to click a button to expand them one by one. The user can even set to view expanded images only when it is in one of their preset categories.

Viewing a topic

There is a page for each major topic, component parts can be summarized within that page or if they deserve a larger explanation then they can also link to a more through reading. A topics page can have 3 levels; one level is a simple explanation such as for a child, the next is a general description and summary, and the third level would go into much greater depth on the subject and its parts.

A button saying, “Would you like to know more?” could be visible for people on subjects to go to the page or different level of explanation. And the words themselves can act as a link when the user holds a certain key or does a long press. Users can search for topics. When they go to make a post they are asked if their post is the same as other example topics. When two posts are found to be the same they are combined.

When a user clicks on a post they are viewing a top level post, that is the submission itself and what the consensus on the topic turned into if it changed.

Pages about the same subject are merged together. After a set number of users agree that two posts or topics are the same and that no attestable difference is found, and any suggested difference between the two was found to be less than negligible by others, and even by those with no relation to the topic, then the topics are merged into one topic.

The sidebar

There is a sidebar on the website with quick access icon links for the user to get around easier. This can be placed on any side of the page, or broken into up to 3 sides and placed as wanted.

This would provide quick access to: Their messages, which lights up when there are new messages and can even show a number in or around the icon; their home page; preference page; specific categories or communities; advert toggling; the web-of-connections; the preference compass page; the community specific weight for a community if the user has any weight in the community they are currently in; the cumulative user weight; and lets users add link shortcuts too.

Web of Connections

This page shows categories and their relationships. It can be used to search and surf through connections between different subjects. The categories are created by the users and the thresholds between different categories are identified and voted upon until there is a consensus the definitions.

The user feedback and user suggestions are used to build this chart of relationships. A consensus builds over time as to where one subject ends and another begins, as well as what subjects are related to which other ones and in what way. Users can scan through a graphical representation of this information to find news or things that interest them.

The users have a display of this information which can be sorted in two main ways, they can zoom in and out on connections, and adjust their viewing settings to see more or less of related content or topics within a category.

A small screen of the WoC can be found on the user home page, it can be linked to it from their sidebar, enter a URL, be linked a connection to view, or see it from any topic, community, or category by clicking a button there.

A user can use the WoC to see what areas of the system they interact with and how that interaction is received. This information is visible to the users themselves and can be visible to others depending on what privacy settings the users has enacted.

The visualization method can be changed to suit the user’s desires. This can be done with lines that embiggen as their relationship is rated as closer, they could change color depending on a positive or negative view, the can become more opaque as more votes make the consensus more cromulent. There are many options for the viewing itself.

The system should allow users to choose and modify their method of viewing, and even share custom methods with others. A community that discusses the topic of the WoC can have a trading area where people can search for, share, and get new skins for their system experience.

There are two main ways to view these connections. In a direct connection way, where each subject is directly related to each subject that it shares a connection with and this is done in a hierarchical way. And in a peripheral way where all connections are shown depending on the user’s viewing filters.

Direct view

This view shows things with direct relationships where a topic can have parent, children, or sibling relationships with other subjects.

The way that two topics are related is the concept of relationship (COR). Once this is defined and agreed up by a certain amount of users then other users can see this connection type in the future as an option when they go to judge a connection. The COR is rated by users who interact with the categories as well as those who do not.

Eg. The topic of George Washington. If the COR is the category ‘U.S. Presidents’ then George would be the top parent topic, with all other presidents going below him in linear order. If the COR was his ‘family tree’ then he would be the child of his parents.

The topics could be viewed one at a time with a sidebar on each side of the page with buttons to move into the related articles. Up for parent, etc. This way a user can move through whole topic pages while still being able to navigate their chosen COR though the sidebar links.

In the global view they could be connected like a stack of cards or nested dolls. Just a bit about what the next connection is but you can see many topics and their relationships at once. Zoom out to see many connections but lose sight of the individuality of the topics.

The direct view is a way to view any two dimensional plan. That means anything that can go in a sequence. Create playlists, steps for instructions, chain-of-reasoning, song lyrics, dance steps, and anything sequential. Since one thing can be added at a time it can also be used for group art pieces and one-step-at-a-time developments of that nature.

Different users can add their own input and the chain can have many branches like a Reichenberg figure. They explore different points of views, and as the evidence accumulates the chain takes more and more steps towards what should be the right direction. If a new direction beings to show promising data to support it then it can be more easily noticed as it will appear brighter or stronger in the WoC map.

Peripheral view

Here the user is shown all the connections between topics but at different levels than direct connections. The user can see how related a topic is to any other topic, based on user ratings of course, and adjust their setting with filters to view certain relationships. This can be between categories, topics, and users based on their stated views which are in turn based on what things they claim to actually be doing.

This can be viewed on a topic by topic basis with the sidebars filled in by other topics, color coded for relationship level, and with filters to edit the things being seen. Filters like minimum and maximum user rated relationship score, category or lack thereof being related to results, date of last new topic, and other user suggested connections that can be made from the data.

In the global view they see spheres of the subject types connected together through thin lines. A simulation of these connections can be seen where you can rotate around a sphere to see things connected with it, this is a non euclidean space so you can rotate more than 360 degrees around the subject sphere without coming back to the start until there are no more items in the list at that setting value.

The size of these spheres can be modified to reflect the size of that subject, or its connection rating to the subject last under view, or the number of posts there, or other customizable sorting methods which users can share.

Privacy settings

It is essential that this system is built in a way that it cannot be later abused by anyone. No tracking information should be communicated, and any transferred information that is sent will be visible to the end user themselves.

The users have absolute and total control of what and how much of their data is shared with anyone. Any data that is shared is also available to the user themselves.

These settings can be access through the sidebar quick link and through the user’s entity page.

Advertising settings are controlled here as well. Users can chose to only see ads from ‘approved categories’ or on specific community pages. They can choose to see ads on any page that supports them. And verified users can choose to see no ads ever. Users can lower the weight on an advertiser’s entity page so thus no longer see advertisements from that entity. If the user is seeing advertisements then that user must be paid for the inconvenience.

When advertisers pay for ads a part of that payment is distributed to the users who see the ads. Advertisers also have an ethical master agreement about what and how they can advertise. Companies can have their own entity page and users can comment there and post entity history for approval by others. So shady companies are called out on their actions.

A company that wants to advertise has to create a public entity page where users can comment and post that companies history. Other users can collaborate on the actions and bring awareness or ban immoral companies for their actions.

Ads themselves are posts in the community of the company that is doing the advertising. Users can leave comments on these posts. The advertisers can limit the visibility of the commenter by adjusting the weight thresholds at their own communities but they cannot silence the voice of the users.

User settings in any one account can be applied to all that account’s child accounts.

The users can search for other users based on search filters, but users have control over what data is searchable by others.

All this information is required to be learned by users in the new user course before they can post or fully use the system.

User Preferences

Through interaction with the system a user may vote or judge things. A user’s preferences for topics is built by their votes. Multiple vote types can contribute to the preference value for any category.

Users are asked to take a preference compass test when they initially sign up to get a rough feel of the things they like/don’t like. The users can spend any about of time in this test, including none, and can always come back to it later. The test can keep going indefinitely as it explores new topics and subjects that make up those topics as well as voting on the reasoning that others use to explain their preferences.

The preferences that people build can be used to search for others with similar interests or locations. They can also be used to compare two users, broadly or with category tags, to better see their differences and similarities in the things they believe in and their stated actions.

The users set limits on who can see their data. This can be done with increasingly specific area locating, so that only users from the preselected area are able to view that data when they search for it. The user can select what categories of data are public or not. They might omit private or sensitive data from being scanned by others.

When the user is viewing their own preferences then they can choose to see all the data from their username but they can set explicit categories to show or be omitted from their own search. They can choose to see all data that is gathered from all the child accounts below that account.

Two parent accounts at the same level can’t share data, they can only get their data combined when viewing the preferences from the parent account of those two accounts or the master account. The user can also select to see data from only specific accounts.

The user can see a list with a select all, select none, import, and search functions showing all accounts and another list with all categories and communities the user has shown interest in, and a demographic selection chart list can all be used to clearly define what data is shared. The user sets their preference and saves that rule. The total preferences are made from all the rules combine. It won’t let you make a rule with doublethink.

Entity

The entity is a subject that has a page. The page can be for a single user name or a user defined construct. When the entity page is non autobiographical then it is a community page that is run by one or more people based on the rules put forth by the community. If an entity is no longer able to represent itself then the page is de-listed into a topic page where there is no message wall.

Example Uses

These example uses expound on ways that the different parts of the system can come together. At the same time these examples are some of the main driving forces of this idea.

Define goals and work towards them.

The system can be used to lay out a plan. This plan can be made by those in a certain group or community. The group can explain their reasons for doing making the plan. The goal itself and methods of achieving it can be decided on by the users. Detailed lists of steps including sub-steps as far down as needed, coupled with potential ways for derailment of plan, and ways to deal with those possibilities are made and voted on. Input can be gathered from everyone or only the town/club/group hosting the idea and can result in a robust and long lasting plan set into action.

Goal completion and planning

The CE allows for a entity to define an objective. This objective or goal can be anything which the entity wants to accomplish. The entity can be a single person, community, or a group of any sort. Steps towards completion of the goal are found, the steps needed to complete those steps are found, things that might hinder this progress is identified, and steps to succeed with one or more hindrances are outlined. For each step involved the process is run, with the goal being the completion of that step. The process is also run with the objective being each potential hindrance. The steps for the previous path are then reevaluated and a new path is outlined which avoids the potential hindrance. These steps can be saved, whole or in parts, for easy assembly or addition to other problems.

Using the CE any number of people can agree on a goal and a course of action. The goal is defined by consensus. These goals can be any thing that was decided by entity. For the betterment of themselves, as a plan to fight climate change, and anything that can be done. Individuals can do this for themselves. It can be done with one or many items simultaneously. We have seen that motivation is successful when the person who is doing the work has an internal reason for doing so that is satisfying to themselves. Outlining these reasons to oneself and seeing how best to act on it can be immensely helpful for some individuals as well as future planning and action.

Whole towns can use the system to plan their infrastructure or future developments. It can be used by localities of every size for their own large scale projects such as: building a grange or implementing universal basic income. It can also be used to test specific instances or modifications. Single towns could take on whole new ‘test rules’ to see what works best in-situ. Like a big test the rules can be tweaked in a few places and what works best can be adopted by more people.

Where there is an objective to be accomplished then this system could improve success in situations over large time scales. The steps for success can be found as well as given time frames and how to respond when things don’t go to plan.

The steps or path to complete a specific goal are listed for discussion based on assumed probability. The CE can be used to find what is more likely and why it is thought to be so. Things that are thought to have little chance of happening are also to be listed. These things that are not commonly predicted to happen can be discussed so that ideas that don’t get much attention can still be known to others. If new data appears which supports ones of these edge cases then there is already a planned course of action.

New evidence to support a less known or popular possibility would increase the visibility of that subject in the system.

If something happens during the process that adds new knowledge or insight into the plan then the goals and steps can be updated to best deal with this information. Voting can happen on decisions as often as the deciding uses agree to do so. Each step would boil down to a series of progressively more basic steps. That process stops when there is no more basic action that can be taken. The smaller steps are collapsed into the larger ones in a nested fashion.

E.g. If the goal was to flip a switch and you’re nearby but out of reach then you could have steps such as ‘get up, walk to switch, & flip switch’, then you might break ‘flip switch’ down into ‘reach out hand, grasp switch, turn switch over’. There might be an alternate plan, ‘grab broom at side, use to turn switch’ and those steps could also be broken down. Also a plan for hindrances such as, ‘arm broken’, could have response, ‘use other arm.’ This can be added for any conceivable situation if desired.

Larger goals should include the very basic outline of how to actually make each step of the process happen. That plan can then be reviewed by others to make sure it has all the needed component parts. This is true also of anything that might hinder or stop the plan or any of its goals. Common things that happen often can be added when relevant for that situation, and if needed for a new situation they can search other entities goals and plans (with permission only of course) and upload common plans and situations.

For any goal there must be things that can happen which would prevent the goal from being reached. E.g. A diet won’t work if the calories-in are greater than the calories-out & a skyscraper won’t be built in a city that won’t approve the permits. These negative steps or obstacles can act as either a stumbling block which slows our progress or like a deep pit where we get lost and may never recover the journey.

These hindrances can include threats from bad actors such as elaborate plans by money-hungry entities to capture resources or sway public opinion. Any entity that doesn’t want the plan to succeed is something to be wary of but there are many other ways plans can fail without malevolent intervention. By listing all the ways the plan could fail it is more likely to find out if that hindrance is already happening or likely to happen; if so then users can try to find out from what cause and how to prevent it.

E.g. A day fishing at the lake could be ruined if there is a boat race at the fishing spot during the same time & also if the spot is under heavy hail. Finding a way to recover from any of these hindrances if they were to happen, and find a way to avoid them in the first place is the best way to deal with them. While not everything can be predicted we can plan for the know and more probable situations. It’s been said that, “Chance favors the prepared,” and so knowing what might happen based on history and speculation based on evidence is a way of putting our best foot forward.

Once potential hindrances are found the plan can be reevaluated. If new steps need to be added or steps changed then users suggest those actions and vote on them and their citations or reasoning until a consensus is found or a certain time frame passes. Or to simply be slightly more prepared in an unpredictable world, but that little more may be all the edge we need.

People, individuals or groups, can decide on things they want and then act on that idea. These actions can be things the people want to change about themselves or things they want to do or create or that they want that happen. Agreement of users is more attainable on topics that are easily provable by way of a preponderance of evidence such as evolution and the dangers of building coal power plants.

There are are many potential things that people could want to accomplish. For example a city or urban area might want to limit population growth or density within their boundaries. They might want to ensure adequate services for those in their area or to limit urban sprawl or eliminate food deserts. A person might use it for themselves to track the goal and steps requires to buy a used vehicle. This aspect of the CE can be used for thing minuscule to huge.

Large projects can be planned more efficiently and with less bureaucracy across many departments. A change that could affect hundreds of millions of people across every jurisdiction in the USA could be handled with far more ease using this type of planing and system. A large scale A/B/+ style test with different ways to go about something can be done as an experiment for a whole town or county and the opinions of the residents on the changes charted to see what is more effective in real life and not just with models.

A switch can be flipped at the cor rect time regardless of obstacles if planned correctly. A diet can be planned and enacted according to that plan so it can work over time. Permitting done in the correct fashion should result in an approved application. Checking the weather or events at the lake ahead of time can be done to find a time to go fishing in peace.

Every goal is broken into sub-goals and further on as needed to find each basic action. Alternative ways to accomplish the same goal are planned alongside the original plan in case something goes wrong. We look for ways things could go wrong to be ready for them, and them plan so that we are ready for success.

If ever the reasons that made the goal become obsolete then the goal can be modified or cancelled to suit the desired reason for its creation.

Combat misinformation

The CE will allow people to clearly define words and terms to help prevent confusion and misuse of the system. Re-discussions on topics will be connected so arguments which have been previously disproven are shown or easily found. The known information sources from those past discussions will be easily accessible and linkable in discussions on the same or similar topics. Posts/comments/replies can be rated on how they related to their source, things can be flagged for being off topic, logical fallacies, and failing to provide a valid rebuttals amongst other values. Users can be presented with their own past comments and asked to justify themselves on the change.

Limit the power of misinformation

Misinformation (MI) is a problem quick seems to have gotten worse in the last few years. Preventing existing MI, discouraging new MI, and encouraging people to resist MI in general are a part of how the CE works. This is done in part by limiting users to human users and community created bots with public code and creating a chain a evidence from data.

There are a large number of bad actors who seek to sway public opinion by influencing what information individuals see online. The reasons for this and identities of these actors who are related to this is quite diverse as is the scale and sophistication of some of the existing operations. With knowledge of attach vectors and the ability to adapt the CE aims to disrupt the strategies of actors who perpetuate MI.

A potential increase in MI seems to be correlated with increase communication online. Centralized data sources are no longer the newspaper or TV news but websites or even programs and applications dedicated to information sharing. Those running many of these sites or apps have track records of bad actions and we should not expect them to suddenly grow altruistic. Similar to the purchase of many broadcast networks like radio and television stations and advertising spaces by those that have desires to manipulate the general public.

This topic has been well covered in other places and we encourage you to read more on the subject of MI and other related ones like native advertising, shilling, reputation management, marketing, and brand awareness.

The internet has become a place where it is easy to spread rumors and lies. Many online platforms operate in a way that seems to encourage this spread and don’t include an easy way to retard this spread. So much so that ‘Brandolini’s law’ was created which states, “The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it”.

The consensus engine aims to make it easier to separate truth and lies while making it more difficult to spread specious mistruths wether the user intended to repeat misinformation or not. This limits the exposure of others to this misinformation in the first place while challenging it anywhere it appears.

When misinformation is spread based on false claims and later these claims have been debunked then it can be easy to show this chain of evidence and how it invalidates the MI. Discussions are sorted by similarity and can be access or link to new and similar discussions. Past points which were disproved are accumulated and can be shown together in a way to shut down further repetition of a obsolete idea. A list of category sorted consensus topics on differing aspects of a topic is created.

This list can be used to store all arguments against a topic, reduce them to their actual base points, and refute them easily after they have been listed. Discussions which are found to be off-topic, which are logical fallacies like an attack on the author, and that try to change the goal posts by using words in different meaning than the accepted ones may receive poor weight over time as the evidence mounts against them and others review them.

The consensus of the definition of words and terms in their respective contexts is easy to compare or cite. Used to prevent a user from trying to argue something that is only possible with a misunderstanding of a known and agreed upon term.

When someone presents an argument that has been proven false then they can investigate the chain of reasoning which supports the argument it until they find the area where it breaks down and is in conflict with the accepted consensus. As new evidence comes into play the consensus can change. A user who wants to learn what they didn’t know on a subject as to make an informed decision can see where they are lacking knowledge and easily find it.

Actions taken by entities such as companies and their public owners can be used to discuss them. Communities can come to a consensus on an action that an entity has done even if that entity denies it. Then the community can present evidence and the users can judge the validity of the chains of evidence. In the cases the an entity is trying to lie about something then that company can lose weights in the type of public standing and others as a small comeuppance from lying to users.

Users’ weight is based on the quality of their posts, users acting as trolls and trouble makers will be limited in their posting and interaction over time. Users with low enough weights are not allowed to post. When users go below a weight threshold they will have to re-complete the initial educational class and test about the CE before their posting privileges can be restored.

A web of evidence is weaved using comments and citations that users have submitted, linked, and voted on. Parts of this web can change strength depending on how respected the citations are by the users as well as the quality of the sources. Through a series of high rated citations the users can follow topics with a consensus to its core evidence. A web of trust results can be built from the consensus on many atomic topics and their supporting evidence which.

The system is designed to questions users who change their point of view and ask for supporting evidence for the change. When users comment on a topic which they have already issued an opinion on and then issue a new conflicting opinion on the same subject then the CE will show the user their own opinions and ask them to justify the change. Other users can be shown this change and reasoning and asked if it is valid. When the topic comes up for other users then they may see this reasoning as part of the feedback questions or choices.

When a user has their user history visible to others then it can be sorted by category. One can find a user name’s already expressed opinion on a subject under discussion. Users can be tagged and rated by other users such that one user can lower their personal weight type towards another user and then not have to see posts or comments from that user. When many users lower the weight on a single user then it lowers a reputation type of vote weight on that user and can lower their overall visibility.

If users are found to be performing paid advertising for a company they can be shunned and branded as such. We don’t want to become /HailCorporate in labeling every post that acts remotely like marketing as an advertisement. However we want to ensure that any brand name or mention is noted. And any user who repeatedly posts things which act as an advertisement will have to retake the section in the initial education class and test about unwitting advertising and how not to do it except in places explicitly approved to do so. Users and communities can stop listening to users if they chose to do so.

Communities can be rated by users according to many vote types. Users both inside and outside of a community rate its facets. Characteristics of all sorts can be listed and voted on. Thing such as, is the community very important or serious. Depending on the answer from users using the community and ones who don’t interact with it then the system modifies how often comments that are in conflict with their community get reviewed by those outside that community. Joke communities that are viewed as a joke by users and outside observers won’t be as quick to find internal power struggles. Communities though to be important and serious for example will get more cross scrutiny on disagreements from users within those communities.

An example of misinformation:

We will see one example of how MI can be used to kill a useful idea. Then explore how to potentially save this idea by using the CE as the information mediator on the subject.

In this hypothetical example we have a small project named “HHH”. The aim of the project is to make life easier for many ordinary people by lessening a burden which they otherwise have to carry. There are large scale industries set up and currently in place around the world and people interact with the institutions in this field to help them deal with this burden. If the project HHH is a success then many ordinary people will have better lives however a few companies will go out of business if they don’t change their business model and some people would need to get new jobs.

These companies that currently exist to facilitate interaction with the burden do not like the project HHH, they stand to potentially lose their companies and profit source if HHH succeeds. They make a profit off of other people and do not produce anything of direct value, instead acting as a sort of middle man between the people (users) and the peoples’ desires. The people would save money and time by not dealing with these companies. The companies use the earth’s resources and profit heavily off of the people who are mostly forced to use these institutions and their products. A few of the highly paid people in the company take home thousands of times the pay of the lowest paid workers. The companies do not come across as inherently useful or ethical to most people.

In this case the project HHH is able to heat and cool a home without the need for natural gas, oil, coal, wood, or electricity from the grid. For almost every building that has a heating and cooling system HHH would be a better choice than the previously existing options. Furnaces, fans, heat pumps would all be largely obsolete in this completely hypothetical example.

This project is still in its infancy at this time but it works great, it can be built and maintained at home, and even set up by the user without professional help. However it is not widely known or used and there are needed modifications to smooth out some rough edges in the plans before it would be seriously considered for use by most people.

By this point in the story individuals discover the project, these individuals are associated with the heating and cooling industry in a variety of ways. They will plan or enact plans. These bad actors are diverse in nature and motives for not wanting HHH to succeed. Many of these actors are working independently and are not connected with most of the other actors. At the same time many of them are working together in varying degrees. Some are working at times in conflict or opposition to other ones. Some of them are also working to manipulate others who are not involved in the space into supporting their motives unwittingly. For the purpose of this example discussion we will refer to all these bad actors who are working against HHH as ‘The Man’.

HHH is only being discussed online in a few very small online communities during this time. The users of these communities are the ones who are working to make the edges smoother so it can be more readily accepted. They are the people who have helped create the project and bring awareness to it.

The Man wants to investigate HHH and learn more. Then based on what information they gleaned they move to interfere with the development in an attempt to capture the project and to remove the functionality of the project. If The Man absorbs HHH then they can use the idea their own way and continue to make a profit off of others who want to heat or cool their homes. If the idea of HHH itself is changed then the immediate threat against them may be neutralized.

Now The Man wants more information. For some of the possible ways to get a better understanding they can: hire think tanks to analyze the system for weakness and ways it can succeed; invite some of the known experts in HHH to give them a presentation; ; deploy agents to befriend the main developers away from the keyboard; deploy a sophisticated array of online personas and affiliated screen names to begin to interact with the few online communities where discussion and development of HHH is concentrated; manipulate through code or coercion the news and media stories normal and also involved people see on HHH; manipulate the popularity of topics and discussions on websites and social media; use online screen names with and without reputations to spread misinformation about HHH to these and other parts of the internet; create fake online conversation which has an intended message for others who view it; begin a series of talking points to discredit or spread doubt about the future of HHH; physically detain a users and take control of their account; create negative associations with HHH; create copies or modified clones of HHH where The Man is in control; spread fear about the use or possession of HHH; try and make HHH illegal; discredit the creator(s); hire serious or reputable people to make demeaning comments or jokes about it; create false factions in the discussion communities; perpetuate disagreements that are not relevant to knowledgeable users; crowd out serious discussion; use manufactured conflict as a basis for failing to address needed issues; find potential problems with a stated plan and blow them out of proportion with many user accounts; use fake accounts to perpetuate the illusion of a false consensus; find a planned and necessary change and coerce the project maintainers not to make any changed thus dooming the project; demonstrate the HHH is guilty of doing things that The Man is already doing; and many other actions designed to suit The Man’s many goals.

There will be increasingly more actors and groups of actors over time who commit to these courses of action.

Continued spread of the same instances of misinformation are repeated. This can be done online in the communities that are a direct target and in less related communities including social media as well as in traditional corporate media. As time and circumstances change there can be different talking points or specific topics to mention about HHH which can be distributed by the man for greater distribution. Targets for these talking points would be news editors, television and radio station managers, social media influencers, advertisement agencies, any company that exists to perform this sort of work, website administrators or moderators, and the like.

The Man may have found that they can make money with a modified version of the project which they call HJK; however this will only work as long as HHH is taken out of the picture. As a result they may move to force HHH into making itself useless while they market HJK which still heats and cools but, where HHH was free, HJK charges a subscription fee to operate. The Man also used their influence and made it illegal to modify a HJK to make it free.

Now The Man makes it illegal for people to make their own HHH via an earmarked bill which is ostensibly written in order to prevent terrorism. And then The Man opens the only stores which are now legally allowed to sell HHH to users or buy the unused ones back.

The Man uses highly respected user accounts in the HHH project to suggest certain changes or failure to perform a planned change that will likely make HHH obsolete. The Man uses controlled news stories and created online discussion to influences normal users. Once a change is cemented into place then it’s too late to do anything about it; if that change is one that benefits The Man then it may be all their plan needs to succeed. At this point The Man has control over enough of the people with access to the code repository or who are in charge of HHH that they can remove the remainder of the old maintainers who are still against the changes.

The Man can keep the project they now control under the name of HHH and completely change the system so HHH no longer heats and cools at all, but instead it now comes with a cool design printed on the outside. The Man uses their influence to convince most the users this is the correct thing to do and also something which has always been the plan. Using similar techniques they can gain control of the small online areas that discuss these topics. By selectively silencing users they can give the impression that everyone agrees with this ‘official story’.

For any user who just came, who doesn’t have knowledge of the history of HHH, or who doesn’t understand the technical workings of it and that it was designed to heat and cool for free, they won’t have any idea if something is amiss. These new users are told that others who want free heating/cooling are out of touch and, as this is frequently repeated in headlines or top rated comments, they have no reason to doubt it.

By then HHH doesn’t have any of the original function and is closer to a beanie baby in that it is a collectible item but has no strong use by itself. The only stories which are allowed to stay up online are ones that mislead. With allowed lies, skewing the truth, manipulated point of views, and removing the voice for all who disagree The Man now controls the narrative on this subject.

The Man then has less fear about the HHH community and has begun to profit from the trading of HHH items while they use their HJK system to heat and cool homes for a profit.

If those that helped create and develop HHH and wanted to keep the project alive they could take the last established working version of HHH and perform any needed work then this project would still be a functioning threat to The Man. To prevent this The Man must maintain public influence of the information on this topic which most people can easily get access to.

Control over the information on the subject of HHH is crucial to The Man selling HJK. As the popularity of the subject grows there would be more communities related to it. Websites, news sites, talking heads, experts in related fields, etc. The Man can wait for these sites to become established and then purchase them or take control, as well we starting their own distribution channels and using their influence to create reputations for them. The Man can gain control of a majority of these niche sites or channels used to discuss HHH and HJK and then use those sites to spread their propaganda.

The Man wants to keep the reputation HHH used to have before they took control of it and also to discredit any attempts to revive the original uses of HHH. When users keep the project alive after it was derailed by The Man then those users and that system need to have a narrative pushed regarding them. Those users are working on what is effectively HHH but since The Man is now in control of HHH officially they cannot have this working product associated with them any longer. So they give it a new name like JJJ.

The Man can then work to associate those who created HHH with JJJ so that new users and the public think the current HHH is the way it was always designed to be and that JJJ is a cheap rip off trying to copy and steal from HHH.

Anyone who sides with JJJ in these controlled online communities is ridiculed by The Man or those who are not informed on the subject. This petty disagreement that was created and amplified by The Man can also be shared with others to show how immature the JJJ community is. Thus JJJ remains a useful but unused project while The Man continues to perpetuate income disparity built on the suffering of normal people who would benefit from JJJ. HHH can never become what it was designed to do. The project has failed due in part to misinformation.

How can the CE help prevent this:

Within the partial list of attacks against HHH put forth by The Man the majority are online but some can be done away from a screen. There are great machines build around the control of information and they have many vectors of attack. Perfect is the enemy of good and we should go with ideas that work, get them working, and then figure ways to replace them with better ideas, and not do nothing and wait.

We can try to prevent known avenues of misinformation as well as work towards better understanding any MI we encounter in the future in the aim of silencing it. We want to enable discourse on subjects that may be taboo or scary but we want to keep discussion grounded in known facts and let the evidence speak for itself.

Limiting users to only real people means that The Man can’t just create an online army to support their discussion points. They would instead have to gain access to real users’ accounts. Sharing accounts or staying logged in so that another person could use an account is a punishable offense in the system. Like driving a motor vehicle safely, excuses are not tolerated if a users is caught selling their account or making paid comments.

Users are educated on account security and safety when taking the required introductory courses. If a user is found to violate these rules it would lower their ‘responsible’ weight type. If the weight score drops below a level then that account is reviewed by community-trusted neutral parties. Then, if found in violation, that account and user are subject to retaking the educational class and is limited in the future posting with a weight type.

Taking control of real peoples’ users accounts is something we should expect The Man to try. The UFB on similarity of comments means that the exact same talking points would be quickly found out and any involved user names given a special weight to ensure more scrutiny.

Users who play both sides of a conversation in a serious community would have to explain themselves or be limited in their posting. What explanations they give would be judged by others and if found to be suspect it would lower a ‘suspicious’ weight type for that community. This could make their comments more visible to UFB review and less visible to some others.

Words and phrases are topics and have a topic page where their definition is clearly defined. The context of the words and their meaning is agreed upon by the community. Any supplemental information which is relevant is linked. With all the information on a topic in one place and easy ways to navigate to related information then users are less likely to find misinformation. New attempts at MI have to compete with the consensus on a topic. We can use the CE to track the invention of new arguments over time to see which ideas were present in what time period.

Tracking changes in the opinions of users makes it easier to spot user accounts which have been bought. When there is new information to change someone’s point of view then that users can describe this to the system where it can be reviewed for validity and shared by being given as an existing choice option for other users.

Users who claim things that have been shown to be false and cannot provide valid reasoning can be limited from communities to the point the are in essence banned. When users lose weight past a certain community-set threshold they encounter time limits to their use. Users who go below a weight score are limited form posting for some amount of time, if they make a new post and lose more weight then they are limited for even longer. This can continue until the user makes comments that the community and network agree with or until the user has months between allowed posts.

Communities with shared chains of trust can enforce community bans where once a user is below a weight in one community it lowers their weight in other related communities. With a low enough weigh in one community a user might find themselves banned from multiple communities at once.

Posts that communities disagree with are shown to users outside the community to get their opinions as well. If a user is being honest and the community is being malicious then this review will validate that. Communities which are found by outsiders to be dishonest can have their community weight type lowered. This will also help prevent a rogue community from acting as a echo chamber.

Find where people disagree to help them agree.

Exploring common values until we find uncommon values. See what subjects users agree on, the subjects are linked together, follow that subject with concurrences until it is found where the users differ on their reasoning or opinion of a subject. Trying to then find why the people disagree about that point in particular. This can be done recursively on the next point of contention once the viewpoints are reconciled with the known data.

Find source of disagreements and plan around that.

Find better ways forward by making it easier to get past disagreements. Through discussion in the CE users who disagree on a subject can trace the source of their disagreements.

Find where users both agree and disagree on a subject. Find what logical reasoning is used to support all points of view in the subject which is the source of disagreement. Have the users see and compare the reasoning and supporting evidence which they support and which supports other points of view. Let the consensus engine find which side has more veracity. Use knowledge of the source of the disagreement so the users can learn things they didn’t know, broaden their horizons, and plan a way to get past this misunderstanding.

Users who have differing opinions can explore that subject by doing a category-specific ‘alignment trace’ on themselves and the user they disagree with. That would show topics within the selected category tag, the topics would relate to each other through the web of connections, and it would show what things they agree on and where in the web of connected topics do they disagree. If the two users are equally knowledgeable but one simple doesn’t like cilantro or something then no new information will change their mind but at least they can see where they disagree.

If one of the users is basing their opinion on a misunderstanding then that can be discovered. Once users know where they disagree on something and why, then they can determine if they are able to move forward together with a plan. If the plan is cilantro soup then it just might not work out to have that item and they can plan around it this time and be able to plan better in the future.

Voting, with a weight representative of their understanding of the topic.

For political, corporate, or whatever there is which has users who want to make decisions.

Users have a right to vote on all things and are not excluded from voting on anything.

Such a system when fully implemented would enable a direct democracy where voters represent themselves and vote based on their own interests. There is no need for representatives who don’t represent the wills of the people. Gone also can be earmarked bills where one bad provision is buried in the text of an acceptable one.

If this system is used by governments then laws should be enacted to ensure the privacy of voters so that their votes remain secret. The fact that they voted may also be held secret to an outsider if that user desires.

All users are allowed to vote but those votes have different values or weights which differently affect the final vote tally. Users answer previously-selected multiple-choice questions on a topic and get a knowledge score based on their answers, then when they vote on something related to that subject their vote score is used to calculate how much to contribute to their choice.

This promotes people learning about things they disagree with as well as allowing those with greater knowledge of a subject more influence over it. The questions are selected by user consensus through the system; so if a user disagrees with something they can learn about it and interact with that community to try and change the local consensus.

A number of preselected authorities in the field can also be used to draft the questions which may be shown to users in their knowledge test. The questions should be put to a public discussion and be subject to the consensus engine as well in the chance there is an error.

When used for group decision like elections the issues that voters actually care about can be represented directly and not bundled with separate items. Voters can use the CE to discuss topics ahead of the vote time frame, the vote and the topics category tags can be added to discussion of it. More popular discussion topics are seen more often and by more people so talking on a subject can raise awareness of it.

Finding a politician or representative that actually represents your views.

To find other users who have similar tastes, preferences, and likes one can do an alignment-trace with their preferences. This can be done for politicians using their records, actions, and plans. If there are topics which are more important to a user than other topics then these important topics can be given a higher weight by the user in finding a match.

If the voters decided to do so then candidates who are running could be in an anonymous mode where you don’t see their actual name or face only their stances, history, record, reasoning, and a description they published on why they should be elected. This can help eliminate cult following or voting based on name recognition if it can be implemented in a fair way (where the given name/number does not influence voters). Perhaps every potential politician can have a name drawn from past hurricanes which can be used as their stage name in a specific election cycle.

If ever a disrespectable elected officials act in ways that their constituents do not approve of or do a switcheroo on their morals after being elected then it can become more obvious. With the list of actions of reasoning for them it would be easy for citizens to see when their representative is not representing them, provided of course they care and take a look.

How actionable it is to recall or impeach the official would depend on the situation. Using the CE a stipulation could be put in place where if the official gets a vote of no confidence from 2/3rd of their constituents then an action happens. This can be them being taken out of power, a new special election can be held, or they can be replaced by an appointee or lower staffer. With the CE powering elections then the people really get a chance to build the world they want for themselves.

User alignment testing

The representatives have an entity page which can list their stances, past actions, reasoning for the things they believe in, ideas for the future, and reasoning for past actions. When the voter has entered their stance on these same issues, including or not how important the specific issue is and the reasoning for their decision, then they can see which of the possible representatives are and are not most aligned with them. Then users can easily find who would best support their interests and who sup[port policies which would harm the users.

Representing what the people want

The representative could issue questions to the voters on local subjects to get their opinion. This information can be used by the representative to base decisions on. The CE could be used to find what the people want for their own future and how to enact it, a politician could act on the data for the area they are in.

Real time fact-checking of debates.

Participants could be given a rating based on multiple factors. Not answering a question, personal attacks, and more can be used to give negative points. Actually answering the asked question, keeping discussion relevant, and more can be used to award positive points. These rules can be decided on and used objectively. With many users interacting at the same time it would be easier to use the community to fact check and link any facts through a chain-of-evidence. Those with a higher assessed knowledge in the field, like relevant experts, could have a higher weight for their votes than people who score low on the subject specific knowledge assessment.

A debate with real time fact-checking and a provable winner/loser.

The debate is judged according to predefined rules and is done so by a number of judges. Real-time fact-checking is done by these judges, who are experts in fields related to the questions in the debate. These judges are basing their votes on how well the subject/entity responds to the actual question. The point total of these votes at the end of a question determines the winner or loser. The cumulative point total would decide the debate as a whole.

The judges themselves are chosen for their ability to represent those who they are voting for. That should mean that they are elected based on their own history, skill, and merit. The ability to serve at a level of a judge is open to everyone.

A user can submit their own application to be a judge, listing why they should be able to judge in this circumstance and so on. They will also enter what type of credentials would make another applicant qualified to be a judge. They can be given a few at once or in a sequence to see what they think would make a qualified application. The users can explain their reasoning for a few of the acceptable and unacceptable choices.

The applicants can vote on other applicants, so can existing and past judges, and in theory everyone. The debate can in theory be done with direct voting for all users and without judges at all as well. It would behoove the watchers to have their judges be prescreened if there is a knowledge assessment, so they can get the results faster. With judges found this way then people can have a closer representation of their interest and beliefs.

The judges would issue points based on how well the debater answers the question they were asked. Points are deducted if the candidate doesn’t answer the question they were asked, if they stray from the subject, or devolve into personal attacks, et cetera. There can be multiple weight class types such as truthfulness and relevance or even charisma which judges (or everyone, or both) can vote on. If a candidate lies or changes the subject then then would get a low rating in those respective categories.

The score, lie count, and failure to answer question count are all shown on the screen. As long as the participant answers the question they can talk about other things afterward without penalization. The debaters can be rated on clarity and punished for dishonesty, anacolutha, garden-path and non-sequitur sentences. A rating chart for the lies can be used to distinguish between intellectual dishonesty, lies by omission, repeating of proven falsehoods, misinterpretation of facts, and other classifications that people want to see.

Failure to obey they rules would result in negative points. Interruptions, taking over people, threats, all result in lost points. Microphones can cut off at the end of the allotted time or a few seconds after; or allow the subject to keep talking but points are lost each second they continue past the timer.

The system can also be used in the direct democracy mode which we have already mentioned. Users can take a knowledge assessment in the subject categories ahead of time so their scores can be calculated quickly. With a multitude of people watching and voting the chain-of-evidence used in the fact checking can potentially go faster. We would also get a realistic reaction from those who participated.

Politicians must have their statements backed up by fact or they will get poor ratings in a ‘Truth’ type category. The fact checking that happening during the debate has the results broadcast live once a consensus is reached. At the end we can get a truthfulness indicator for each participant.

Finding entities with matching preferences

Find people that like the same music. Find them worldwide or in one’s locality. Find others to talk to about subjects be they general or specific. People can connect themselves with matching people. Some uses include: hobbies, clubs, combating loneliness, dating, finding like minded people, sport enthusiasts, community interaction, learning subjects, support groups, & food preferences.

Search for users with matching preferences

Users control who can search for them and where those searchers are located. Users can search for specific likes and in their specific area. Some examples of this being a useful include: a way to combat loneliness by making it easier to access potential friends and others with common interests who are near you; dating by being able to look for a potential person who shares your important views; fan clubs by being able to search for people that enjoy one or a group of things; wanting to start a team or club or get new members; et cetera.

Sell ads to users who opt IN to do so

From general targeting to highly specific targeting the ads could be much more likely to reach those that are relevant to their sales. however verified users would have agreed to be shown ads. Non verified users, anonymous users, and those in private categories that don’t run their own servers can all be served ads.

Improving scientific research

For those willing to do so, sharing work including steps, negative results, and experimental circumstances can all greatly improve the quality and collective rate of scientific advancement. Allow outsiders to give opinions, advice, or criticism; and let all suggested ideas but available for discussion within that community. Use a chain-of-trust to build reputations for the work from citations and past work. Experiments are rated for quality by those within the community and that voting is knowledge weight based.

Interdisciplinary collaboration

New experiments which are verifiable and reproduced are given high weight as a citation. When that experiment is used as a citation on works which themselves are respected them it raises the weight of the source experiment a small amount. New evidence and new research builds a connected web of ideas based on each other and known principles. The user weight of authors will suffer if their experiments are not reproducible.

There can be special weight classes which are used to calculate a ‘veracity’ rating. There would a ‘reproducible’ weight type that would change if many users voted on the experiment. Experiments which are not reproducible get low weight overall. But by detailing the steps and negative results the authors are more likely to make their experiments reproducible.

Sharing what was tried and did not work as well as clearly explaining all the steps involved can help the collective learning process. Sharing this information during the process of running the experiment can help in gathering feedback on the process. It can also help to identify confounding variables, such as a culture in a laboratory growing differently when placed in light or darkness, or when placed nearby a working refrigerator that is producing electromagnetic fields.

People with knowledge who are not part of an experiment can contribute by communicating to the study authors. This will only work in a climate values knowledge itself and may not be viable currently for large scale deployment in universities where information is guarded instead of shared.

The aim is to get as close to ‘facts’ as we can get through scientific study. Each of these ‘facts’ or ‘probably-facts’ or ‘likely-facts’ that we will simply refer to as ‘facts’ like a normal person. The facts must be supported by one or more pieces of evidence such as a study or experiment. Then these facts are connected and stacked to create a web of the known knowledge.

Find fraud through review

Having work or information checked and reviewed by outsiders to the department/organization/subject can help to spot errors sooner. Research, finances, etc can all be reviewed by others in a similar field but a different location or employed to check for obvious errors. For small or specialized departments this can help ensure compliance with goals. For larger companies employees can review decisions or actions to spot errors before they grow.

Idea development

For stories, TV shows, characters, or anything that is dynamic and has a past this can help keep ideas coherent. Persistent ideas like the story or character will do things in their own plot which are influenced by their own history and limitations. The CE can keep track of all this and help guide creators when making changes so that they are in-line with their own ideas. It can be used by teams, individuals, or creators and fans together.

With private communities the creators or writers can explore topics. They can save their made up history and develop a relatable character and setting through continuity. In a private community this can be done in an organized way. Users can have levels of verification or a special weight used as a rank so that some aspects of the idea are not visible to those below a weight level and so approved users can interact with everything.

Continuity management for clearer results

Any character, group, world, show, story, writing, movie, or other creative work that relies on a dynamic character can use the CE to keep future plans aligned with past actions. A universe can be created to support a single decision and this universe can be reused for all the interactions of any character. It can help authors and creators make a clear display of what they want for themselves and help prevent doing things that would be out of character.

Finding combinations

Such as food combinations at a restaurant or cooking methods being tested by a chef. The changes can vary, significantly down to minuscule, and be judged alone or in combination. A name for that combination can be chosen or awarded and then voted on by others. Find trends and correlations between preferences and other unknown qualities.

Large scale comparison tool. Trial and error tracking. It can result in interesting or useful combinations being discovered by people. When enabled the CE can help discover, share, and popularize these combinations.

For example if a restaurant is testing new meals. People can test food prepared in different ways, be slight or extreme. They can get food combinations or change the order which food is eaten. Those people then rate their experiences and the test giver learns something about what people like.

Translations

From ancient hieroglyphics to Louie Louie we can harness the knowledge of a group to find ideas and hints. People can post their interpretations along with how they arrived at them so and others can judge. Try to understand things open to interpretation by finding things similar to them and assembling a web of ideas.

Group interpretations

Ambiguous or contested things can be discussed and there can be an attempt to concentrate evidence on the matter into the one spot for better hypotheses.

Poems, ancient tablets, ciphers, song lyrics, meanings in art, quotations, and anything that is open to interpretation can be discussed with the CE. Information is gathered to support different view points and then users can see many differing options with their respective supporting evidence. Chains of circumstantial points are connected with known facts and speculation is based on this. Users relate topics and try to infer relationships. Users can try and find the purpose of physical objects with unknown uses such as in archaeology and anthropology.

We can follow the data and try to guess and what new data we might find; it’s a lot easier to find something if you know what you’re looking for. Like expecting to find a stellar body based on gravitation perturbations witnessed in a second body, we can narrow the range for clues and investigate those areas first. If new data arises the completely changes the prediction then there might already be discussion on that matter to make a smoother segue into the new interpretation.

Statistical studies

If users chose to share their data and participate with studies then there are opportunities to learn from the information people input. Correlations and interactions can be determined based on a large data set which can glean more useful results. Previously unknown connections between actions or items may be found including data that can result in better health and healthcare.

Epidemiology and heath studies

A large sample size can show trends over time. Users can mark down behaviors, actions, traits, etc in themselves and how they observe others to be so that a statistical correlation can be drawn. The resulting data can act as a longitudinal study of the users based on information given. Over time changes in people, their activities, and their symptoms or experiences can be used for better prediction or diagnoses. Can also be helpful for drug interactions and rare diseases.

Users input symptom types and levels as well as history in a special healthcare anonymous user account that keeps their data secure and reusable. They can input lifestyle actions and more data as they wish including where they live, work, or play.

The user can enter as much data about them as they want. The data can be drawn automatically from their user profile and then validated by the user as accurate for medical use. Potential diagnoses can be seen with probability from the known information as well as other things to look for to confirm and deny that choice and potential future and past symptoms.

Find similarities in experiences that are possibly related

Discoveries and societal paradigms shifts often come from an new or better understandings of what is around us. It seems likely that there are more things to learn, that we are not at the end of knowledge. We can use the idea of the CE to expound on known things and to elucidate the currently unknown. The CE can be used as a way to uncover new laws of math and physics, new ideas in philosophy, and the better understanding our place and that of our universe.

The basic idea of how this works is to find the common points between multiple examples or anecdotes and then try to find what a mechanism of action could be that would enable these results, and once we know what we are looking for we try and work backwards to understand what it might actually be. When someone, X, posts an experience or idea, which for this example encompasses the attributes of A, B, & C we can categorize those attributes. If then someone else, Y, describes something with B, C, & D in it we can then correlate the B & C attributes with the experience of X & Y. As more information comes in we can statistically uncover more about things.

For a real world example take transcendental mediation where one’s mind is allegedly separated form their body in a way. How does this work, if real, and what are the connections between different practices of this. This subject can encompass a multitude of swaths of ideas. If we wanted to focus on how people can try and achieve this state we would want to find people who are capable of it and have them explain how they do it, then we can compare multiple people and see if there is a lowest common denominator that would allow us to make a framework for letting other people more easily achieve this.

For people that use music or dancing to try and get into this state the CE could allow an analysis of the music. If there is a common beat or counterpoint or rhythm or anything that the different approaches have in common then it can be found. That’s how the engine would be useful in trying to better understand our consensus reality. Anyone with an experience or idea can relate it and if there are other similar concepts by other people. Then we can try and find the underlying cause.

Allowing better correlation of things can hopefully result in better understanding of those items via statistical trend analysis. People who experience anything abnormal can be given a questionnaire on the subject. These questions are to find commonalities in the experiences of many people.

The questions can be given to people who have: a near death experience such as from a car accident; a disassociation from their bodies during surgery; drugs; schizophrenic episodes; brain structures that are deviations from the average such as those in autism; dreams; alleged UFO/UAP abductions; transcendental meditation experiences; premonitions; waking dreams; seen ghosts or apparitions; third man syndrome experiences; seen ball lightning; a stroke; a migraine; a religious experiences; etc.

We can learn from these studies. It doesn’t matter if what we learn is about another dimension of existence or about how the human brain functions. If there is more to the mind than the body/brain this may give insight into that. If not it will help us study how the brain works and how changes across areas within the brain can influence consciousness.

Hypotheses can be put forward as topic pages with category tags on the subject, expected results from potential actions can be listed. Then if new evidence come out that shows results which are the same as the expected results it can be easily connected to the new hypotheses.

Better understanding of the results of any rigorous scientific research such as double or triple blind studies on things that don’t currently receive this type os study. Such as: paranormal activities, occult topics, remote viewing, astro-projection, astrology, and even just putting minerals in habitats. If you run a bunch of studies where all sorts of rocks and crystals are kep in a terrarium or not and compare you can then discuss the results in a scientific manner, even if the results are that mineral crystals are not magical and seen to have no effect on living organisms.

Personal introspection

Users preference can help someone compare how they think about themselves with how others think about them based on the comments that someone write. Users can see and be aware of any area where their stated beliefs are not being backed up by their online actions.

Someone with X stated values will have to reconcile to themselves how they might have made a statement supporting Y if it is opposed to X. This can function to point out hypocrisy to oneself if their stated beliefs don’t match their actual actions.

The user preference and their ratings on things are combined with the relationship between these things to look for discrepancies. If an opinion-discrepancy is found for the user then they are questioned on it, and that answer can be given to others to see if it is valid. Users who disagree with themselves this way and give poor answers have their weight lowered in a corresponding weight type.

When a user agrees with an action that goes against something they already agreed with then they can be shown the two items and asked to reconcile them.

An example would be user Bob saying they are a christian. When asked further Bob says they believe in Jesus and the current accepts translation of his teachings. One of these values may be to help the poor and sick and helpless. Bob rates this highly in a ‘the right thing to do’ weight type.

Later Bob joins a cult that makes fun of people who are suffering. He votes positively about a comment about how these people who are suffering deserve it and shouldn’t be helped. Bob can be confronted with his approval of both things, which other users have marked as being dissimilar, and asked to explain how he can support both concurrently.

There have been studies which concluded that when someone is confronted with facts which disagree with their opinion then that person can believe even more in the now disproved idea. Perhaps allowing people to be confronted with their own formed opinion on what makes a good person could help them. It’s been said, “you can’t reason someone out of something they didn’t reason themselves into” but if those people see their own reasoning compared with the resulting actions and facts which ultimately support that viewpoint they may be more open to greater understanding and mental growth.

Exposing personal hypocrisy may be the only way to gain awareness of a problem, once the user has knowledge of a problem then they can take steps to address it.

People can answer questions of increasingly specific situations about the same topic to elucidate where the delineation between their reactions would be and why. What is the theoretical threshold for action. How does that threshold or action change based on modifications to the situation. If multiple users report the same or similar answers then we can begin to form a community consensus on the issue.

When a user has input enough opinions on topics relating to life, metaphysics, and human interaction then they can run a preference trace on their preference versus known mental and spiritual practices. Things like: philosophy, meditation, or religion so see which existing belief structures support the things they believe in.

Data input comes from questions like, “Do you like it when people push you to the ground?”, “Do you like to push other people to the ground?” which are aimed at determining what the user is alright with and what they don’t like. The questions have the 1-10 scale rating and they can give reasons to defend themselves.

The user might be a wrestler and does like that, they might be a push-artist and like pushing people but not to the ground. Whatever variation that is input can be viewed and judged by others as well as shown to them as an example choice if they are faced with the same question. The answers that become the most popular choices become the consensus to that question in that situation.

A user can see which beliefs of theirs are detrimental to their understanding of a subject. They can find more about how others view their comments. They can track beliefs and values in topics over time.

Prediction markets

The consensus engine also acts to measure sentiment amongst users based on their knowledge and involvement with a subject. Users can state a thing they think will happen, why they think it will happen, and with what confidence they make this guess. Other users can weigh in a make their own guesses or vote on already posted topics. A consensus can emerge on what the users think will happen. In this way a group can act to try and predict things.

Users can wager points when they place these bets so the users who make the most accurate predictions have the highest points. In this case the fake internet points could be a special weight type within the general marketplace community. Users can bet on what things will happen and bet on what others think will happen. Using a weight type which can be fungible within the community, and all other sub-communities, and used for the marketplace(s) so that it could be traded between users.

Research for hire

A community of experts in one or more related categories can be hired by an entity to explore topics. A robust think-tank can result from proper selection of this community. Users can use this ability do real time fact checking or investigation of live information. People could harness users with similar skill levels across the globe to work together for special operations.

Subject specific education

The web of connections allows users to see topics related to their topics. The category tags make it so users can find information related to their query. Users can give feedback on what works and what doesn’t so users can find things that work for them. They can see who else the same techniques worked for and then see what other things those users are doing so they can potentially do it too.

Knowledge assessment on specific topics

Tests and questionnaires can be given so that the next question depends on the answer to the previous. If someone gets a question wrong then next questions may be about a part of the previous question. The reasons for the mistaken answer want to be found and corrected.

Through adaptive knowledge assessment we can make sure a user has the complete picture, as far as the test giver is concerned, of any one part before they can more on to another part. As the user moves on their quiz questions can mix new information with old information or just refer back to past sections to help ensure retention.

Companies run by and for all of their employees

Workers vote on company decisions, the worker’s vote weight determined by consensus of the other workers. Limits possibility to act in a greedy way and encourages people to work together. The CE can enable a company to stay with its founding mission statements and limit that company from becoming evil. Can reduce inflation if the workers help decide prices and how the profits are used.

Use the CE’s weighted voting system for stockholders who want to vote on issues alongside the employees. The company can create philanthropic goals and use the system to outline the baby steps towards completing those goals. The goals can be related to helping those in the company, their families, and those that live in the vicinity of the company so that if it succeed the entire area will prosper.

Workers can benefit when the company succeeds. This may result in a more cohesive company as the parts are not all as self serving. The company’s goals can be defined by the workers and everyone can be onboard with those actions. This could even be a way to clearly define a wanted goal and find co-investors who can all start the company together with shared resources.

Many rules can be put in place if the employees think they are useful. For example the company can have a profit goal or cap that it can’t exceed. This can be to eliminate corporate greed, any profit that comes in is split so that part of it goes towards the goals automatically. Compensation is approved by the workers and capped via a ratio so no worker can have 1000 times the rate of pay of anyone else no matter what they do.

Jobs are all rated in skill, difficulty, and other metrics. Workers rate their opinion of their own jobs as well as the jobs of their coworkers. Workers can be cross trained so they all have some experience in jobs which are not directly their own. The workers can comment in a company community or sub community and share their experiences.

This can help ensure a fair pay so workers who do harder work are rewarded for it. Required role changing can be done; where you have to spend a day in another worker’s shoes to get an idea of what it is like. There can be ladder requirements where one can only be a manager or higher with enough time spent doing the lower level jobs. Any new CEO could have to spend months working through the lower ranks to fully understand their company and workforce. Worker pay ratios are based on the skills and work needs to maintain a position and are voted on by everyone.

A weight type can be had within the company’s online community to rate the value, difficulty, required training, and skills needed to success in a position, and any other aspects of the job title. Workers throughout the company can contribute to these weights by voting with their own knowledge weighted votes.

Example goals

Public Living

With public approval and appropriate use of money, areas could be built to offer people housing and living services when they are in need, and until they can operate on their own. Closer to a housing complex that has metal health professionals and life coaches that can help people whom are dealing with difficulties. This free housing can offer enrichment activities and skill training to assist in getting people back on their feet. It can also support those unable or unwilling to support themselves.

A place where people can have their needs met

A part of the housing crisis is that even if houses/apartments were affordable some people would not move into their own place. For places that have criminalized homelessness, outdoor camping, sleeping, and panhandling, this could provide those people a place to go. Where they could get support so that those who are able to be rehabilitated can be and those that cannot are still taken care of in a way that prevents their breaking any laws and being punished for existing.

A person could lose an investment or their job so they become destitute and lose their place of residency. Or because the world is full of bad news some people may become overwhelmed by this to the point that they cannot function in normal society. This type of place combined with universal basic income could allow these people to not suffer on the street or die while also allowing them time to work on and get over the issues that afflict them in a safe environment.

Some actions have a measurable cost to society. Money spend on education of children and people results in less people incarcerated and less cost to taxpayers in the long run. Some actions are just good investments in the future. A situation where this exists could be cheaper for the working people than then current situation of jailing, releasing, and re-jailing the same people. It could have a longer lasting and more positive effect on people all around as well as the budget.

Food, learning, enrichment, shelter, clothes, information, water, medicine, therapy, and a set schedule they can participate in if they are lonely or bored could all be provided. While people are living at these locations there can be schedules of activities. Some to help them learn life skills or job skills, some for fun and to develop personal skills, while some would be to connect people with others that have shared interests and are nearby so people can have easier access to making friends. These residents can use the CE or have an interpreter enter their information to help this process.

The residents can volunteer to work at the locations to help others the way they were helped and can be given tasks set to their tested ability level. The CE can be used to asses their knowledge and predilection towards action in situations they would encounter so they can be best placed.

For the few people that cannot get assimilated into society there can be more long term sections of a complex. The rooms can be switched every 9 months or year to share the experience. This is a way to house the permanently unhoused into a safe area where they can get help that they need as well as providing a safety net for those in society who otherwise don’t have support. It can save money overall by reducing resources used in other departments.

Community centers

Bring back places people can go to without having to spend money to exist. Centers can be built throughout communities and tied to the local area’s online community which can be used to facilitate communication and planning. People can enter preferences and find others with similar views to make friends and ease loneliness. Groups of people with similar interests at the community center can organize club meeting times to get together or an open house to show newcomers.

Vote-by-mail for everyone in the USA

If you’ve ever been to a voting booth then it’s easy to see why mail in voting is far more convent. It gives voters much more time to vote at their leisure, days or weeks to fill out the ballot. The ballot can be mailed or put in an election drop box at places like libraries. It’s very secure and allows citizens a way to ensure that their vote was cast.

The election office even mails you a booklet explaining both sides of any issues. Those explanations are submitted ahead of time. The consensus engine can be a little bit like the presentation of these written statements, except they can then be reviewed by others for inaccuracies.

Like ranked choice voting, and getting rid of gerrymandering or the electoral college voting system, voting by mail is something that would almost immediately make voting much more fair and have great benefits for society on its own. If that was already the case then we wouldn’t have this document. This point is more about baby steps and wanting to get moving in the correct direction.

Build and launch the consensus engine

I think the best way to make this is to make it a competition. Where we ask anyone who wants to contribute to do so with the understanding that there will be awards. If Consensus Engine Company or whatever were to win the lottery in the order of over a few million dollars we might be able to do this. With a big enough winning we could do a press release and say that we are going to give the money away and I think that will get attention. The plan would be to give money to normal people who use the system and a second lot of money to the people making the system.

We tell the news that in one year we will give X million dollars to the winner, and Y and Z amount to followers. The caveat would be that the winner would be decided by the users of the systems themselves. We would give our description and have anyone who could build and launch the system do so. If multiple people create working systems then they would be in competition. Each working CE could have it’s own users, likely with some overlap, those users could then vote on the merits of all the prototypes and how closely they align with the stated mission.

In addition, we announce that once the system is up and running any user will be able to post on the CE in a category where they can ask for some of the money. If CE Co can create working business models that profit under the prior explanations then it donate money to this fund which can perpetuate the giving away of money to people with deserving stories and why they need it. Those stories would of course be judged by others under rules that could be fleshed out by using the CE.

In this manner we could raise awareness of the idea, sow the seed of its design and excitement to come for users in the future. This could start a small ‘news fire’ where the information spreads to others who want to get a piece of that money which can help accelerate its development and also adoption.

Make the system available for use to a limited number of local jurisdictions or districts. Ask for voters to volunteer to use it and share how it works for them. Request multiple trial locations in any state that wants to try it. Have the citizens discuss their problems before use and after using the system for a while. If the system is useful in small areas then that fact can be used to show its success to slightly larger areas. Eventually we can make a better world through cooperation.

Conclusion

Voting on decisions for everyone. The vote weight for any question is adjusted based on how well the voter knows about the subject. A system to support this knowledge weighted voting idea can suppress misinformation while encouraging friendship and has the potential to transform the human race’s ability to interact and plan for the future. A way to bring people together by finding where we disagree and why and then finding a way past it. And a tool used to build a picture one iota of truth at a time into a great tapestry. If it could ever be built.

Discussion

This fever-dream of an idea came to me one day while I was lamenting about the future and watching a depressing episode of a ecological documentary called Planet Earth. Humanity faces many problems that it must overcome if the species wishes to survive long term. Socially, politically, ecologically, and mentally there are things that most of us are doing to perpetuate the existing world and in many cases there is little to no good way around these things. The actions that I think need to be taken have to be dramatic in rapidity and gargantuan in scope and they simply cannot be accomplish with the world we currently live in. I also fear there might not be much time to do these things before something happens that we can’t recover from.

Affecting the future is what I wanted, and this way of voting seemed like the way to do it. Normal people don’t want to hurt each other. They want their kids to live in a world that wouldn’t be described as a dystopian nightmare. It’s only a small handful of people who have created and maintain a machine of oppression and division. Things that require businesses to make decisions which make money even if it kills people and pollutes the environment need to stop. Misinformation is a driving force behind part of our situation and this can help that.

I had some crazy idea that normal people would act more rationally if they saw the evidence presenting in a conclusive chain. That people who preach one thing but do another would be forced to confront themselves. If we made an online society where you got further being polite and honest and might allow better behaviour to be learned and rewarded. Since we all seem to be quite different people with different views, ‘knowledge’, memories, action patterns, and pretty much everything (identical twins not included) then this idea seemed like a way to bring us together.

Why was this done. To expose religiolites who practice hate and preach about heaven. The ones who pretend to worship someone who said to help others and share yet those people refuse to do those actions. To further scientific research at the expense of experiment secrecy which would mandate a greater practice of working together in order to be successful (or done in a controlled way, like a secret research installation). To try to expose for study and understand the truths that might not be so obvious to everyone. If there is any relationship between near-death-experiences, dreams, and the other mentioned topics, one which is a real and can be studied, then this system might help us become aware of these things so we (as a species) can act on it.

I have no way to make this idea. My coding exposure ends pretty quick past the ‘d’ in hello world. If I can take home 100 million dollars from the lottery then I could pledge 50 million to a bounty for the creation of this system. It could be done by offering a large prize of a million dollar a year to the winner for 4 years, and some hundreds or tens of thousands of dollars to the runners ups.

One could have the winner decided by using the CEs which were made. The deployed consensus engines would be judged by the amount of verified users who vote in favor of which system. With follow up money awarded for assistance and start up ventures. Then find a community that wants to participate and start a company that controls the CE there which operates with a CE as described in the example use about a company. It would use the profits to help and support those in need and those in its own community. This idea could be spread to new areas and each location could operate as a separately node working together but independently of other ones.

An idea that consolidates knowledge into one area seems like a great idea in a place where people haver personal freedom but in a nation state where that liberty is limited then this system seems like a course of rebellion. We don’t want to infringe on anyone’s rights. The only people who should use the system are those that want to have their voice heard in their community by choice.

The amount of information people share with it wouldn’t have to be any more than people are already sharing online. And the the design above we could even be teaching people how to better secure their online lives.

There was a whole lot I wanted to say, but looking at the earlier drafts it was mostly on examples of things I wanted to see done. It seems likely I’ve inserted enough craziness into these pages and that you don’t need more than is already present. Important as I feel many of those ideas were the ones not listed just didn’t have time to be woven in. The allusions are thinly veiled and the writing is less than fantastic but I think the idea is mostly here.

It’s sort of a mess but if you want to see how bad it was when it started have a look at the earlier versions. This idea was written down at once, then slightly expanded on, then sat for about a year, then written about as a way to accomplish things I wished would happen. For whatever reason I can’t quite be sure ever existed I’ve now spent over a month of my free time taking those posts and making this paper.

Maybe 60 pages of posts that had to be separated by topic, then the topics had to be defined, then those groups of ideas were changed into something that was hoped could make sense to a reader which was only 42 pages long, then they were written down in the draft of this document in a way that tried to make the entire idea make sense. Then I gave this one perfunctory proofread in which I rewrote a few areas, removed some things, entirely formatted the text, spell checked it, and added the navigation headers.

The sections don’t smoothly flow from one to another. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to improve the clarity and now it seems like somethings have been overstated and repeated. I’ve purposefully left out most things to do with existing regulations. But I would hope that no one under 18 is allowed to get verified for anything here so all users are. That conversation is encrypted end to end as the cost of doing business for a system with this potential. Any attempts to add any sort of backdoor to encryption and ruin security would be abhorrent to the spirit and execution of this.

My brain/body system will sometimes type things which are not at all what I want it to. This often includes switching of ‘of’ with ‘if’ making something plural when it was supposed to be past tense, and some other annoying idiosyncrasies. Capitalizing the first two letters of a word. All these are vice verse of course. What I’m trying to say here is that if you are read sections or sentences that made no sense and seem elementary then I apologize for the misunderstanding and inconvenience.

I couldn’t find the working of any existing group decision platforms, I had bookmarked a few agencies that worked with those ideas but I didn’t see any clear explanation of their mechanisms of action and I also did not look very hard. To be fair to them, the idea I presented looks like word garbage and even to me had parts that are unintelligible. Well now we have this paper and maybe I can find someone who will read it and help. With these ideas I hope we can find a better world together.

If you’ve gotten this far you hopefully have an opinion on everything here. If we had a working CE you could post your opinion there there. And if you had a long list of reasons this can’t work you could post it there and I might hopefully be able to work on solving some of those issues. It’s unlikely this idea will ever be created, but perhaps if we are aware of potential options that might help everyone and make the future seem brighter then we can take tiny steps towards implementing such things. This may be a good idea, it may be a seed that leads to a good idea, but it can’t do anything without help and nurturing. As an aside to close our time here is a short excerpt.

A gene or trait that is evolutionary advantageous does not guarantee it will be passed on. Aside from a the development of a new gene potentially having a negative influence on any other already existing genetic aspect, life is complex and one advantage doesn’t ensure success.

Forward

Preface

Introduction

Summary

Description

Parts

Votes

Weight

Users

Verified users

Non verified users

Topics

Accounts

Account names

Child accounts

Anonymous accounts

Timed accounts

Duress accounts

Posting

Similarity judgment

Feedback required

Visibility

Top level posts

Comments

Communities

Community Decisions

User Feedback

Categories

User Interface

Viewing an entity page

Alignment trace

User viewing their own entity page

Settings

Preferences

History

Weight

Connections

Message board

Direct Messages

Viewing a category

Viewing a topic

The sidebar

Web of Connections

Direct view

Peripheral view

Privacy settings

User Preferences

Entity

Example Uses

Define goals and work towards them.

Goal completion and planning

Combat misinformation

Limit the power of misinformation

An example of misinformation:

How can the CE help prevent this:

Find where people disagree to help them agree.

Find source of disagreements and plan around that.

Voting, with a weight representative of their understanding of the topic.

Users have a right to vote on all things and are not excluded from voting on anything.

Finding a politician or representative that actually represents your views.

User alignment testing

Representing what the people want

Real time fact-checking of debates.

A debate with real time fact-checking and a provable winner/loser.

Finding entities with matching preferences

Search for users with matching preferences

Sell ads to users who opt IN to do so

Improving scientific research

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Find fraud through review

Idea development

Continuity management for clearer results

Finding combinations

Translations

Group interpretations

Statistical studies

Epidemiology and heath studies

Find similarities in experiences that are possibly related

Personal introspection

Prediction markets