Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Hello, Carson, are you there? Yeah, I’m here. Thank you for this interview. Welcome. I’m going to start by introducing you used to be a professor in applied politics in University of Sydney and Lismore from understand is that correct?

Lyn Carson
I started in Lismore. I eventually went to Sydney and I also spent time not only in the University of Sydney, but also at the University of Western Sydney. So I’ve been I’ve been in several academies, but mostly University of Sydney.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right and what are you doing today?

Lyn Carson
At the moment, I’m the research director for the New Democracy Foundation, which is a non government research institute that I helped develop about 10 years ago and now I’m acting as both a member of the board but also as the research director.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right, that sounds fascinating. What’s what does your research consist in?

Lyn Carson
I’m mostly doing evaluations and critical reflections on deliberative democracy experiments. So we’re particularly interested in ways that can draw typical citizens into political decision making. So we often have oversight of some of these experiments they’re generically called mini Publix or miniature populations. And as a research director I’m you know, I’m looking closely at those I’m writing about various aspects of those all of which can be found on the New Democracy website.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, I’m on the New Democracy the active democracy right now. Looking at it it says you participated in Australia’s first consensus conference, Australia’s first deliberately polls and number of Cityizen juries, etc.

Lyn Carson
I have been involved in these experiments from the time that I was elected to local government in the 90s. And Lismore, and after that I had a chance to work in various ways with consensus conferences, deliberative poll citizens juries, and in particular, the Australian citizens parliament in 2009. A huge project and since then, on many citizens, jury solutions, panels and so on

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Many of our listeners don’t know all these words.

Lyn Carson
I know. Yeah, and it’s, you know, …

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Let’s get right into it. The good stuff is gonna come in. My first question was, what is democracy and how has it changed and morphed throughout the ages?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I mean, the work that I do is in a very particular area, called deliberative democracy. But let me just stay with your question for now. And think about democracy more generally more generically. I’m a bit fond of the way that David Runciman describes this long history of democracy. And I think there’s a long story and middle story and a short story. And that’s the kind of language that he uses. So if you look at the long story, then we’re looking at two and a half thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks and the way in which they did something incredibly unusual for the time, and that was to use a lottery to select its citizens, admittedly, only men, not foreigners, or slaves or women to make political decisions on a daily basis, often involving hundreds of thousands of, of Greeks to do that. So that’s the long story and it looks lasted for hundreds of years, which is kind of the length of our current system. But I’ll come to that the middle story occurred around the time of the French, the American, the English revolutions. And it was when a choice was made about what kind of democracy and I’d almost want to put that in inverted commas. What kind of democracy should replace the very hierarchical, you know, royal houses that were around at the time. And they chose the Roman model. They did not choose the Greek model based on lotteries. They chose the republican model. And that pretty much guaranteed that power would be situated amongst elites for people who had money. And so we went from the long story of what I would think of as a pretty amazing democracy to a middle story where It was replaced with something which I think is more accurately described as representative government rather than democracy to a short story, which is really only happened in the last hundred years. And that’s much more about universal franchise about how giving everyone the vote, including women, you know, which has been a long project over that time. But it’s also been the time during which the two party system or definitely the party system has been submitted as part of this representative government. So you can see we’ve moved a long way from original forms of democracy to what we have now, but we persist in, in calling it democracy and in fact, the term was not even used in the American Constitution. They did not like the idea of democracy at all, because it you know, they, they argued that you would end up with a message the guillotine or whatever. It was a very Nate’s argument in order to secure decision making for political elites, and I think we’re still we’re stuck with that. Actually, I think we do have Yeah, I think we do have a political system. That is

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But in last 50 years there are more experiments and innovations coming in, around democracy.

Lyn Carson
Definitely are Yeah, I think, you know, and that would take me to the kind of work that I do in deliberative democracy and over the past 50 years, definitely since the early 70s. There have been not just experiments but ways in which someone stays. Ideas these mini public’s have been used Firstly, in America as citizens juries in Germany and is planning cells in Australia as as citizens juries, consensus conferences, more recently. We’re seeing the emergence of citizens assemblies. And you’re probably familiar that with that through examples, like the Irish example, but fairly recently led to a change in abortion laws in marriage equality and at the moment is looking at issues policies around climate change, amongst other things, and they’ve been citizens assemblies in Canada, the Netherlands, Iceland,

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Can you, just for our listeners define a bit, mini-publics and, planning cells, citizen juries.

Lyn Carson
So citizens jury is a fairly small scale. It usually involves, you know, somewhere between 12 and 25 people although the work we’ve been doing lately, we often use as many as 40 people in a citizens jury. They come together over a period of time very intensively. They deliberate which is why that term deliberative democracy has emerged. So they deliberate together and, and try to establish their common ground in order to make recommendations. And during those deliberations, they hear from experts, they read a whole lot of information. They’re very educated the people who are part of these intensive processes, and then they make recommendations to a decision maker which should be agreed in advance will be acted upon. So that’s a citizens jury. A planning so work slightly differently in that it’s a bunch of simultaneous I guess you could say juries, in that you might have 20 of them on a given topic in Germany. Maybe there’s 25 people in each usually that’s the number that they would involve. So Refaeli again intensive, but over a period of time they will have had 500 people participate on on a given Topic as citizens assembly is a is a larger scale version of that. So in Australia when we did the Australian citizens parliament, there were 150 people, one from every elected in Australia that came together for four days in one location in camera and made recommendations as citizens assembly usually follows that model. So there’s usually about 100 or 150. People, they, they’re all this always involves random selection, any of the the models that I’ve just talked about, always use random selection in order to get a very diverse group into the room. And as citizens assembly does just that, Ireland did it slightly differently in that they had 66 randomly selected people and 33 elected representatives, so that they could encourage the elected representatives to share ownership. decisions and ensure that they were taken through the parliament. So you’ll get variations but they, they always share these methods always share three ideals, that they’ll be very inclusive, almost always using a lottery or random selection. They will be deeply deliberative. So they’ll take a lot of time, a lot of learning, and they will always be influential. So it has to mean something. It’s not just bringing people together for chat. It’s bringing them together, because there’s an important decision to be made. Does that give you enough information?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah. And all that brings me to the place where you and I met, which was the Byron Model and it falls in everything you just said, and I was lucky enough to be selected in the random stratified selection. What kind of many public was that?

Lyn Carson
That was the citizens jury? Yes. So you have had a first hand experience of the citizens jury And very equipped to talk about what that was like.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
It was amazing. I was very impressed by the whole process and the facilitators.

Lyn Carson
Which raises an additional point, which is that these mini Public are always facilitated by an independent facilitator, someone who will allow the group to find its own way. So it’s very important that that facilitator is mutual, you know, is is not imposing an agenda, but it’s simply there in order to enable the group to end up where it wants to end out.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, and giving a lot of interesting information on how to judge objectively the situation and I really feel it was mutual to the tools and strategies that were used to facilitate were really high quality are all the sessions that we went through.

Lyn Carson
I think you’re also pointing to the fact that we we really want to alert participants to the importance of critical thinking and cognitive biases. So we, we want to, if we can impart the skills of interrogating expert knowledge because we don’t want people to be hoodwinked or you know, cajoled in manipulated in any way. We want those participants to really question the information that they are hearing, which I think in your case study, your own experience happened. You know, I think there are a lot of people who were asking fantastic questions and really interrogating any expert knowledge that came their way.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, well, again, for the listeners to Byron model was an initiative that was facilitated by New Democracy and the Council of the Byron Shire, ordered this study and they have to follow the recommendations for next two years. Is that Right, Carson?

Lyn Carson
That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
So we put together this very modern, interesting process with the scale of impact and how deep you must engage the population for each topic that they are are going to have to work with.

Lyn Carson
Indeed, and I think it was a very unusual subject area in that the Byron Council was very interested in knowing how could it create a model for local democracy that really maximized trust in both the council and its ability to work with citizens. So it may be that it was a precedent that we hope is going to be taken up in our local governments throughout the world that we actually give the people themselves an opportunity to say how they want to be governed, which is pretty exciting, really.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
It was it was and I am really fond of the Basic principles that we wrote down, which was trust communication identity. I want to add on this point that you’ve said many times that you don’t really like direct democracy or surveys, because it gives us opinions and opinions are usually not informed. There’s no critical thinking. Can you develop that?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I think you’ve expressed that well, so the difference between direct democracy and deliberative democracy is that direct democracy, let’s think about something like a referendum is a collection and aggregation of what people what people’s opinion is of something now, you can come on stuck with that, because if it’s not informed, all you’re getting is an aggregation of public opinion. Whereas I’m incredibly interested in deliberative democracy, because what you’re getting there is public judgment. So you’re saying that we can harness the collective intention And so the whole community, and together we can arrive at recommendations that are very sound because they’re based on reason. They’re not based on the kind of emotion that you might get if you ask someone in a survey. What do you think of this say? And, you know, surveys are notoriously inaccurate, as we just discovered in Australia in the last election, where the predictions were, were contrary to what would actually happen. So giving an opinion is superficial, it’s fairly meaningless. Whereas that kind of Data Liberation is going to result in something else. I mean, there are there are examples of direct democracy which, which are a little bit stronger than the way that I’ve just conceptualized it. So I’m thinking of somewhere like Switzerland.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
That was my my next question, what’s the best democracy in the world today?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, and I don’t know whether One can, I wouldn’t want to dismiss Switzerland because it, it does use direct democracy. It’s not necessarily deliberative democracy. But there’s such a strong culture of direct democracy. In Switzerland. They’ve been doing this for decades, you know, so that people do engage, I think, fairly meaningfully and genuinely, with the kind of propositions that are put forward to them. So I think you can actually encourage a culture of direct democracy that encourages that kind of thoughtful questioning and conversation. It may be that Switzerland has come some way towards this. It’s certainly the only country that you could point to if you’re saying, you know, what’s the best democracy in the world. There are places that we can point to. I’ve talked about Island and its citizens assemblies, and it’s now done a number of them It may be that Ireland begins to institutionalize citizens assembly. So it just does them routinely, which would mean that it’s coming off a close to being a really good example of democracy is at least one place in Belgium. There’s a German speaking region in Belgium, that has just created what I would one could describe as a permanent citizens assembly that is sitting alongside its parliament. So it can convene many public’s it can set agendas. It can do a whole lot of things. This is actually very exciting in, in my opinion, and I think it’s a way for other regions for other countries for the states to go is to start thinking about ways in which they can permanently be in partnership with randomly selected citizens in something like a citizens assembly. So there are pockets of it. That the frustration for me is that I, I feel like I sit in the middle of the most incredible democratic innovation going on all over the world, because I’m hearing about it all the time. But I think if you don’t hear about that, when you just read newspapers or watch TV or access social media, you would have a very strong sense that we are, you know, we are experiencing the most extraordinary democratic deficit and the things quite dire. And it’s, you know, it’s true that the democracies really are weakening, but there are so many fantastic examples of where good things are happening, that I but you know, it’s great that we’re talking about it, it’s it’s really good for people to know that there are alternatives that are working incredibly well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There’s a lot happening around the world. Can you tell us […] very quickly about what happened in Madrid and in Iceland?

Lyn Carson
Yeah. I mean, Madrid in many ways is both a fantastic story and potentially a sad story in that Madrid developed a method was, you know, based on some work that New Democracy indirectly was part of, but it ended up being a direct democracy method that is people could go online and, and offer ideas to the local government, the city government of Madrid, and Madrid council created what it called an observatory. And that evolved randomly selected people coming together as a mini public to look at those ideas and work out what should go to a referendum and they could also that many public could also propose referendum ideas. Unfortunately, there’s just been a change of governments in Madrid and It’s back to the problem of political elites, perhaps but it’s just unknown whether this is going to survive this fantastic example, that emerged in Madrid may very well stumble as a result of a new fairly right wing government that doesn’t have too much interest in. In persistent with this. Iceland was an example of I mean, they change the constitution using online platforms as well as face to face deliberations. So it’s extraordinary really when you think about constitutional reform, using the kinds of methods that I’ve talked about that in many ways, earning way more trust. You know, if you have a constitutional convention that is made up of political elites, then everyone is deeply suspicious that is probably going to be reformed in a way that’s going to perpetuate their future. Whereas if you put it back in the hands of the population using various methods, then there’s an awful lot more trust involved in in what’s likely to arise. And as we saw no study trust is, is the key. absolutely fundamental. And it’s, we are in a situation where trust is declining in governments. I mean, all I said, I don’t really trust surveys, but all the all the surveys tell us that trust in government is in decline. Not just trust in government, but also people’s willingness to to vote, which I think is a can be a bit of an empty ritual, as I said, but even in a country like Australia that has compulsory voting, I think we saw the lowest turnout amongst young people in the last election and I mean, these these sorts of issues around trust and belief in the system to have you Know that they have consequences?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah. Maybe that brings me to my next question. Again, Transparency International said that since 2006 , 113 countries have seen a decline in their democracy scores. So what what fundamental rights as an individual need to lose for government to lose its entitlement to, to use the title of democracy.

Lyn Carson
It’s what’s occurring now is, in many ways, it’s really subtle. And a lot of it is attributable to social media. As we know, you only have to look at the Cambridge analytical example and the way in which people can be targeted in a very personal way with messages that are going to influence how they vote, for example. So that’s, that’s not a diminution of their rights. It’s much more subtle. I started to think that it’s all Around a whole lot of illnesses, political illnesses that start with the letter P i think i’m starting to collect them. Things like polarization. And I think social media is, you know, it does result in more polarization, populism, that, you know, people are reacting to elections as though they are reality TV shows and that you can elect a buffoon and and that’s an appropriate act. pessimism, I think those who look closely at these circumstances are starting to be very pessimistic and that can be quite damaging and deadening. I think there are pathologies associated with political parties where they have their eye on short termism on the next election and not so much on long term sound policies. And then there’s that dominance of political elites. And as you could either a lot of pieces associated with that. So I don’t know whether I’m looking at theory here. I am starting to, to think that it is that more subtle stuff that is happening. That is way more scary than the elimination of certain rights, although one would not want to lose those either.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I thought it was quite a big number, 113 countries since 2006.

Lyn Carson
Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But so how, based on all those examples you gave that things are happening around the world, what would you say is a good strategy for people to push for more democracy, whether it be locally on a bigger scale?

Lyn Carson
If I could change one thing, I would encourage people not to see the vote as the beginning and the end of their political activity because I think there’s been a while Which that instrument has been oversold, you know that if we just, we just get this vote, and we vote for pre selected candidates and it’s really quite meaningless. You know, a pencil every three or four years in a polling booth is not the way that I think democracy was ever meant to work. And if I go back to ancient Athens, it was about governing and being governed in tune, you know, that we weren’t meant to take turns, leading someone govern and then we assume the position of someone who can do the governing. This is difficult in huge populations, but it’s not difficult at a local government level. And the reason that, that that was an ideal was that we were meant to be able to accomplish things together. That’s the whole purpose of it is so that we could actually share meaning and get on with accomplishing So I want to take people back to how you do that. Inevitably, that takes you back to local government. I mean, it’s a, it is a very poor cousin of state government in Australia that differs throughout the world. But there’s no reason why we can’t assume responsibility for our own futures. at a local level, you and I happen to be part of the bar in local government area. And I would say, this area is actually pretty good at that. You know, I think we do have a council that’s willing to share that with its residents. I think it is going about doing that. And I’d like to think that we could spread the kind of activity that is going on here, elsewhere and encourage people to do just there to advocate citizens juries to resolve the issues to just spend a bit of time advocating for process? You know, I think that’s really underestimated. We think that we activists have a way of protesting about issues instead of protesting about process and if you get the decision making method right, then everything else just falls into place. You know, it’s

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, being an IT person I always think systems are quite important.

Lyn Carson
Exactly. Yeah, I think I spent a big part of my life being an activist in one area or another. And then I realized, hey, it’s the how our decisions being made here. And I think that’s what took me into this very interesting area, which is political decision making, but I mean, decision making generally is pretty fascinating to me.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
You did show us a few examples of things happening in processes being changed in Geelong, Tweed heads, Lismore, all around on the local level.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, there’s some really good stuff happening locally. I think there’s some interesting stuff happening locally around climate change, actually, you know, that local areas are developing climate emergency plans. They’re, you know, they’re acting on it in a way. I mean, that that is absolutely fantastic people just taking responsibility for their own destiny alone, it’s not going to be enough. We know that we know that we need some big policy directions as well. But you have to start somewhere and if those methods are used at a local level and gather some momentum, and one would hope that it will translate into a you know, that bigger context.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, which it follows very well with the two next questions I was going to ask which is, what’s the true value of democracy in helping to build a more humane world You said just a second ago that originally the idea of democracy is to enable us to build together, accomplish together and create meaning.

Lyn Carson
That’s true. And I think it’s why I, I just love the whole notion of democracy. I think it can build a more humane world, I think we have this extraordinary capacity as humans to both think about power in ways that are very destructive, but also to think about power in ways that are incredibly constructive. And I guess we just need to stay focused on that constructive idea of collective decision making ways in which we can actually work together. I mean, you have had that experience of a citizens jury, you know, that when people come together who have Very different ideas, very different backgrounds. It’s extraordinary the level of agreement that exists. And it’s actually quite easy to work with that agreement. Whereas we are living in a world that is so focused on disagreement on discord on what makes us different rather than what makes us alike and what is it that we want to accomplish together? I think when people come together, they always make sound decisions. They always step aside from their own self interest, which they come in with initially, understandably, but by the end of it have a very strong sense of public interest or common goals that they they just move beyond their own backyard, you know, and start to think about the wider community and why is that a really quite moving I think

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There was this very funny example in our group with a person entering the first day being very, very focused on the potholes. And then Few days later realizing, you know, it’s it’s a much larger issue.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But let’s imagine for a second, that we’re in an ideal world. In a world where we’ve already managed to establish truly democratized processes everywhere. How would that in which way would that help us to solve the big problems of this world? And thinking, of course, about climate change, but also democracy, poverty, and could there be a domino effect and having better democracies on all of those problems?

Lyn Carson
Yes, I think the court I think it’s going to, it’s going to require I know that I always hold Gretzky’s phrase close to my heart, about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the world, that I think we can be very pessimistic in the face of what we see around us. But there is some kind of optimism of our, our will our collective world that I think can see us the world. I would be repeating myself to say that I do think that it is dependent upon this diverse groupings of of citizens and what they can do together, that would have that kind of domino effect. I’m seeing it in my world in my deliberative democracy world, because I’m part of an international network that is constantly learning from each other. So we see something that happens in one country and say, Aha, why couldn’t network in my country so an experiment that happens in a developing country might then pop up in a western country. And it’s not always the other way around. I’m thinking of something like the participatory budgets that started in, in Porto Alegre in Brazil. And then, before we knew it, they were happening in developed countries. And and the reverse is also true that we’re currently doing a project for the UN that is working in a bunch of countries throughout the world that I think has real potential for change, or, yeah, I think a domino effect is entirely possible while ever we can maintain some optimism of the world.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, you were holding a panel recently in this more on the topic of democracy and climate change. How, what was the conclusion? How does democracy help with the climate crisis?

Lyn Carson
I think it’s it helps in that it’s somewhat of a pincer movement. I think. think if you if you think about the way that we do activism or make decisions as involving insisted spaces and invited spaces, you can see that a positive outcome is possible. And by that, I mean, if you think about an insistence space, as people take into the streets like they are, through organizations like extinction, rebellion, demanding change, I would see that as an insistence space. And alone, I don’t think it’s going to be effective, but it’s essential. I think it’s really important that people do Megan do make noise. But I’m interested in the other end of that, which is the invited spaces so I’m interested in how you can bring people along in a decision making space to help develop policy directions around things like climate change, because I think elected sedatives are just way too fearful. They’re influenced by business group by industry, although I have to save an industry saying we have to do something at the moment. I just think that they, it’s not a good decision making mechanism for something like this. And therefore, I think they will need to reach out and create different decision making mechanisms and citizens assemblies, the the most obvious way of doing that now that’s an invited space. And I think that combination of diverse group of people making sound recommendations about how we must act needs to happen alongside of that insistent space. And I notice that groups like extinction rebellion, are currently calling for citizens assemblies. So they have, I think, realize that they need that combination my own little concern with that is the UK is currently, it’s just announced that it’s going to have a citizens assembly on climate change. And I don’t much like the method that they’re going to employ. It’s too short. You know, there’s a, there’s a bunch of things that that are not going to deliver something that I would look out as sound. And I suppose that raises a very important aspect for me that these methods that I’ve been talking about have to be extremely robust. They need to have oversight by people who understand how you maintain the integrity of the process, otherwise they can be used and abused by people who don’t have the best interests of citizens at heart.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, like every little detail of the process is important, the length, the number of people, the facilitors, etc.

Lyn Carson
Exactly.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right. Very interesting answers. Thank you. I’d like to ask you a few questions related to technology. And my first one, very simple. How does technology at the moment support democracy?

Lyn Carson
At the moment? I don’t think it’s supported very well. I think it’s one of one of the enemies of democracy for the reasons that I talked about earlier, because for each of technology strengths, there’s a dreadful danger, it seems to me. And the sort of things I’m referring to are obviously fake news, or, you know, it’s polarizing affect its appeal to emotion rather than reason and so on. So I’m not a great fan of technology in the democratic space. I keep wanting to default to face to face but having said that, I think ways in which you can combine the two. I think that’s what they were hoping to do in Madrid to have a way in which technology could bring in everyone and then have a deliberative space of random universe civic lottery of people to just sift through all of that data if you live, but I think it always must be complemented with a face to face deliberative method. Otherwise, I seriously question its value.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, you talking about the discussion aspect, the exchange aspect of democracy? Yeah. How to Build ideas, and agree. And

Lyn Carson
I think technology is great for just extracting ideas, you know? But it’s great at deliberation.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, but very soon we’ll have everything digitized so the communication, the deliberation, the voting, controlling the monitoring, all the aspects of democracy will be digitized. Understand what you said, on the negative aspect of that if we all wanted to discuss ideas, but isn’t maybe another threat to democracy if she’s digitizing everything,

Lyn Carson
I’d love it if you could convince me that there was some value here, but I just want to say is it’s a vulnerability to corruption, you know, that they will always the ways in which it can be manipulated, and it’s very difficult to manipulate a group of diverse citizens, they’re, you know, they become very good critical thinkers and call each other on, on anything whereas, you know, the electronic space is so far notoriously bad at it. It’s been interesting to me over the last, I would say 10 maybe more years to watch people try to create a deliberative version of an online environment and so far without success, there are ways in which we can do something like an informed referendum, you know, record insist upon people rating information that was, you know, very diverse record universe, everything that we try to do, I think I can see how that could be gained, you know, um, so, yeah. I am a cynic.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Alright, so I want to bring that I want to bring those two aspects together to really high technology and the very fact that we invented democracy for us, you means to discuss and agree on things. So imagine a world in which artificial intelligence will be so advanced that could calculate and predict the best systems and the best rules for each and every situation. Just imagine that for a second. And I think in such a world that would exist would likely rely on those calculations, more than would rely on people’s opinions, to make decisions. And in such a world, relying on humans to deliberate and foe to make effective decision what to make sense would be laughable. But if we did that, what’s your opinion of that if we what fundamental fundamental part of life and of the human experience would we be giving up if we were to develop in the world in which we give our power of decision to computers?

Lyn Carson
I love it sort of like it starts with now if pigs could fly, then blablabla. So okay, I’m going to imagine that pigs can fly, that that is even possible. And what would we be giving out? I think we would be giving up what I see as the most extraordinary experience, to be able to look each other in the eye and to understand each other in ways that have so far proven to be impossible. Without that face to face experience, that there is something so fantastic about being in the company of another and trying to work out not just what you have in common, but to actually share meaning and to fully understand that You know, do I actually be able to stand in another person’s shoes is very difficult, online that it’s so easy face to face. So there is some kind of, there is a relational thing that happens in the company of others, that it’s very difficult to emulate online. So I think we’d be giving that up. The very thing that I think makes us truly human is it’s difficult to imagine people giving a figure about justice and equality and so on, unless they were in the company of others. And if the company of others, shrinks to our own family or our own very homogenous circle of friends, then I think we’re going to wind up with even more polarization. I think we resist plurality rate resist diversity, you know how many of your friends or my friends Whole views that are distinctively different to my own, and there aren’t that many of them, I have to say. So unless I’m, you know, I’m given a real experience where, like the experience that you were given in a citizens jury, it’s very difficult to imagine that we’re going to get to a point where we can take each other seriously in ways that are going to lead to good outcomes for everyone. So I think that’s what we be giving out.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, imagine that Byron model if we didn’t need to get together and some some some computer calculated the best process for us, then publish document for the council

Lyn Carson
That has been suggested, by the way. So there’s been a suggestion that instead of voting in an election, that we just hand it over to AI. And we say, all right, well, you know, you know what we look at, I mean, obviously Cambridge Analytica what we looked at. So just have a look at our history online and just vote. Now, in many ways, if that was done accurately, that would probably lead to a better outcome. Because at the moment people vote contrary to their interests. We saw that in the US, you know, the people who are voting for people that are not actually they don’t have their interests at heart, and it’s not going to lead to the kind of outcomes that would be better for them. Because, you know, they’ve been, for whatever reason, hoodwinked into voting for someone else. So you could the people who put forward that idea, you think, well, that would be good. We also know that when people go online, and they look at the kind of platforms prior to election, let’s say, what do you think about all of these policies and then at the end, Is that they say, okay, you should be voting for this party. And inevitably, that’s not the party they’re voting for. Because their policies of matching a party that they are not prepared to vote for, because they vote for a brand or they vote, you know, it’s the whole kind of emotion other than, rather than raisins. So, yeah, I mean, you could argue that AI is going to end up with a more reasonable outcome than the kind of outcomes that we’re currently getting. It’s just that inevitably, it’s also vulnerable to manipulation as well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But even that what you were saying before, let’s say we would, let’s take this example in the Byron model, we don’t forget organizes citizen jury, we just have a computer calculate the best strategy and the best process and counsel uses that and it’s so good. Let’s even say it would be a good result in solution. We still not be giving up something as humans.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I do. I think that democracy was always about responsibility. It was always about rights and responsibilities, which is why I’ve always thought compulsory voting in Australia is, is perfectly valid. It’s a the responsibility of a citizen, to do something to make a contribution. And I think that notion of rights and responsibilities is a very important combination. So in the example that you just gave, well, they go where we’re going to do this, so we’re going to maintain your rights, but where is the responsibility that comes with that you’ve just handed it over to an algorithm or whatever. And I think that makes us that makes us better citizens. If we own decisions, we are much more likely To respect them to, to want to abide by laws and so on if we have been part of their formulation. And I think we’ve moved a long way from that. And I think the example you just gave would take us even further away.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, what I think about it is having to go through those processes and to think about that stuff makes us smarter and wiser and even if we fail, it makes us smarter and wiser. Exactly. But we’re getting to my favorite question, which is what makes a human human? And this is my last question now. You being a professor, you have a sound knowledge of history and corruption and lies have been a major part of the political life political history, so much that political structures such as the republic’s Republic’s democracies, all system that Try and put boundaries to do the power one man can have. And governments can be corrupted by several things, the thirst of power of debt own leaders, but also their entanglement with religious institutions or corporations these days. So, in your opinion, where does the corrupt ability of the government stem from? Is it is it that we fail? We fail to build solid, incorruptible systems? Or is it that we fail to strengthen our characters and morality as conscious human beings? Is it the system? That’s the issue is that the nature of the human being this the issue?

Lyn Carson
It’s both I think, and I’m not sure that corruption and lies have always been a major part of political life because the vulnerability to corruption and lies has always been there. So I think it is part of the human condition. But if you if we go full circle and end up back in ancient Athens, then they were definitely trying to counteract that human tendency, which is why they ended up with this system of lotteries, you know, with decision makers. I mean, they had a whole bunch of other things that we don’t have time to talk about, but almost all of the systems that they put in place, were designed to counteract that. So it is, I think, a combination of both. I think America is going to be a very interesting example for us to watch you know, it’s I think it’s what it’s experiencing right now is it’s our IT systems going to be strong enough to withstand a buffoon as a president, you know, who is just, you know, wow, slightly off Yeah, you know, doing all sorts of wild stuff. And so far the systems have been able to constrain his activities. I mean, that’s not true. In other countries, the systems, particularly when you find new democracies, you mentioned Brazil before. There’s, you know, very scary stuff happening in Brazil right now, which is really just making a mockery of its newly developed systems that it was putting in place to defend itself against that kind of corruption and lies and it hasn’t been able to do that successfully. It’s not the only country. It’s kind of all over the world now, as we know that systems have to be incredibly tough because the US has been at this for a lot longer than those emerging democracies. That’s why I think it’s an interesting case study can it with standard can the UK with And its current distress over Brexit and the likelihood that it true may elect a buffoon as its prime minister, well, we’ll see what happens there in the next few weeks, but many, there are many buffoons who will who will happily step up to the plate and say elect me as your leader. So yes, we need incredibly strong systems to ensure that people who are just off the air, you know, psychopaths or people with personality disorders, let’s face it, anyone who seeks power probably should be denied it. The ancient Greeks Yeah. They were very famous for saying that but if you’re going to, you know, be in there running for leadership, there’s a fair chance that you, you probably have a personality disorder or two. It’s a very Unusual leader at a national level who doesn’t be very wary of that and to therefore establish systems that can withstand craziness.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
That’s such a great answer regarding the systems part of this question, but I’m, I’m very, very interested in the other aspect, which is the nature of human being and this this question of our relationship to power, and now we’re going for sylco with the beginning of this interview, where you started speaking about power. What is how do human relate now you just said, most likely for human crazy power? There’s something not right.

Lyn Carson
Oh, I think we all crave power. I think you do. And I do. It’s probably much more subtle than the kind of power we were just talking about. I think there is something alluring something fabulous about power. That I think we do all wanted in some measure. It’s just that it has a destructive face and a constructive face. So it can be used for good. And it can also be used for evil. But I think we like to be we like to be on top, there’s no question about it. We like to be the ones who have the influence or whatever, because we all consider that we are good people, and then we’ll use it well, even if that’s not true. I, you know, I just think we’re a kind of strange species don’t think that. Yeah. And then we seem to be intent on destroying ourselves just strikes me as quite extraordinary. And that’s got to be a human tendency to be able to just shut off from all that we say that is happening. And, you know, to to voting little election based on a superannuation entitlement or something? just seems so ridiculous. But it’s what we do.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, I heard that sentence for the first time during the last election in Australia that people vote with their wallet. Yeah. It seems to be reality. But yeah. People who are in power in not just in governments and you type of structure tend to… Power seems to corrupt. That’s a very old saying, but it also developed. It’s like people see, power as a bad thing now, and I think that also has a very negative impact on our human minds because the opposite side of things is that if you have a really good intense and integrity, and you refuse power, then who’s going to do the good things in the world.

Lyn Carson
But you’ve just had an experience of power in your citizens, Jerry, I said that it’s a positive example of. So if you’re sharing power with a group of people, it’s actually pretty positive. You know, you’re all looking to come up with good recommendations that were going to benefit everyone. So there was power residing in that, but it was quite positive power. It’s usually when individualized, that it’s problematic. And I would have to say even though, I flippantly said that we’re all intent on destroying ourselves, well, we’re not all intent on destroying ourselves. There’s an inordinate number of people who are expanding a lot of energy trying to prevent that from happening. So it isn’t true that we are all doing this blindly, you know, heading towards the cliff face and throwing, so off. There’s a lot of people who are thinking hard and acting Well, in order to ensure that that doesn’t happen. So I think we always have that. You know, we’re going to say the two faces of power and circumstance

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There are and I’m trying to meet many of them and interview them.

Lyn Carson
Good for you. You’re doing your bit.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Thank you so much for this conversation, Carson, it’s wonderful.

Lyn Carson
That’s been my pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks so much.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Hello, Carson, are you there? Yeah, I’m here. Thank you for this interview. Welcome. I’m going to start by introducing you used to be a professor in applied politics in University of Sydney and Lismore from understand is that correct?

Lyn Carson
I started in Lismore. I eventually went to Sydney and I also spent time not only in the University of Sydney, but also at the University of Western Sydney. So I’ve been I’ve been in several academies, but mostly University of Sydney.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right and what are you doing today?

Lyn Carson
At the moment, I’m the research director for the New Democracy Foundation, which is a non government research institute that I helped develop about 10 years ago and now I’m acting as both a member of the board but also as the research director.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right, that sounds fascinating. What’s what does your research consist in?

Lyn Carson
I’m mostly doing evaluations and critical reflections on deliberative democracy experiments. So we’re particularly interested in ways that can draw typical citizens into political decision making. So we often have oversight of some of these experiments they’re generically called mini Publix or miniature populations. And as a research director I’m you know, I’m looking closely at those I’m writing about various aspects of those all of which can be found on the New Democracy website.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, I’m on the New Democracy the active democracy right now. Looking at it it says you participated in Australia’s first consensus conference, Australia’s first deliberately polls and number of Cityizen juries, etc.

Lyn Carson
I have been involved in these experiments from the time that I was elected to local government in the 90s. And Lismore, and after that I had a chance to work in various ways with consensus conferences, deliberative poll citizens juries, and in particular, the Australian citizens parliament in 2009. A huge project and since then, on many citizens, jury solutions, panels and so on

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Many of our listeners don’t know all these words.

Lyn Carson
I know. Yeah, and it’s, you know, …

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Let’s get right into it. The good stuff is gonna come in. My first question was, what is democracy and how has it changed and morphed throughout the ages?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I mean, the work that I do is in a very particular area, called deliberative democracy. But let me just stay with your question for now. And think about democracy more generally more generically. I’m a bit fond of the way that David Runciman describes this long history of democracy. And I think there’s a long story and middle story and a short story. And that’s the kind of language that he uses. So if you look at the long story, then we’re looking at two and a half thousand years ago, the ancient Greeks and the way in which they did something incredibly unusual for the time, and that was to use a lottery to select its citizens, admittedly, only men, not foreigners, or slaves or women to make political decisions on a daily basis, often involving hundreds of thousands of, of Greeks to do that. So that’s the long story and it looks lasted for hundreds of years, which is kind of the length of our current system. But I’ll come to that the middle story occurred around the time of the French, the American, the English revolutions. And it was when a choice was made about what kind of democracy and I’d almost want to put that in inverted commas. What kind of democracy should replace the very hierarchical, you know, royal houses that were around at the time. And they chose the Roman model. They did not choose the Greek model based on lotteries. They chose the republican model. And that pretty much guaranteed that power would be situated amongst elites for people who had money. And so we went from the long story of what I would think of as a pretty amazing democracy to a middle story where It was replaced with something which I think is more accurately described as representative government rather than democracy to a short story, which is really only happened in the last hundred years. And that’s much more about universal franchise about how giving everyone the vote, including women, you know, which has been a long project over that time. But it’s also been the time during which the two party system or definitely the party system has been submitted as part of this representative government. So you can see we’ve moved a long way from original forms of democracy to what we have now, but we persist in, in calling it democracy and in fact, the term was not even used in the American Constitution. They did not like the idea of democracy at all, because it you know, they, they argued that you would end up with a message the guillotine or whatever. It was a very Nate’s argument in order to secure decision making for political elites, and I think we’re still we’re stuck with that. Actually, I think we do have Yeah, I think we do have a political system. That is

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But in last 50 years there are more experiments and innovations coming in, around democracy.

Lyn Carson
Definitely are Yeah, I think, you know, and that would take me to the kind of work that I do in deliberative democracy and over the past 50 years, definitely since the early 70s. There have been not just experiments but ways in which someone stays. Ideas these mini public’s have been used Firstly, in America as citizens juries in Germany and is planning cells in Australia as as citizens juries, consensus conferences, more recently. We’re seeing the emergence of citizens assemblies. And you’re probably familiar that with that through examples, like the Irish example, but fairly recently led to a change in abortion laws in marriage equality and at the moment is looking at issues policies around climate change, amongst other things, and they’ve been citizens assemblies in Canada, the Netherlands, Iceland,

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Can you, just for our listeners define a bit, mini-publics and, planning cells, citizen juries.

Lyn Carson
So citizens jury is a fairly small scale. It usually involves, you know, somewhere between 12 and 25 people although the work we’ve been doing lately, we often use as many as 40 people in a citizens jury. They come together over a period of time very intensively. They deliberate which is why that term deliberative democracy has emerged. So they deliberate together and, and try to establish their common ground in order to make recommendations. And during those deliberations, they hear from experts, they read a whole lot of information. They’re very educated the people who are part of these intensive processes, and then they make recommendations to a decision maker which should be agreed in advance will be acted upon. So that’s a citizens jury. A planning so work slightly differently in that it’s a bunch of simultaneous I guess you could say juries, in that you might have 20 of them on a given topic in Germany. Maybe there’s 25 people in each usually that’s the number that they would involve. So Refaeli again intensive, but over a period of time they will have had 500 people participate on on a given Topic as citizens assembly is a is a larger scale version of that. So in Australia when we did the Australian citizens parliament, there were 150 people, one from every elected in Australia that came together for four days in one location in camera and made recommendations as citizens assembly usually follows that model. So there’s usually about 100 or 150. People, they, they’re all this always involves random selection, any of the the models that I’ve just talked about, always use random selection in order to get a very diverse group into the room. And as citizens assembly does just that, Ireland did it slightly differently in that they had 66 randomly selected people and 33 elected representatives, so that they could encourage the elected representatives to share ownership. decisions and ensure that they were taken through the parliament. So you’ll get variations but they, they always share these methods always share three ideals, that they’ll be very inclusive, almost always using a lottery or random selection. They will be deeply deliberative. So they’ll take a lot of time, a lot of learning, and they will always be influential. So it has to mean something. It’s not just bringing people together for chat. It’s bringing them together, because there’s an important decision to be made. Does that give you enough information?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah. And all that brings me to the place where you and I met, which was the Byron Model and it falls in everything you just said, and I was lucky enough to be selected in the random stratified selection. What kind of many public was that?

Lyn Carson
That was the citizens jury? Yes. So you have had a first hand experience of the citizens jury And very equipped to talk about what that was like.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
It was amazing. I was very impressed by the whole process and the facilitators.

Lyn Carson
Which raises an additional point, which is that these mini Public are always facilitated by an independent facilitator, someone who will allow the group to find its own way. So it’s very important that that facilitator is mutual, you know, is is not imposing an agenda, but it’s simply there in order to enable the group to end up where it wants to end out.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, and giving a lot of interesting information on how to judge objectively the situation and I really feel it was mutual to the tools and strategies that were used to facilitate were really high quality are all the sessions that we went through.

Lyn Carson
I think you’re also pointing to the fact that we we really want to alert participants to the importance of critical thinking and cognitive biases. So we, we want to, if we can impart the skills of interrogating expert knowledge because we don’t want people to be hoodwinked or you know, cajoled in manipulated in any way. We want those participants to really question the information that they are hearing, which I think in your case study, your own experience happened. You know, I think there are a lot of people who were asking fantastic questions and really interrogating any expert knowledge that came their way.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, well, again, for the listeners to Byron model was an initiative that was facilitated by New Democracy and the Council of the Byron Shire, ordered this study and they have to follow the recommendations for next two years. Is that Right, Carson?

Lyn Carson
That’s exactly right. Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
So we put together this very modern, interesting process with the scale of impact and how deep you must engage the population for each topic that they are are going to have to work with.

Lyn Carson
Indeed, and I think it was a very unusual subject area in that the Byron Council was very interested in knowing how could it create a model for local democracy that really maximized trust in both the council and its ability to work with citizens. So it may be that it was a precedent that we hope is going to be taken up in our local governments throughout the world that we actually give the people themselves an opportunity to say how they want to be governed, which is pretty exciting, really.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
It was it was and I am really fond of the Basic principles that we wrote down, which was trust communication identity. I want to add on this point that you’ve said many times that you don’t really like direct democracy or surveys, because it gives us opinions and opinions are usually not informed. There’s no critical thinking. Can you develop that?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I think you’ve expressed that well, so the difference between direct democracy and deliberative democracy is that direct democracy, let’s think about something like a referendum is a collection and aggregation of what people what people’s opinion is of something now, you can come on stuck with that, because if it’s not informed, all you’re getting is an aggregation of public opinion. Whereas I’m incredibly interested in deliberative democracy, because what you’re getting there is public judgment. So you’re saying that we can harness the collective intention And so the whole community, and together we can arrive at recommendations that are very sound because they’re based on reason. They’re not based on the kind of emotion that you might get if you ask someone in a survey. What do you think of this say? And, you know, surveys are notoriously inaccurate, as we just discovered in Australia in the last election, where the predictions were, were contrary to what would actually happen. So giving an opinion is superficial, it’s fairly meaningless. Whereas that kind of Data Liberation is going to result in something else. I mean, there are there are examples of direct democracy which, which are a little bit stronger than the way that I’ve just conceptualized it. So I’m thinking of somewhere like Switzerland.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
That was my my next question, what’s the best democracy in the world today?

Lyn Carson
Yeah, and I don’t know whether One can, I wouldn’t want to dismiss Switzerland because it, it does use direct democracy. It’s not necessarily deliberative democracy. But there’s such a strong culture of direct democracy. In Switzerland. They’ve been doing this for decades, you know, so that people do engage, I think, fairly meaningfully and genuinely, with the kind of propositions that are put forward to them. So I think you can actually encourage a culture of direct democracy that encourages that kind of thoughtful questioning and conversation. It may be that Switzerland has come some way towards this. It’s certainly the only country that you could point to if you’re saying, you know, what’s the best democracy in the world. There are places that we can point to. I’ve talked about Island and its citizens assemblies, and it’s now done a number of them It may be that Ireland begins to institutionalize citizens assembly. So it just does them routinely, which would mean that it’s coming off a close to being a really good example of democracy is at least one place in Belgium. There’s a German speaking region in Belgium, that has just created what I would one could describe as a permanent citizens assembly that is sitting alongside its parliament. So it can convene many public’s it can set agendas. It can do a whole lot of things. This is actually very exciting in, in my opinion, and I think it’s a way for other regions for other countries for the states to go is to start thinking about ways in which they can permanently be in partnership with randomly selected citizens in something like a citizens assembly. So there are pockets of it. That the frustration for me is that I, I feel like I sit in the middle of the most incredible democratic innovation going on all over the world, because I’m hearing about it all the time. But I think if you don’t hear about that, when you just read newspapers or watch TV or access social media, you would have a very strong sense that we are, you know, we are experiencing the most extraordinary democratic deficit and the things quite dire. And it’s, you know, it’s true that the democracies really are weakening, but there are so many fantastic examples of where good things are happening, that I but you know, it’s great that we’re talking about it, it’s it’s really good for people to know that there are alternatives that are working incredibly well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There’s a lot happening around the world. Can you tell us […] very quickly about what happened in Madrid and in Iceland?

Lyn Carson
Yeah. I mean, Madrid in many ways is both a fantastic story and potentially a sad story in that Madrid developed a method was, you know, based on some work that New Democracy indirectly was part of, but it ended up being a direct democracy method that is people could go online and, and offer ideas to the local government, the city government of Madrid, and Madrid council created what it called an observatory. And that evolved randomly selected people coming together as a mini public to look at those ideas and work out what should go to a referendum and they could also that many public could also propose referendum ideas. Unfortunately, there’s just been a change of governments in Madrid and It’s back to the problem of political elites, perhaps but it’s just unknown whether this is going to survive this fantastic example, that emerged in Madrid may very well stumble as a result of a new fairly right wing government that doesn’t have too much interest in. In persistent with this. Iceland was an example of I mean, they change the constitution using online platforms as well as face to face deliberations. So it’s extraordinary really when you think about constitutional reform, using the kinds of methods that I’ve talked about that in many ways, earning way more trust. You know, if you have a constitutional convention that is made up of political elites, then everyone is deeply suspicious that is probably going to be reformed in a way that’s going to perpetuate their future. Whereas if you put it back in the hands of the population using various methods, then there’s an awful lot more trust involved in in what’s likely to arise. And as we saw no study trust is, is the key. absolutely fundamental. And it’s, we are in a situation where trust is declining in governments. I mean, all I said, I don’t really trust surveys, but all the all the surveys tell us that trust in government is in decline. Not just trust in government, but also people’s willingness to to vote, which I think is a can be a bit of an empty ritual, as I said, but even in a country like Australia that has compulsory voting, I think we saw the lowest turnout amongst young people in the last election and I mean, these these sorts of issues around trust and belief in the system to have you Know that they have consequences?

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah. Maybe that brings me to my next question. Again, Transparency International said that since 2006 , 113 countries have seen a decline in their democracy scores. So what what fundamental rights as an individual need to lose for government to lose its entitlement to, to use the title of democracy.

Lyn Carson
It’s what’s occurring now is, in many ways, it’s really subtle. And a lot of it is attributable to social media. As we know, you only have to look at the Cambridge analytical example and the way in which people can be targeted in a very personal way with messages that are going to influence how they vote, for example. So that’s, that’s not a diminution of their rights. It’s much more subtle. I started to think that it’s all Around a whole lot of illnesses, political illnesses that start with the letter P i think i’m starting to collect them. Things like polarization. And I think social media is, you know, it does result in more polarization, populism, that, you know, people are reacting to elections as though they are reality TV shows and that you can elect a buffoon and and that’s an appropriate act. pessimism, I think those who look closely at these circumstances are starting to be very pessimistic and that can be quite damaging and deadening. I think there are pathologies associated with political parties where they have their eye on short termism on the next election and not so much on long term sound policies. And then there’s that dominance of political elites. And as you could either a lot of pieces associated with that. So I don’t know whether I’m looking at theory here. I am starting to, to think that it is that more subtle stuff that is happening. That is way more scary than the elimination of certain rights, although one would not want to lose those either.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. I thought it was quite a big number, 113 countries since 2006.

Lyn Carson
Yeah.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But so how, based on all those examples you gave that things are happening around the world, what would you say is a good strategy for people to push for more democracy, whether it be locally on a bigger scale?

Lyn Carson
If I could change one thing, I would encourage people not to see the vote as the beginning and the end of their political activity because I think there’s been a while Which that instrument has been oversold, you know that if we just, we just get this vote, and we vote for pre selected candidates and it’s really quite meaningless. You know, a pencil every three or four years in a polling booth is not the way that I think democracy was ever meant to work. And if I go back to ancient Athens, it was about governing and being governed in tune, you know, that we weren’t meant to take turns, leading someone govern and then we assume the position of someone who can do the governing. This is difficult in huge populations, but it’s not difficult at a local government level. And the reason that, that that was an ideal was that we were meant to be able to accomplish things together. That’s the whole purpose of it is so that we could actually share meaning and get on with accomplishing So I want to take people back to how you do that. Inevitably, that takes you back to local government. I mean, it’s a, it is a very poor cousin of state government in Australia that differs throughout the world. But there’s no reason why we can’t assume responsibility for our own futures. at a local level, you and I happen to be part of the bar in local government area. And I would say, this area is actually pretty good at that. You know, I think we do have a council that’s willing to share that with its residents. I think it is going about doing that. And I’d like to think that we could spread the kind of activity that is going on here, elsewhere and encourage people to do just there to advocate citizens juries to resolve the issues to just spend a bit of time advocating for process? You know, I think that’s really underestimated. We think that we activists have a way of protesting about issues instead of protesting about process and if you get the decision making method right, then everything else just falls into place. You know, it’s

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, being an IT person I always think systems are quite important.

Lyn Carson
Exactly. Yeah, I think I spent a big part of my life being an activist in one area or another. And then I realized, hey, it’s the how our decisions being made here. And I think that’s what took me into this very interesting area, which is political decision making, but I mean, decision making generally is pretty fascinating to me.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
You did show us a few examples of things happening in processes being changed in Geelong, Tweed heads, Lismore, all around on the local level.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, there’s some really good stuff happening locally. I think there’s some interesting stuff happening locally around climate change, actually, you know, that local areas are developing climate emergency plans. They’re, you know, they’re acting on it in a way. I mean, that that is absolutely fantastic people just taking responsibility for their own destiny alone, it’s not going to be enough. We know that we know that we need some big policy directions as well. But you have to start somewhere and if those methods are used at a local level and gather some momentum, and one would hope that it will translate into a you know, that bigger context.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, which it follows very well with the two next questions I was going to ask which is, what’s the true value of democracy in helping to build a more humane world You said just a second ago that originally the idea of democracy is to enable us to build together, accomplish together and create meaning.

Lyn Carson
That’s true. And I think it’s why I, I just love the whole notion of democracy. I think it can build a more humane world, I think we have this extraordinary capacity as humans to both think about power in ways that are very destructive, but also to think about power in ways that are incredibly constructive. And I guess we just need to stay focused on that constructive idea of collective decision making ways in which we can actually work together. I mean, you have had that experience of a citizens jury, you know, that when people come together who have Very different ideas, very different backgrounds. It’s extraordinary the level of agreement that exists. And it’s actually quite easy to work with that agreement. Whereas we are living in a world that is so focused on disagreement on discord on what makes us different rather than what makes us alike and what is it that we want to accomplish together? I think when people come together, they always make sound decisions. They always step aside from their own self interest, which they come in with initially, understandably, but by the end of it have a very strong sense of public interest or common goals that they they just move beyond their own backyard, you know, and start to think about the wider community and why is that a really quite moving I think

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There was this very funny example in our group with a person entering the first day being very, very focused on the potholes. And then Few days later realizing, you know, it’s it’s a much larger issue.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, yeah, that’s right.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But let’s imagine for a second, that we’re in an ideal world. In a world where we’ve already managed to establish truly democratized processes everywhere. How would that in which way would that help us to solve the big problems of this world? And thinking, of course, about climate change, but also democracy, poverty, and could there be a domino effect and having better democracies on all of those problems?

Lyn Carson
Yes, I think the court I think it’s going to, it’s going to require I know that I always hold Gretzky’s phrase close to my heart, about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the world, that I think we can be very pessimistic in the face of what we see around us. But there is some kind of optimism of our, our will our collective world that I think can see us the world. I would be repeating myself to say that I do think that it is dependent upon this diverse groupings of of citizens and what they can do together, that would have that kind of domino effect. I’m seeing it in my world in my deliberative democracy world, because I’m part of an international network that is constantly learning from each other. So we see something that happens in one country and say, Aha, why couldn’t network in my country so an experiment that happens in a developing country might then pop up in a western country. And it’s not always the other way around. I’m thinking of something like the participatory budgets that started in, in Porto Alegre in Brazil. And then, before we knew it, they were happening in developed countries. And and the reverse is also true that we’re currently doing a project for the UN that is working in a bunch of countries throughout the world that I think has real potential for change, or, yeah, I think a domino effect is entirely possible while ever we can maintain some optimism of the world.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, you were holding a panel recently in this more on the topic of democracy and climate change. How, what was the conclusion? How does democracy help with the climate crisis?

Lyn Carson
I think it’s it helps in that it’s somewhat of a pincer movement. I think. think if you if you think about the way that we do activism or make decisions as involving insisted spaces and invited spaces, you can see that a positive outcome is possible. And by that, I mean, if you think about an insistence space, as people take into the streets like they are, through organizations like extinction, rebellion, demanding change, I would see that as an insistence space. And alone, I don’t think it’s going to be effective, but it’s essential. I think it’s really important that people do Megan do make noise. But I’m interested in the other end of that, which is the invited spaces so I’m interested in how you can bring people along in a decision making space to help develop policy directions around things like climate change, because I think elected sedatives are just way too fearful. They’re influenced by business group by industry, although I have to save an industry saying we have to do something at the moment. I just think that they, it’s not a good decision making mechanism for something like this. And therefore, I think they will need to reach out and create different decision making mechanisms and citizens assemblies, the the most obvious way of doing that now that’s an invited space. And I think that combination of diverse group of people making sound recommendations about how we must act needs to happen alongside of that insistent space. And I notice that groups like extinction rebellion, are currently calling for citizens assemblies. So they have, I think, realize that they need that combination my own little concern with that is the UK is currently, it’s just announced that it’s going to have a citizens assembly on climate change. And I don’t much like the method that they’re going to employ. It’s too short. You know, there’s a, there’s a bunch of things that that are not going to deliver something that I would look out as sound. And I suppose that raises a very important aspect for me that these methods that I’ve been talking about have to be extremely robust. They need to have oversight by people who understand how you maintain the integrity of the process, otherwise they can be used and abused by people who don’t have the best interests of citizens at heart.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, like every little detail of the process is important, the length, the number of people, the facilitors, etc.

Lyn Carson
Exactly.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Right. Very interesting answers. Thank you. I’d like to ask you a few questions related to technology. And my first one, very simple. How does technology at the moment support democracy?

Lyn Carson
At the moment? I don’t think it’s supported very well. I think it’s one of one of the enemies of democracy for the reasons that I talked about earlier, because for each of technology strengths, there’s a dreadful danger, it seems to me. And the sort of things I’m referring to are obviously fake news, or, you know, it’s polarizing affect its appeal to emotion rather than reason and so on. So I’m not a great fan of technology in the democratic space. I keep wanting to default to face to face but having said that, I think ways in which you can combine the two. I think that’s what they were hoping to do in Madrid to have a way in which technology could bring in everyone and then have a deliberative space of random universe civic lottery of people to just sift through all of that data if you live, but I think it always must be complemented with a face to face deliberative method. Otherwise, I seriously question its value.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, you talking about the discussion aspect, the exchange aspect of democracy? Yeah. How to Build ideas, and agree. And

Lyn Carson
I think technology is great for just extracting ideas, you know? But it’s great at deliberation.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, but very soon we’ll have everything digitized so the communication, the deliberation, the voting, controlling the monitoring, all the aspects of democracy will be digitized. Understand what you said, on the negative aspect of that if we all wanted to discuss ideas, but isn’t maybe another threat to democracy if she’s digitizing everything,

Lyn Carson
I’d love it if you could convince me that there was some value here, but I just want to say is it’s a vulnerability to corruption, you know, that they will always the ways in which it can be manipulated, and it’s very difficult to manipulate a group of diverse citizens, they’re, you know, they become very good critical thinkers and call each other on, on anything whereas, you know, the electronic space is so far notoriously bad at it. It’s been interesting to me over the last, I would say 10 maybe more years to watch people try to create a deliberative version of an online environment and so far without success, there are ways in which we can do something like an informed referendum, you know, record insist upon people rating information that was, you know, very diverse record universe, everything that we try to do, I think I can see how that could be gained, you know, um, so, yeah. I am a cynic.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Alright, so I want to bring that I want to bring those two aspects together to really high technology and the very fact that we invented democracy for us, you means to discuss and agree on things. So imagine a world in which artificial intelligence will be so advanced that could calculate and predict the best systems and the best rules for each and every situation. Just imagine that for a second. And I think in such a world that would exist would likely rely on those calculations, more than would rely on people’s opinions, to make decisions. And in such a world, relying on humans to deliberate and foe to make effective decision what to make sense would be laughable. But if we did that, what’s your opinion of that if we what fundamental fundamental part of life and of the human experience would we be giving up if we were to develop in the world in which we give our power of decision to computers?

Lyn Carson
I love it sort of like it starts with now if pigs could fly, then blablabla. So okay, I’m going to imagine that pigs can fly, that that is even possible. And what would we be giving out? I think we would be giving up what I see as the most extraordinary experience, to be able to look each other in the eye and to understand each other in ways that have so far proven to be impossible. Without that face to face experience, that there is something so fantastic about being in the company of another and trying to work out not just what you have in common, but to actually share meaning and to fully understand that You know, do I actually be able to stand in another person’s shoes is very difficult, online that it’s so easy face to face. So there is some kind of, there is a relational thing that happens in the company of others, that it’s very difficult to emulate online. So I think we’d be giving that up. The very thing that I think makes us truly human is it’s difficult to imagine people giving a figure about justice and equality and so on, unless they were in the company of others. And if the company of others, shrinks to our own family or our own very homogenous circle of friends, then I think we’re going to wind up with even more polarization. I think we resist plurality rate resist diversity, you know how many of your friends or my friends Whole views that are distinctively different to my own, and there aren’t that many of them, I have to say. So unless I’m, you know, I’m given a real experience where, like the experience that you were given in a citizens jury, it’s very difficult to imagine that we’re going to get to a point where we can take each other seriously in ways that are going to lead to good outcomes for everyone. So I think that’s what we be giving out.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, imagine that Byron model if we didn’t need to get together and some some some computer calculated the best process for us, then publish document for the council

Lyn Carson
That has been suggested, by the way. So there’s been a suggestion that instead of voting in an election, that we just hand it over to AI. And we say, all right, well, you know, you know what we look at, I mean, obviously Cambridge Analytica what we looked at. So just have a look at our history online and just vote. Now, in many ways, if that was done accurately, that would probably lead to a better outcome. Because at the moment people vote contrary to their interests. We saw that in the US, you know, the people who are voting for people that are not actually they don’t have their interests at heart, and it’s not going to lead to the kind of outcomes that would be better for them. Because, you know, they’ve been, for whatever reason, hoodwinked into voting for someone else. So you could the people who put forward that idea, you think, well, that would be good. We also know that when people go online, and they look at the kind of platforms prior to election, let’s say, what do you think about all of these policies and then at the end, Is that they say, okay, you should be voting for this party. And inevitably, that’s not the party they’re voting for. Because their policies of matching a party that they are not prepared to vote for, because they vote for a brand or they vote, you know, it’s the whole kind of emotion other than, rather than raisins. So, yeah, I mean, you could argue that AI is going to end up with a more reasonable outcome than the kind of outcomes that we’re currently getting. It’s just that inevitably, it’s also vulnerable to manipulation as well.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
But even that what you were saying before, let’s say we would, let’s take this example in the Byron model, we don’t forget organizes citizen jury, we just have a computer calculate the best strategy and the best process and counsel uses that and it’s so good. Let’s even say it would be a good result in solution. We still not be giving up something as humans.

Lyn Carson
Yeah, I do. I think that democracy was always about responsibility. It was always about rights and responsibilities, which is why I’ve always thought compulsory voting in Australia is, is perfectly valid. It’s a the responsibility of a citizen, to do something to make a contribution. And I think that notion of rights and responsibilities is a very important combination. So in the example that you just gave, well, they go where we’re going to do this, so we’re going to maintain your rights, but where is the responsibility that comes with that you’ve just handed it over to an algorithm or whatever. And I think that makes us that makes us better citizens. If we own decisions, we are much more likely To respect them to, to want to abide by laws and so on if we have been part of their formulation. And I think we’ve moved a long way from that. And I think the example you just gave would take us even further away.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, what I think about it is having to go through those processes and to think about that stuff makes us smarter and wiser and even if we fail, it makes us smarter and wiser. Exactly. But we’re getting to my favorite question, which is what makes a human human? And this is my last question now. You being a professor, you have a sound knowledge of history and corruption and lies have been a major part of the political life political history, so much that political structures such as the republic’s Republic’s democracies, all system that Try and put boundaries to do the power one man can have. And governments can be corrupted by several things, the thirst of power of debt own leaders, but also their entanglement with religious institutions or corporations these days. So, in your opinion, where does the corrupt ability of the government stem from? Is it is it that we fail? We fail to build solid, incorruptible systems? Or is it that we fail to strengthen our characters and morality as conscious human beings? Is it the system? That’s the issue is that the nature of the human being this the issue?

Lyn Carson
It’s both I think, and I’m not sure that corruption and lies have always been a major part of political life because the vulnerability to corruption and lies has always been there. So I think it is part of the human condition. But if you if we go full circle and end up back in ancient Athens, then they were definitely trying to counteract that human tendency, which is why they ended up with this system of lotteries, you know, with decision makers. I mean, they had a whole bunch of other things that we don’t have time to talk about, but almost all of the systems that they put in place, were designed to counteract that. So it is, I think, a combination of both. I think America is going to be a very interesting example for us to watch you know, it’s I think it’s what it’s experiencing right now is it’s our IT systems going to be strong enough to withstand a buffoon as a president, you know, who is just, you know, wow, slightly off Yeah, you know, doing all sorts of wild stuff. And so far the systems have been able to constrain his activities. I mean, that’s not true. In other countries, the systems, particularly when you find new democracies, you mentioned Brazil before. There’s, you know, very scary stuff happening in Brazil right now, which is really just making a mockery of its newly developed systems that it was putting in place to defend itself against that kind of corruption and lies and it hasn’t been able to do that successfully. It’s not the only country. It’s kind of all over the world now, as we know that systems have to be incredibly tough because the US has been at this for a lot longer than those emerging democracies. That’s why I think it’s an interesting case study can it with standard can the UK with And its current distress over Brexit and the likelihood that it true may elect a buffoon as its prime minister, well, we’ll see what happens there in the next few weeks, but many, there are many buffoons who will who will happily step up to the plate and say elect me as your leader. So yes, we need incredibly strong systems to ensure that people who are just off the air, you know, psychopaths or people with personality disorders, let’s face it, anyone who seeks power probably should be denied it. The ancient Greeks Yeah. They were very famous for saying that but if you’re going to, you know, be in there running for leadership, there’s a fair chance that you, you probably have a personality disorder or two. It’s a very Unusual leader at a national level who doesn’t be very wary of that and to therefore establish systems that can withstand craziness.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
That’s such a great answer regarding the systems part of this question, but I’m, I’m very, very interested in the other aspect, which is the nature of human being and this this question of our relationship to power, and now we’re going for sylco with the beginning of this interview, where you started speaking about power. What is how do human relate now you just said, most likely for human crazy power? There’s something not right.

Lyn Carson
Oh, I think we all crave power. I think you do. And I do. It’s probably much more subtle than the kind of power we were just talking about. I think there is something alluring something fabulous about power. That I think we do all wanted in some measure. It’s just that it has a destructive face and a constructive face. So it can be used for good. And it can also be used for evil. But I think we like to be we like to be on top, there’s no question about it. We like to be the ones who have the influence or whatever, because we all consider that we are good people, and then we’ll use it well, even if that’s not true. I, you know, I just think we’re a kind of strange species don’t think that. Yeah. And then we seem to be intent on destroying ourselves just strikes me as quite extraordinary. And that’s got to be a human tendency to be able to just shut off from all that we say that is happening. And, you know, to to voting little election based on a superannuation entitlement or something? just seems so ridiculous. But it’s what we do.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Yeah, I heard that sentence for the first time during the last election in Australia that people vote with their wallet. Yeah. It seems to be reality. But yeah. People who are in power in not just in governments and you type of structure tend to… Power seems to corrupt. That’s a very old saying, but it also developed. It’s like people see, power as a bad thing now, and I think that also has a very negative impact on our human minds because the opposite side of things is that if you have a really good intense and integrity, and you refuse power, then who’s going to do the good things in the world.

Lyn Carson
But you’ve just had an experience of power in your citizens, Jerry, I said that it’s a positive example of. So if you’re sharing power with a group of people, it’s actually pretty positive. You know, you’re all looking to come up with good recommendations that were going to benefit everyone. So there was power residing in that, but it was quite positive power. It’s usually when individualized, that it’s problematic. And I would have to say even though, I flippantly said that we’re all intent on destroying ourselves, well, we’re not all intent on destroying ourselves. There’s an inordinate number of people who are expanding a lot of energy trying to prevent that from happening. So it isn’t true that we are all doing this blindly, you know, heading towards the cliff face and throwing, so off. There’s a lot of people who are thinking hard and acting Well, in order to ensure that that doesn’t happen. So I think we always have that. You know, we’re going to say the two faces of power and circumstance

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
There are and I’m trying to meet many of them and interview them.

Lyn Carson
Good for you. You’re doing your bit.

Cyprien (FutureSeeds)
Thank you so much for this conversation, Carson, it’s wonderful.

Lyn Carson
That’s been my pleasure. I’ve enjoyed it. Thanks so much.