I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as collective values. Individual egregores (distributed agents running on human wetware, like governments, religions, businesses, etc) can have coherent values, but groups of people in general do not. Rather, there are more and less optimal (in the sense of causing minimal total regret—I’m probably thinking of Pareto optimality here) mechanisms for compromising.
The “collective values” that emerge are the result of the process, not something inherent before the process begins, and further, different processes will lead to different “collective values”, the same way that different ways of thinking and making decisions will lead a person to prioritize their various desires / subagents differently.
It does look, though, as if some mechanisms for compromising work better than others. Markets and democracies work very differently, but nearly everyone agrees either one is better than dictatorship.
I’m pretty sure there is no such thing as collective values. Individual egregores (distributed agents running on human wetware, like governments, religions, businesses, etc) can have coherent values, but groups of people in general do not. Rather, there are more and less optimal (in the sense of causing minimal total regret—I’m probably thinking of Pareto optimality here) mechanisms for compromising.
The “collective values” that emerge are the result of the process, not something inherent before the process begins, and further, different processes will lead to different “collective values”, the same way that different ways of thinking and making decisions will lead a person to prioritize their various desires / subagents differently.
It does look, though, as if some mechanisms for compromising work better than others. Markets and democracies work very differently, but nearly everyone agrees either one is better than dictatorship.