@ pan
that's honestly the best response i've gotten from anyone i've talked to about this so far. i like that you are actually trying to come up with a solution that may not agree with me but addresses the problems i am pointing out instead of falling back on "you can't trust people with too much power" therefore we always must settle for a mediocre solution.
i have a few questions/challenges for your solution:
even if the algorithm for picking the articles is perfect at getting a balanced mix, the algorithm for selecting people to vote can't be nearly as balanced without being flawed. let's face it, some people are better at solving problems than others. just doing a random survey only gives you the most common opinion, not necessarily the right answer.
how would you really test that they had seriously read and considered the articles? their only requirement is to vote and say they said they read some articles which they can do easily without spending much time on it at all and you will just have to accept that they did and this was the opinion they left with.
plus, even if they did read the several random articles which were balanced for bias through a neutral algorithm, this won't necessarily cancel out whatever initial bias they already have prior to even being selected for that issue. everyone has some sort of ideological bias that will honestly effect how they interpret and side with the various articles. which still makes this bottom-up solution susceptible to interest groups lobbying support with widespread propaganda campaigns.
i do like what you say about the answers are in the population and we just have to figure out how to pull them out, but what if the better answer that we find is not the more popular answer and a lot of people are mislead by the hangups i mentioned above? do the people interpreting the data have the authority to override the popular consensus and select the more effective answer? cause if so then the system in question really ceases to represent the idea of a democracy to me.
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