Epistocracy

A New Way to Make Group Decisions

Epistocracy is a proposed governance system that improves how groups make decisions together by revealing the reasoning behind those decisions.

School Board Example:

In a traditional vote, parents might only vote YES or NO on "Let's build a new playground"

In epistocracy, a parent could introduce relevant information like "The proposed location floods every spring"

The system weighs how relevant this new information is to the original proposal

Other parents could confirm or dispute this claim with evidence

Community Garden Example:

Instead of simply voting on "Let's plant tomatoes in Section A," participants could add:

"Section A gets 30% less sunlight than Section B"

"Tomatoes need full sun to thrive"

The system connects these related pieces of information

The final decision reflects not just what was decided, but why

The key innovation is transparency in reasoning. Epistocracy doesn't just tell you if a proposal passed or failed — it reveals the logic and evidence behind the decision. This helps everyone understand not just what was decided, but the reasoning process that led there.

This approach could be valuable for any group making complex decisions, from neighborhood associations to scientific research committees to corporate boards.

The examples above show how epistocracy makes decision-making more transparent, but there's another important aspect: epistocracy works alongside governance systems that use financial incentives (such as futarchy). Epistocracy can be thought of as an additional layer that brings clarity to decisions that often involve money or resources. This makes it particularly useful in real-world situations like businesses, community projects, or public funding decisions where both reasoning and resources matter. If you're interested in the technical details of how we're designing epistocracy to work with these financial systems, we have more information available about our approach here:

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General Technical Approach⁠

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