So, depending on the topic and which appropriate template is chosen the chances of success are ‘almost’ guaranteed because the underlining logic is agreed upon and already proven.
It’s not easy for me to understand how strong of a claim you’re making here, because you say “depending on the topic” and “almost.” It still feels too strong to me. I’d say most of the time, at best, templates for discussion would just be helpful. Especially if people have different values and beliefs about the world, disagreements are very difficult to settle.
I suppose questions in mathematics or something where you can prove an answer is correct may be a type of exception. Check out the polymath project if you haven’t seen it already for an example of people collaborating on trying to solve (math) problems.
I have a lot of similar ideas to the ones you’ve presented in this post, so if you’d like to discuss these things anytime, feel free to send me a dm.
There are a few things that sound similar to what you’re talking about. The first is the process of writing an RFC: https://github.com/inasafe/inasafe/wiki/How-to-write-an-RFC. Also wikipedia must need to do many of the things you describe, so looking into how they reach consensus may be interesting for you. Also, there are attempts to have more of a direct democracy style governance in the US, and they have certain procedures that you may want to look into: https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-future-of-democracy/politics-without-politicians
I do like the idea of templates for certain types of discussion. That’s why I wrote this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/xE7F4b34pfTMThYMX/what-questions-should-we-ask-ourselves-when-trying-to.
It’s not easy for me to understand how strong of a claim you’re making here, because you say “depending on the topic” and “almost.” It still feels too strong to me. I’d say most of the time, at best, templates for discussion would just be helpful. Especially if people have different values and beliefs about the world, disagreements are very difficult to settle.
I suppose questions in mathematics or something where you can prove an answer is correct may be a type of exception. Check out the polymath project if you haven’t seen it already for an example of people collaborating on trying to solve (math) problems.
I have a lot of similar ideas to the ones you’ve presented in this post, so if you’d like to discuss these things anytime, feel free to send me a dm.