I have had an academic interest in using assurance contracts in the social domain for a few years now. Like the author, I want them to be a reality but making that happen isn’t my forté. My profession is research, not implementation.
When we import this mechanism into the social domain, an assurance contract is an agreement something like an open letter—with the exception that the signatures on the letter become public only after some safety conditions (analogous to the provision point) are fulfilled. At a university it might look like this:
We, the undersigned believe [controversial idea we might be punished for expressing] and think the University should take the following steps [1, 2, 3…]. Signatures on this letter will become public only when there are at least [60] signatures from tenured faculty, [150] signatures from pre-tenure faculty, and [400] signatures from students. Until then, no one except the keeper of this letter can see who has signed.
This serves to make expressing a controversial (or controversial-feeling) idea much less costly: while a single hand raised in dissent might get cut off, a thousand can be safely raised together.
If anyone is interested in working together to make assurance contracts in the social domain a thing drop me a line. I’d love to see it happen.
I have had an academic interest in using assurance contracts in the social domain for a few years now. Like the author, I want them to be a reality but making that happen isn’t my forté. My profession is research, not implementation.
I’ve written a few overviews of the idea for grants before. Here’s one: https://cashman.science/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Assurance_description_v11.pdf
The basic idea is this:
When we import this mechanism into the social domain, an assurance contract is an agreement something like an open letter—with the exception that the signatures on the letter become public only after some safety conditions (analogous to the provision point) are fulfilled. At a university it might look like this:
This serves to make expressing a controversial (or controversial-feeling) idea much less costly: while a single hand raised in dissent might get cut off, a thousand can be safely raised together.
If anyone is interested in working together to make assurance contracts in the social domain a thing drop me a line. I’d love to see it happen.