Habermas Machine workshop
This session is part of the Introduction to Political Technology programme at Newspeak House, open to faculty, fellows, and fellowship candidates only.
Session by Fellowship Candidate Yiannis Ravanis
Following up on Theo's session on Digital Deliberative Methods, this is a session for the Lab Members to try out Habermas Machine!
Faculty are welcome as observers of the process, with an opportunity to give feedback at the end.
The Habermas Machine is an LLM powered deliberation engine designed to find consensus among people who disagree. Read more about it here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/j9K4Wu9XgmYAY3ztL/habermas-machine
Before the session, I have opened an async deliberation to answer the question:
"What three questions should we deliberate via the Habermas Machine next week?"
It takes five minutes: propose three questions, then rank and critique the Machine's suggestions.
You can join the deliberation with the link in the location details, shown to approved guests.
I'll kick it off in a few days.
For the actual session, I suggest the questions bellow, one warmup, one mission oriented, one action oriented.
1) What is one silly constitutional rule we should adopt? (warmup)
2) What should our mission as the 2026 Newspeak House cohort be?
3) How should we best utilise our available capital to achieve our mission (financial, and Newspeak House devolved estate)?
Each question will be deliberated for 2 rounds, 10 minutes each max (can close round early), for a total of 1h. Between questions we will have a 5 min rest break. That then leaves us 45m for open discussion to share our thoughts and for the faculty to give us feedback/ideas/advice.
A place to potentially draw questions/inspiration from is the Fellowship Programme Doc Ed put together (link in the location details, shown to approved guests).
I will share a zoom link on discord when we start the meeting so people can join remotely.
Recording: this session will not be recorded.