Table of Contents for Governance Systems Design

Capsule history of governance systems of the world

Note that i have not researched this section carefully and it is probably rife with errors. This section should be treated as a fable, not as fact. I do not intentially including anything misleading or false here, and ideally i'd like to improve this section until is is fact, not fable, but i dont have time and so there is bound to be mistakes due to my lack of diligence; please contact me if you have conclusive evidence that something i said here is incorrect or misleading.

(todo: a capsule history of governance. surprising how far back everything goes. democracy,solrition vs reepublic,aristo. slavery, sortition, monarchy, indiv rights, antitotalitarianism, univeersal franchise, scalable republic, the press, science and progress, industry, feudal mode, meerchant mode, warrior glory, warrior/priest/commoner, elders, suizereignity, sovereignity, anarchism (not neccesarily advocates of no procedure); communism/socialist capitalism)

Governance system examples

athens

" In Athens:

    generals and treasurers were elected
    other official positions were chosen by an elaborate lottery process that every adult male citizen was entitled to participate in
    none of these officials had very much power to make any decisions
    decisions and laws were passed in Assembly, which was a gathering of citizens anyone could turn up to
    anyone could speak to the citizens at Assembly and seek to sway them to their point of view
    legal matters, including constitutional matters, were decided on by large numbers of lottery-selected citizens
    elections were regarded as undemocratic and to be avoided wherever possible
    the Athenians paid people for participating at Assembly and on juries" -- Roslyn Fuller

sparta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spartan_Constitution early example of 'communism'?

rome

ancient china

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Lords_and_Nine_Ministers
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Departments_and_Six_Ministries
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorate
• "Ch'ü T'ung-tsu has shown that the "Confucianisation" of Chinese law was a slow process and that the amalgamation of the Confucian views of society with the law codes was completed only in the great Tang Code of CE 624. The code is regarded as a model of precision and clarity in terms of drafting and structure." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_law#Imperial_law
• legalism: "The Legalist school, as represented by such thinkers as Han Fei Zi, insisted that the ruler must always rely on penal law and the imposition of heavy punishments as the main instrument of government. At the same time, moral considerations and social standing should be rigorously excluded. Another hallmark of Legalist thinking was that there should be equality before the law. On the question of legislative technique, the Legalists stressed that the rules enacted by the ruler for punishment of offences should be clear, intelligible to the ordinary people, and properly communicated to them." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_law#Legalism_and_Qin

various systems during the French Revolution

failed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Year_VIII

holy roman empire, hanseatic league, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_commune

?swiss stuff?

failed: paris commune paris commune had almost learned what i think is one lesson of thee french revolution: no death penalty but this was only a de jure rule, not a de facto one; killing of generals, hostages, etc

Presidential system (example: US constitution) failed: us confederation failed: electoral college maybe it occurs after violent revolutions where the leading military general of the rebels becomes the president? (eg george washington in the US (presidentialy); Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan (ROC) (semi-presidential); Yuan Shikai in China)

Parliamentary system (example Westminster) (older, but updated more than the US constitution)

US modern joint shareholder corporation articles vs bylaws: each class can vote on articles separately?

US LLC

failed: USSR

taiwan's (ROC's) constitution (was five branches/Yuan)

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Republic_of_China
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legislative_Yuan
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Yuan
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Yuan
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Examination_Yuan
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_Yuan
• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_Constitution_of_the_Republic_of_China

art. 60 ff. of the Swiss Civil Code: http://web.archive.org/web/20120401000000*/http://communitywiki.org/en/CorporateMembership

modern china

holacracy

Occupy Wall Street

branch democracy (my own proposal)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_town_meeting [1]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland : a semi-direct democracy

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freemasonry#Recognition.2C_amity_and_regularity

United States House of Representatives

The United States House is a legislative chamber. The majority party elects the Speaker, through the Speaker and their majority control of the House floor and of the committees, especially the Rules Committee, they have a lot of procedural control. The majority party often limits debate, claiming this is neccessary because there are so many members of the House (over 400). In constrast to the U.S. Senate, where the possibility of filibustering allows the minority party to essentially impose a supermajority 60% 'veto' over many acts, in the U.S. House the majority can pass legislation over the strong objection of the minority.

Some of this is said to be a result of reforms made by Thomas Brackett Reed in the 1890s, who believed that "The best system is to have one party govern and the other party watch.". [2].

Some of this as a result of changes made by Republicans after they captured Congress in 1994, in which the old policy of appointments to committee chairs based on seniority was jettisoned, causing the chairs to be effectively under the control of the party leadership. (Congress in comparative perspective by Graham K.Wilson)

" There is little disput among political scientists that the U.S. Congress is a uniquely powerful legislature by comparison with those in other contemporary democracies. And to the extent that a powerful and independent legislature is regarded as a positive attribute for modern democracies, Capitol Hill is surely the most compelling model.

The U.S. second chamber, the Senate, is as powerful, if not more so (due to its veto over federal executive and judicial nominations and its foreign policy prerogatives) than the House of Representatives. AMong other second chambers examined in this volume, perhaps only the Italian and Brazilian senates (and to some extent the German Bundesrat) approach the coequal strength of the U.S. Senate. Moreover, unlike other second chambers, such as the British House of Lords and the Canadian Senate, the U.S. second chamber does not suffer from a "legitimacy issue" that undermines its authority. The Senate has been directly elected for nearly a century, and although it grossly overrepresents the smaller states (Lee and Oppenheimer 1999_, there is no imminent or likely threat to its authority within the U.S. constitutional system.

The U.S. House of Representatives is also highly unusual by modern democratic standards. The term of office—two years—is the shortest among polyarchies today. The U.S. House is also peculiar in that the presiding officer -- the Speaker -- is simultaneously the leader of the majority party. In most other modern democracies, the chamber presidency or speakership is a neutral and largely nonpartisan office confined to arbitrating floor debate.

Both chambers of the U.S. Congress possess conspicuously powerful permanent committees with significant legislative power, covering the entire spectrum of government activity. These committees also have important oversight and investigative power, covering the entire specrum of government activity. By international standards, Congress is also superbly staffed at all levels: research staff (the Congressional Research Service, the Congressional Budget Office), committee staff, and personal staff, with generous office, mailing, and travel allowances. In 2006, members of Congress earned an annual salary of $165,200, meaning that their wages are also well above the international average for parliamentarians.

The relative weakeness of American parties also means that individual members enjoy much more freedom in lawmaking and can make a mark earlier in their legislative career than in most other democratic systems. The fact that the U.S. executive, the president, is not electorally dependent on the assembly also allows legistlators to challenge the executive to a far greater degree than in other advanced industrial democracies, almost all of which are parliamentary systems. WHile most democratic legislative chambers today are in a weak position vs-a-vis their governments, U.S. presidents have to fight for their proposals every inch of the way in Congress and rarely get everything they want, event when their own party is nominally in the majority. Individual members of the executive are also compelled to appear regularly before committees and explain themselves. No other contemporary executive has to undergo anything like this degree of day-to-day scrutiny.

Of course all of these judgements are relative. By comparison with a century ago, Congress has lost a great deal of power to the presidency and the rest of the executive branch -- particularly in the area of war-making and national security -- as government has expanded and the United States has become a world power (Fisher 1995; Sundquist 1981). In this respect, the American experience partially mirrors the twentieth-century tentency for executives in democracies to gain power at the expense of legislatures in parallel with the expansion of government and the development of mass political parties (Duverger 1954). In the House of Representatives today, the committees and their chairs are but poor shadows of the bastions of power than they were in the middle decades of the twentith century. The party leadership has become much stronger in the last quarter century, and Congress is more partisan today than it has been since the 1890s (Rohde 1991; Sinclair 1995), altohugh party unity and discipline are still at nothing like the levels seen in other advanced industrial democracies. Part of this is due to the peculariarity of most House districts being drawn to be "safe" for one party or the other, but the trend has also affected the Senate, although to a somewhat lesser degree (Rae and Campbell 2001). The role of like-minded interest groups associated with the major parties in congressional campaigns, as well as the tendency of the ideologically minded to participate disproportionately in congressional electison, has probably been more significant here (Schier 2000). ... Federalism in the United States is robust, which is not the case in many nominally federal systems. " -- Legislative Diffiusion: Can the U.S. Congress Be a Source? by Timothy J. Power and Nicol C. Rae, in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

"...the specific electoral system (single-member district plurality, or SMDP) that is traditionally viewed as the driving force behind much congressional behavior (Mayhew 1973; Fenno 1978)." -- Legislative Diffiusion: Can the U.S. Congress Be a Source? by Timothy J. Power and Nicol C. Rae, in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

" While U.S. parties have revived in recent decades, they still pale in terms of organization, discipline, and electoral loyalty by comparison with the ideological and disciplined mass parties characteristic of many other advanced democracies. Party loyalties in the United States have rarely been sufficient to overwhelm the inherent powers of the legislature, and Americans, unlike Europeans, have been unwilling to sacrifice legislative power for partisan ends.

Mass parties evolved in Europe in the late nineteenth century as the advent of democratization, in combination with industrialization, created political pressure for the legislative representation of the working calss and some accomodation of their social and political demands, even at the expense of the independence and traditions of free debate in the legislature (Ostrogorski 1982; Duverger 1954). Legislative power in these circumstances became secondary to partisan imperatives, particularly in parliamentary systems where the legislator's first priority became etiher the defense or undermining of the government of the day, depending on whether the legislator's party held power. In fact, the institutionalized and powerful British House of Commons of the late nineteenth century stood as something of a barrier to democratic development as expressed by the mass parties that emerged to channel the political demands of the new middle- and working-class electorate.

Different historical patterns -- such as guaranteed constitutional rights and the emergence of a mass electorate prior to industrialization -- led to a... ... yet it is also evidence from our authors' accounts that the American model HAS been influential in several specific areas -- particularly as the grip of the mass party has begun to erode. Economic growth and concomitant social change have led to the attenuation of traditional class politics in Western democracies. A related rise of new parties and social movements is linked to an expanding "postmaterialist" middle class (Inglehart 1997) that possesses a much more individualistic and participatory approach to politics than the traditional hierarchical and disciplined mas parties. Emerging new social movements have been more inclined to challenge the authority of an overweening executive, traditional governing elites, swollen bureaucracies, and hidebound mass party organizations of both the Right and the Left. Elite-challenging actors have tapped into the increasingly self-expressive, anti-authoritarian biases that drive citizens to mistrust large-scale public institutions, including representative assemblies (Inglehard and Welzel 2005).

In this climate, and with the corresponding rise of "critical citizens" (Norris 1999), legislators have responded by seeking tools with which to cahllenge government and open its procedures and decisions to public scruitny. As legislatures have become somewhat less inclined to be pure rubber stamps for party governments, and individual legislators have become more creative in the use of what powers they have, interest in emulating at least some aspects of the U.S. congressional model, such as stronger committees and investigations, has grown. The U.S. Congress -- especally in its more combative, investigatory mode in the wake of Vietnam and Watergate (Sundquist 1981) -- provides an obvious model. ... The greater utilization of committee inquires and public committee hearings has been the most readily imitated aspect of congressional procedure...The adoption of committee inquires and investigations in Germany, Britain, and Canada has been popular...Even in Latin America, Morgenstern and Carey note the increased power of legislative committees and the growing use of roll call voting in recent years, although the prevailing executive-central environment still poses limits to the concept of a powerful legislature... ... Polsby (1975a) made the distinction between an "arena" and a "transformative" legislature, the former serving as the main venue of national political debate between government and opposition but with no substantive policy-making role, and the latter being a lawmaking body in the full sense of the word....Amie Kreppel makes a similar distinction -- although she uses the less opaque term "chamber of debate" rather than "arena legislature."... the U.S. Congress is very much..with a full policy-making role. Most of the other parliaments discussed in this volume...function primarily as chambers of debate, dominated by the government of the day, lacking adequate staff and resources, and generally experiencing high membership turnover. We stress again that the weak position of the legislative branch in most advanced democraicies is a legacy of the rise of mass political parties....the singular weakness of the American parties, by comparison with those in most other democratic or democratizing regimes in the early decades of the twentieth century, largely explains why the U.S. Congress has remained uniquely powerful among legislatures.... " -- Barrier and Carriers.. in Exporting Congress?: The Influence of the U.S. Congress on World Legislatures

http://wikisum.com/w/Mayhew:_Congress http://wikisum.com/w/Fenno:_Homestyle http://wikisum.com/w/Category:American_Politics

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Notes on Limits on Exporting the U.S. Congress Model to Latin America by Scott Morgenstern:

Why are Latin American legislatures weaker?

"Latin America’s democracies all have constitutions based on the U.S. model of presidentialism in that their presidents and legislatures are elected separately and on set schedules, the two branches have independent powers, and neither branch can dissolve the other. ...however, there are important differences between the United States and Latin American constitutions... the Latin American legislatures are not co-equal branches with the executive; few significant bills that become law are initiated in the legislature, most legislatures cannot increase the budget, and most executives are empowered to alter the legislative agenda and they can often end-run the legislatures on policy proposals. Given their more limited roles, Latin American legislatures attract very different sorts of legislators than in the U.S. case. As I show in this chapter, many Latin American legislators have only limited interests in becoming policy experts, writing legislation, or even winning reelection....legislatures continue to maintain the reputation as places to hold debates or ratify executive initiatives, rather than initiate bills, develop budgets, and oversee executive actions. "

some structural aspects that makes Latin American legislatures weaker:

• cannot increase the budget
• executive powers over legislative agenda; some executives can force the legislature to consider their proposal via 'urgency provisions'; they can do this over and over, preventing the legislature from having time to do anything else
• low re-election rates gives legislators little hopes of making a career in the legislature, which means they have no incentive, and little time, to drive professionalization and institutional reform with the legislature
• lack of independence in the courts
• executive can pass legislative "decrees" which the legislature cannot veto (without their veto itself facing an executive veto) (note: the U.S. now has elements of this as well, after a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Immigration and Naturalization Service v. Chadha)
• executive have a 'partial veto', which disincentivizes legislators from making deals with each other in order to compromise
• lack of generous staffing budgets for individual legislators, and lack of institutional assistance (for example, the U.S.'s Congressional Research Service, or the U.S.'s Congressional Budget Office; or things like a legislative bill-tracking website; or website and email infrastructure for legislator-constituent communication) makes it hard for legislatures to employ the expertise needed to create substantive policy proposals
• some effects in the U.S. of a high re-election rate (and therefore legislators looking at their job as a career): the seniority system, a more complex organizational scheme, greater staff resources, and a decentralization of power in the chambers, institutional support for helping members get re-elected (via credit claiming, position taking, and advertising)
• if you want legislators to vote for the reforms needed for a professionalized legislature, these reforms must further the interests of individual legislators
• legislation cannot increase, or in some cases alter, the budget without an executive proposal
• budget committees have unreasonable time constraints to review the executive's budget proposal (eg 45 days)
• no judicial review of executive actions, or executive control over judges via court packing or similar
• no way for an entity other than the executive to get judicial review of a law outside of the context of a case
• "A final aspect of the party system that affects legislative organization and functioning is the independence of the legislative party from the executive. Even when U.S. presidents have enjoyed a partisan majority in the legislature, they frequently have had trouble winning support for their initiatives. Latin American presidents, by contrast, often direct their legislative contingents and thus face limited pressure by legislatures when their parties do control a majority of legislative seats. There would not likely be much movement towards the development of oversight mechanisms in Chavez’s Venezuela, Menem’s (or Peron’s) Argentina, or Fujimori’s Peru. As an example, even though a new constitution in 1994 which gave Menem the right to run for reelection also gave the Argentine Congress the right and obligation to set up a committee to oversee executive decrees, the necessary enabling legislation was not passed." (is he suggesting that Latin American presidents tend to direct legislative contingents because of the party-list electoral system?)
• "Of course the opposite system also exists in Latin America, where multipartism leaves presidents with very limited support in the legislature. These cases might be propitious for an interest in developing oversight of the executive, but collective action problems could inhibit the formation of the requisite structure or the necessary cooperation among the otherwise competitive parties."

An idea for rotating committee chairmanship:

• "Chile’s committee system shows that even with a majority actor in the legislature, there are viable and perhaps preferable alternatives to the U.S. model." They "rotate the chairmanship of the committees among coalition members, so that each legislator could credit claim and advertise to their constituents. Perhaps this shows the limits of Mayhew’s oft-cited phrase about the difficulty in imagining a better organizational scheme than the U.S. Congress if the institution were nothing but a reelection machine."

recent changes that make Latin American legislatures more U.S.-like:

• "They have moved towards a system of permanent rather than standing committees. They have begun to use roll-call voting on a more consistent basis and have improved their bill-tracking systems. Veteran consultants from U.S. campaigns have directed Latin American elections, thus yielding U.S.-style media battles and phonebanks..."
• "In the past, Latin American legislatures were considered places to debate, express discontent, recruit for the executive, ratification and legitimate government decisions, or decide upon distribution of clientelistic resources (see, for example, Baaklini 1992; Mezey 1979; Kornberg and Mussolf, 1970; Kornberg 1973. Abuses of power by decree-wielding presidents and statements like those of Colombian President Uribe suggest a continued prominence of this view. However, recent and successful efforts in numerous countries to reform constitutions and shore up the Latin American legislatures in other ways also suggest that at least some policymakers in both North and South America have come to accept a new assumption about the proper role of the legislatures. This shift in assumptions is perhaps related to arguments about how the concentration of power in the executive cheapens the democracy and inhibits democratic consolidation (O’donnell, 1994; Shugart and Carey, 1993; Ordeshook and Shvetsova, 1997). "

"Chile’s Congress has conventionally been regarded as among the mosteffective in Latin America in representing diverse interests and influenc-ing policy" -- Parties, Coalitions, and the Chilean Congress in the 1990s by John M. Carey

titles

names that came from old fedual household stuff eg chamberlain

"Court officials or office-bearers (one type of courtier) derived their positions and retained their titles from their original duties within the courtly household. With time, such duties often became archaic. However, titles survived involving the ghosts of arcane duties. These styles generally dated back to the days when a noble household had practical and mundane concerns as well as high politics and culture." -- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_%28royal%29#Court_officials

(other household guys: steward, butler (etymology related to 'bottle', "the attendant entrusted with the care and serving of wine and other bottled beverages which in ancient times might have represented a considerable portion of the household's assets" [3]), sensechal, chamberlain, marshal (etymology relating to 'horse', 'stable servant' [4]), footman, valet, coachman, groom)

"the four great offices necessary to run a great household: seneschal, butler, marshal and chamberlain" -- [5]

other names and their origins: chancellor, bailiff, sheriff, duke, earl, alderman, count, marquis

academic administrator titles: http://www.heitmanagement.com/blog/2013/03/what-is-a-provost-an-introduction-to-administrative-and-academic-ranks/

page squire knight

archon

constable count of the stables https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshal

castellans

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burgrave

margrave

kaiser and czar: from Caesar -- [6]

reeve: sheriff comes from it

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogt

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministeriales comparable to Gentry

pattern: some serfs become household servants, become administrators, become lords. Eg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministeriales

"In many European languages, the very word for "king" derives from (Charlemagne's/Karl's) name; e.g., Polish: król, Ukrainian: король (korol'), Czech: král, Slovak: kráľ, Hungarian: király, Lithuanian: karalius, Latvian: karalis, Russian: король, Macedonian: крал, Bulgarian: крал, Romanian: crai, Bosnian: kralj, Serbian: краљ/kralj, Croatian: kralj, Turkish: kral." -- [7]

"Chancery is a general term for a medieval writing office, responsible for the production of official documents." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_%28medieval_office%29

https://faculty.history.wisc.edu/sommerville/123/123%20133%20Government.htm

comptroller clerk

"Early medieval European courts frequently traveled from place to place following the monarch as he traveled. This was particularly the case in the early French court."

"Olson argued that under anarchy, a "roving bandit" only has the incentive to steal and destroy, whilst a "stationary bandit" a tyrant has an incentive to encourage some degree of economic success as he expects to remain in power long enough to benefit from that success. A stationary bandit thereby begins to take on the governmental function of protecting citizens and their property against roving bandits." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mancur_Olson

more on feudal England:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_of_King%27s_Bench_%28England%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchequer_of_Pleas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chancery_%28medieval_office%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curia_regis

The Feudal Kingdom of England: 1042-1216 By Frank Barlow

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_precedence_in_the_Catholic_Church

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acolyte

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" By the time of Henry I (r. 1100–1135), the royal household was divided into five departments as described in the Constitutio Domus Regis. The Chapel—led by the lord chancellor—served the king's spiritual and secretarial needs. Subordinate to the chancellor was the master of the writing office (or chancery) who supervised the clerks who wrote various government documents. The Chamber was the main financial office within the king's government and also saw to the king's personal needs. The Chamber was led by the master chamberlain (Latin magister camerarius, later called the Lord Great Chamberlain), lesser chamberlains, and other officials. The next department was the Hall, led by the stewards who probably were four in number and served in rotation. The buttery was led by the butler. The constabulary-marshalsea constituted the outdoor staff (including a large number of hunting officials) under the authority of the constables and master-marshal. These officers also supervised the knights of the royal household, who formed the backbone of the king's army. Knights of the familia militaris or military household were often young men from prominent families for whom receiving military training in the king's household was considered a great honor. Others were younger sons forced to make their own way in the world.[2] " -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Households_of_the_United_Kingdom

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             Stanford EE Computer Systems Colloquium

                4:30 PM, Wednesday, October 28, 2015
     NEC Auditorium, Gates Computer Science Building Room B3
                       Stanford University
                   http://ee380.stanford.edu[1]

Topic: The Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME) and Its Unparalleled Power To Influence How We Think

Speaker: Robert Epstein American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology [2]

About the talk:

An extensive study published in August 2015 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that biased search rankings have a dramatic impact on the voting preferences of undecided voters. Five randomized, controlled experiments conducted with more than 4,500 participants in two countries showed that rankings that favored one candidate could easily increase the proportion of people who supported that candidate by 20 percent or more--up to 80 percent in some demographic groups--with virtually no one aware they were being manipulated. Because in most countries online search is conducted on a single search engine, this means that if, for any reason, search results on that search engine favored one candidate, a large number of votes would likely be driven to that candidate with no possible way of counteracting the effect. Because search algorithms currently do not incorporate "equal-time" rules to assure objectivity in presenting election-related material, and because many elections around the world are won by small margins, it is possible that a single search engine has recently been determining the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of the world's national elections, with increasing impact each year as internet penetration has been increasing.

The impact of search rankings on people's thinking is called the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). SEME is one of the

largest behavioral effects ever discovered, and it is almost entirely undetectable as a means of social influence, which makes it especially dangerous. Its impact extends far beyond voting, affecting decisions large and small that people make every day. SEME's power derives from a basic operant conditioning phenomenon: In routine searches every day, people are being trained, like rats in a Skinner box, to believe that what is higher in a list of search results is better and truer. The stronger that belief becomes, the more easily search rankings can be used to alter the beliefs, attitudes, opinions, and behavior of people who are undecided on almost any issue. In both scope and power, this makes SEME unlike any other list effect that has ever been discovered.

Ongoing research on SEME is assessing how the operant conditioning process contributes to SEME's power, how SEME is affecting decisions people make about their health, how SEME may be affecting court decisions, and how it might be possible to suppress SEME through regulations, browser add-ons, or other means.

The speaker's recent study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences can be found here[3]. An article Dr. Epstein published about SEME in Politico can be found here[4]. A critique of Dr. Epstein'sPolitico article by Dr. Amit Singhal, head of Google search, can be found here [5]. Dr. Epstein's reply to Dr. Singhal can be found here [6].

Slides:

There are currently no slides to be downloaded for this presentation.

Videos:

Join the live presentation.[7] Wednesday October 28, 4:30-5:45. ?Requires Microsoft Windows Media player. View the 2015 Stanford Archive Lectures[8] View video[9] by lecture sequence in HTML5. Available after 8PM Pacific on the day of the lecture. View Video[10] on YouTube?. The YouTube? video is uploaded the day following the prentation. You may need to disable your pop-up blocker for this link to work. Or use the direct YouTube? link.[11]

About the speaker:

[speaker photo] Robert Epstein is Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT) in Vista, California, as well as the former editor-in-chief of Psychology Today magazine and the founder and director emeritus of the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. A Ph.D. of Harvard University, he has published 15 books on artificial intelligence, creativity, stress management, and other topics, as well as more than 250 scientific and popular articles in publications such as Science, Nature, Psychological Science, TIME, Discover, U.S. News & World Report, and Scientific American Mind, where Dr. Epstein is a contributing editor. Dr. Epstein is also the founding director of the Loebner Prize Competition in Artificial Intelligence, an annual Turing Test that has been conducted since 1990. A thought leader in the behavioral sciences, Dr. Epstein is interviewed by journalists between 50 and 100 times a year. You can follow him on Twitter at @DrREpstein?