The problems of information complexity, attention scarcity, and voter apathy.

[luckybit]

The voter apathy problem in my opinion is the symptom/subset of the attention scarcity problem.

The attention scarcity problem will only get worse as the technological solutions become of a greater complexity.

Complex information becomes much more difficult to process and even if the data were simple it could be so much of it flowing around that no one can organize and process it all into anything useful to make wise decisions.

How do we scale up decision making capabilities along with the level of technological and information complexity in a way which factors in the problem of attention scarcity?

I think autonomous agents could be one mechanism we could use to do this. Algorithms are perhaps our only means of processing vast amounts of information of increasing complexity. How can we scale up our information processing capabilities within the Bitshares platform?

Delegating the decision making responsibilities to experts might delay a catastrophe but it is not a long term solution as it is top heavy and promotes reliance/dependency on others. These others who followers depend on could become the de-facto government of experts. Providing an incentive for people to vote will make people direct their attention from other problems but is a costly solution.  If we put a focus on solving the problem of attention scarcity using automation/algorithms then we might be able to solve the problem of voter apathy in the most cost effective way.

Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_economy
http://www.theequitykicker.com/2009/07/24/information-abundance-creates-attention-scarcity/
http://subprint.com/blog/data-is-the-most-valuable-commodity-on-earth