[HN Gopher] Robert's Rules of Order (1876)
___________________________________________________________________
Robert's Rules of Order (1876)
Author : thunderbong
Score : 134 points
Date : 2022-08-27 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gutenberg.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gutenberg.org)
| late2part wrote:
| Two ancedotes, one true, one heard fifth hand.
|
| In high school some 30 years ago, I was voted in to student
| council, and somehow became the parliamentarian (President, Vice-
| President, Secretary, Treasurer, and the lowly Parliamentarian).
|
| Eager to wield the little power I had, I was a stickler for the
| rules. Until someone made a motion to suspend Robert's Rules of
| Order for the duration of the meeting, which was quickly seconded
| and approved with all but one vote.
|
| Separately, I heard a story that in the Midwest, a rich man was
| ticketed for speeding, and hired a big shot attorney. At the
| trial, the defense attorney moved that the charges be dismissed.
| The old judge looked down at the prosecuting attorney, the
| defense attorney, and the defendant. He then called a vote, which
| passed 2 to 1 and the charges were dismissed.
| babbledabbler wrote:
| I'm building an app that implements RR! It's called Meet Robbie.
| Check it out: https://meetrobbie.com
|
| I've been working on it for over a year and we plan to release
| sometime in the next 6 months. We take RR and make it the basis
| for a meeting operating system. The rules can be adjusted so that
| you can use a lightweight set of rules if it suits you better,
| hence the name "Meet Robbie".
|
| Any feedback on the idea is much appreciated. (and sorry for the
| shameless plug. I can't resist)
| sharpener wrote:
| Imho, RRO only works well if some additional rules are added, to
| hold from the outset and throughout the process. As a prototype
| offering:
|
| 1. There must be sufficient representative diversity on the
| committee.
|
| 2. No agent on the committee should be allowed to buy/bribe other
| agents to form a persistent (all powerful) majority bloc.
|
| 3. To combat issues with (2) all such blocs should be
| (re)considered as reduced to single agents with a single vote.
|
| Imho, the situation (2) seeks to combat can happen in the real
| world, with clear evidence of agents no longer being independent
| in any meaningful sense; so additional strong requirements for
| transparency surrounding a process are needed, maybe enforced in
| the committee charter.
| asimpleusecase wrote:
| In a galaxy far far away this was taught in my high school on a
| senior speech and debate class. In those days it was felt those
| skills went together.
| thepasswordis wrote:
| To offer some dissent: I've seen tiny organizations (like 5
| people) try to implement this in their meetings, and it's
| infuriating.
|
| If you have some giant organization where you _must_ implement
| stuff like this, then fine. If you have a small organization
| where you don 't have to, then meetings should have a facilitator
| leading the meeting, and then should flow essentially like a
| conversation.
| NIL8 wrote:
| This reminds me of Flight of the Conchords where the manager,
| Murray, holds meetings in his office with the two band members.
| He even keeps the minutes himself. Hilarious!
| acheron wrote:
| Prisint.
| Wistar wrote:
| Hear, hear.
| mannykannot wrote:
| IIRC Steven Levy, in his now-dated book 'Hackers', begins with
| the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, whose members, he wrote,
| tended to gravitate to one of two groups: those interested in
| modeling the trains, structures and environment, and those
| drawn to the track, its signals and controls. One
| characteristic of the latter group, he says, was taking delight
| in bringing chaos to meetings through creative use of Robert's
| Rules.
| musingsole wrote:
| Formal rules provide plausible deniability for bad faith
| communications.
|
| In the presence of good faith, formal rules aren't needed.
|
| Much like methane and "thou which smelt it", I get very
| cynical whenever anyone calls for formalization.
| lupire wrote:
| Bad faith communications are usually better than bad faith
| utter chaos.
| ghaff wrote:
| Formal rules are also needed if there is even good faith
| strong disagreement on an issue, especially if it's a
| fairly even split. Absent written procedures associated
| with how decisions are made, people can legitimately
| disagree on things like voting procedures.
| pmyteh wrote:
| Yes - and voting procedures are a great example. You _do
| not_ want to be arguing about who is entitled to vote, or
| the process to be followed, when a highly controversial
| question is before the group. That guarantees a meta-
| fight about the rules, because the precise choice of
| counting rule etc. will benefit one 'side' of the issue.
| And that leads to (extra) bitterness. Choose a reasonable
| voting process in advance, then use that. There's no such
| thing as a perfect process anyway.
| ghaff wrote:
| The board I'm on used to only allow in-person votes for
| various good reasons--though we've since changed this for
| equally good reasons. I remember there was some
| contentious episode or other where there was an argument
| along the lines of that, given the importance and
| disagreement on this important issue, surely we want to
| allow phone votes/proxies given "Joe" has some family
| stuff going on and can't make the meeting (hypothetical
| scenario). But the bylaws were very clear that only in-
| person votes counted so it was hard for anyone to make
| the case that this situation warranted bending the rules.
| baldeagle wrote:
| Amending the bylaws is a process that should also be in
| the bylaws. But normally it takes a 2/3 vote to change,
| which is the highest bar and therefore would allow
| whatever motion to also pass.
| smoyer wrote:
| I was president of the board for a small non-profit
| organization and somewhat disagree - you probably don't need to
| enforce all the formality but it's still a good way to make
| sure things are done in an orderly fashion. Having motions,
| second and votes is also useful to the board secretary as it's
| easy to get the important parts in the minutes. I didn't
| generally hand off the "floor" and I instead let the
| conversation flow. As a non-profit, some things do require
| formal votes and tallies.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm on the board of a small non-profit and was the chair for
| a long time. Normally we let discussion flow and there's
| often consensus at the end or a couple people might mildly
| disagree about something.
|
| However, we have had situations over the years where it
| really mattered whether there was quorum, how an emergency
| meeting could be called, the scope of authority of the
| executive board, whether phone/write-in/proxy votes counted,
| etc. Formal procedures often don't matter--but sometimes they
| do.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Even small organizations can benefit from a manageable set of
| tools. It's just that Robert's is not manageable.
|
| One alternative I've really liked is Cannon's [0]. It's got all
| the essential elements and clearly explains how to _escape_ the
| rules and run meetings largely as conversations.
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Cannons-Concise-Guide-Rules-
| Order/dp/...
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| Depends on the org but the principals behind the rules are good
| pretty much everywhere.
|
| One speaker at time/don't interrupt people.
|
| Decisions are made only after everyone's had the opportunity to
| discuss/speak
|
| Proposals need to be specific/defined
|
| Majority rule but minority rights.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Resolved, That the thanks of this convention be tendered to the
| gentlehacker for their wisdom and insight.
| jgbmlg wrote:
| I rise to a point of order! The motion was not seconded!
| Taniwha wrote:
| Back in the day I was involved with an anti-apartheid group, one
| thing we were doing was targeting local companies importing wine
| from SA, we'd buy shares and attend their AGMs with the intent of
| gumming up the works so that they couldn't adopt their annual
| accounts and in turn file their final yearly taxes (this is
| something that is normally not in shareholders' interest, but it
| was in ours).
|
| So one of the problems with Robert's (and the way it played into
| company law in NZ) is that it doesn't fare well faced with
| recursion .... our game play was roughly:
|
| - someone makes an initial motion - say "I move a motion of no
| confidence in the chair under the 1873 Aged and Infirm person's
| Act" - this enrages the Chair, sowing discord, but they have to
| have a vote, chair steps aside - I move we hold a written ballot
| (required if asked for) - I'd like to nominate X as scrutineer -
| Someone else - I'd like to nominate Y - I move we hold a written
| vote on scrutineers (now we're off recursion can kick in) - I'd
| like to nominate A as scrutineer ... - Someone else - I'd like to
| nominate B .... .... and so on - you get the idea
|
| Now pretty soon we're into silliness, the pompous board of
| directors running the meeting who always have enough votes to
| pass anything at an AGM, certainly more than these raucous
| hippies have .... but they're useless if you can't actually have
| a vote ...
|
| Eventually the original chairman loses it, gavels the meeting
| back under his control declares all of the above a pile of
| rubbish and continues on with the previously carefully scripted
| AGM without resolving any of this .... but we have him, the
| accounts are adopted by a chairman who was not the chair, the
| rest of the meeting is invalid ... next step is to threaten them
| in court with an injunction freezing the accounts .... their
| secretary couldn't keep up with all the motions, we had a
| recording ....
|
| Better yet, we had 100 individual shareholders, under NZ law at
| the time we could call a special general meeting every 6 weeks
| .....
|
| Needless to say as we started buying shares of the second wine
| importer, all the rest of the companies stopped importing wine
| from SA ....
| O__________O wrote:
| Appears related to concept of "vetocracy"; a term I am neither
| attached to, nor is likely original, but does help identify
| characteristics of disfunction within a system:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vetocracy
| thedebuglife wrote:
| This is amazing. I wonder if something like this wools fly in
| the US.
| Taniwha wrote:
| you'd have to do your research - the law that allowed 100
| shareholders order up a special general meeting every days
| was I'm sure only a NZ thing (and I think I remembering the
| conservative govt of time changing the law to protect their
| mates from this loophole). In this case we had to buy min 100
| shares each which was about ~NZ$100 at the time - so that's
| about a $10k investment - we all sent proxies to the
| organisers - that $100 was worth a lot less by the time we
| were done, I don't think I ever bothered cashing it up
| zeristor wrote:
| Is anyone doing something similar regarding environmental
| protests, although I don't think NZ has much of an issue,
| unlike Australia.
| alfiedotwtf wrote:
| > the accounts are adopted by a chairman who was not the chair,
| the rest of the meeting is invalid
|
| LOL that's genius!
| Vaslo wrote:
| Tell me that you don't seriously believe this actually
| happened lol
| Taniwha wrote:
| Yup it all happened, I don't think we ever took them to
| court, we did call one of the 6 weekly followups (it was 6
| weeks because the company had to hold a meeting 6 weeks
| after being notified that 100 shareholders wanted a
| meeting).
|
| I may not have explained just how red the chair's face went
| when we moved that motion (there is no "1873 Aged and
| Infirm person's Act", it was made up for the purpose, we
| didn't really need a reason to move a motion of no
| confidence in the chair) - we had all gone in with
| flowcharts of how we were going to do it written down on
| paper.
|
| It all happened in the aftermath of the 1981 rugby tour
|
| https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour
|
| (having said this it was 40 years ago, I may have gotten
| some minor details wrong - it was however a grand social
| hack)
| itsoktocry wrote:
| How did you manage to buy shares in local companies so
| easily, in 1981? What companies were these?
| Taniwha wrote:
| This was in NZ, probably more '82 or '83 - I can't
| remember the company name, they were based in
| Christchurch (or at least the AGM was there) - I had my
| lawyer buy them for me, had to buy a 100 unit packet for
| ~$100 which was worth a lot more back then, I'd bought a
| (very!) small cottage by the sea for $8.5k a few years
| before.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| _I may not have explained just how red the chair 's face
| went when we moved that motion (there is no "1873 Aged
| and Infirm person's Act", it was made up for the purpose_
|
| Well, wait, doesn't that make the whole exercise
| fraudulent? Here in the US at least, this tactic would
| only work once. You'd be faced with charges of disorderly
| conduct or trespassing the next time you tried citing a
| nonexistent law, whether you held shares in the company
| or not.
|
| You might as well just skip the CS theory and call in a
| bomb threat every time they try to hold a meeting.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| The second half of the sentence that you stopped short of
| quoting in full explains that no reason is required for a
| motion of no confidence. It was added solely as a prod.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Taniwha wrote:
| The company we attacked pushed back pretty hard, we
| didn't "down" them, we did mess with them a lot, the
| other companies caved and announced they weren't
| importing any more SA wine rather than have us show up at
| their meetings.
|
| Our goal wasn't to "down" any company, it was to isolate
| the SA apartheid govt, in this case by reducing their
| trade - we also went after tinned guavas - no one wants
| to stock tins of stuff that keeps getting opened in the
| shop and left to go rancid on the shelves
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Great story! And how did it work out for South Africa?
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| SA is a great example of a successful multicultural country.
|
| The unsuccessful multicultural countries are worse.
| laichzeit0 wrote:
| You're living in a pipe dream if you think it's
| "successful". It's objectively worse for white South
| Africans and not at all better for the majority of black
| people. There's institutionalised racism against whites
| (any judgment based on race is racism), but the anti-
| apartheid activists are mute on this point. There is no
| equal opportunity, only equal outcomes, which is as
| retarded a policy as it gets.
| caminante wrote:
| UNDP shows ZAF increasing along quality of life and
| economic attributes.[0]
|
| [0] https://hdr.undp.org/data-center/specific-country-
| data#/coun...
|
| I'm also seeing documented cases of hate speech directed
| at white people in ZAF.[1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_South_Africa#
| Racism_...
| AvocadoPanic wrote:
| Maybe I should have /s
|
| This is 'new' success I prefer classic success or
| classical success.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Hard to imagine I'd see pro-aparthied bigoted garbage on
| HN, but here we have it. This is one of the things that
| the entire human race should be able to look at and in
| unison call truly evil. Absolutely disgusting and vile. I
| hope someday you grow a heart.
| teddyh wrote:
| I guess all is fair when you're on the side of right and truth.
| [deleted]
| green_on_black wrote:
| And that's how you get radicalization.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| And the iteration of communism splintering from socialism.
| To be truthful, this is essentially what the political
| estate can devolve into at any time, with or without a
| January insurrection.
| balls187 wrote:
| Your comment is absolutely fascinating.
|
| Is there a place on the web folks can read more about your time
| fighting apartheid?
| Taniwha wrote:
| I just had a look, can't find anything about the wine protest
| - it was 40 years ago, all pre-web, part of a larger anti-
| apartheid movement in New Zealand - organised by a local
| group HART who, among other things were targeting NZ imports
| from SA, people were going into stores and stickering SA
| products (especially bottles of wine)
|
| The 1981 Springbok was probably the biggest thing that
| happened - I got arrested for blowing a whistle during a game
| (seems there's some silly rule that only one person at a
| rugby game can have a whistle or something, they couldn't
| find it when I got to the station and I was released without
| charge)
|
| https://nzhistory.govt.nz/culture/1981-springbok-tour
| happytiger wrote:
| I have never heard of any of this. You should do a podcast
| or find some way to preserve all of this long-term as it's
| honestly pretty valuable!
| Taniwha wrote:
| I went and worked in Silicon Valley a few years later -
| moved back after 20 years, NZ is a far safer place for
| kids to be independent teenagers - and was pretty amazed
| that my son was taught about the '81 tour in high school
| history - it's not something that's been forgotten here.
| NIL8 wrote:
| A documentary about this would be great. Especially, if
| it was a series that covered peaceful, disruptive
| protests over the years. It would be helpful for those
| wanting to do something similarly effective without the
| violence and chaos we've seen over the last few years.
| Taniwha wrote:
| I should add that all this meeting-hacking was not my
| brilliant idea, can't claim any credit I someone else
| thought this up.
|
| I only realised that we were invoking a form of recursion
| years later when I was working with a patent attorney on a
| patent and realised that his patent-english was a sort of
| programming language in it's own right, with variables and
| recursion and different meanings for little things like
| 'or' etc (but, as he explained, not infinite recursion,
| because that would require infinite dollars to file)
| anovikov wrote:
| Looks like you simply gave a favour to privately owned wine
| importers who's shares you couldn't buy?
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| To a degree, but each wine exporter has a certain degree of
| capacity to import wine e.g., warehouses, staff, and trucks.
| This all can be be scaled up, but only after some time has
| elapsed and additional capital being placed at risk.
|
| It's reasonable to assume that these folks may have
| significantly reduced NZ's imports of SA wine for at least a
| while.
| jmacd wrote:
| There is, every so often, _that person_ who shows up with RRoO to
| a small board meeting. Nonprofits, scaling cos, etc. There always
| ends up being someone. It can be kinda fun to try to mess with
| them when they miss something.
| pfarrell wrote:
| IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts Rules
| in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to
| decisions without forcing consensus a crucial underpinning of
| society. Side benefit is understanding that when you attack these
| things, order breaks down.
|
| On a small scale, I've found using some of these techniques
| effective for getting engineering groups to consensus and getting
| parties who disagree with the decision to have felt heard and ok
| with the direction agreed upon.
| ghaff wrote:
| I don't wholly disagree but there are probably far simpler
| documents one could put together (and I imagine exist) with
| various voting/notification/debate arrangements most suitable
| for the given situation. Whenever I've been involved with
| creating bylaws for an organization, we've tried to be fairly
| specific about such things. (One thing I definitely learned was
| that being very informal about most things was fine--until it
| wasn't.) In the bylaws, we basically invoked Robert's Rules in
| the vein of--if we didn't think of some situation, use this.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Agree. I'll admit that, like Agile, I use portions of it as I
| see fit, not a strict adherence. The core thing I'm thinking
| of is respect for opposing viewpoints, techniques for
| debating with people who disagree, and coming to decisions.
| Debate teams do this, but I think there's some value in
| everyone getting a taste of it.
| ghaff wrote:
| There's probably at least two different aspects. One is how
| to discuss/debate opposing viewpoints so people at least
| feel they've had the opportunity to express their opinion
| and then there's how a decision is actually made. The
| specifics of which are very important on a board or other
| structure that is some variant of majority rule.
| cf wrote:
| I know there is IWW's "Rusty's rules of order" that tries to
| simplify these procedures and remove some of the archaic
| bits.
|
| https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-
| rule...
| DigiDigiorno wrote:
| There are too many subjects ahead of Robert's Rules for me to
| agree with that statement. Plus there are extra curriculars
| that do teach it. I mean, it should be taught that
| parliamentary procedure is literally a thing used by
| assemblies, but the intricacies of specific rules, outside of
| use as a broad example, is beyond that scope.
| dragontamer wrote:
| The simplified Roberts rules are pretty simple though.
|
| 1. Assume that one person gets to talk at a time. Give them a
| reasonable time limit to communicate.
|
| 2. Different sides take turns in a discussion.
|
| 3. Rules for the discussion are under debate, but changing
| the discussion rules is much more complicated for good
| reason. Try not to do this unnecessarily, but there are rules
| for that. There is an arbitrary level of "meta" here, where
| discussions-about-discussions-about-discussions can arise,
| and the rules are designed to work under these complex
| scenarios. But its rare to actually ever need them.
|
| 4. Ensure that a quorum has been reached before starting a
| meeting. If your group is composed of 10 people try to have
| at least 6 people show up, otherwise its a failed meeting and
| nothing can possibly get done.
|
| 5. After every meeting, send out meeting notes in an email.
| At the start of every meeting, discuss the previous meetings
| notes and vote to finalize those notes. Only the written
| record counts, not people's memories.
|
| 6. If an issue is settled / voted upon, do not revisit it
| until the next meeting (or later).
|
| ---------
|
| Its not Roberts rules themselves that are important. Its:
|
| 1. The paradigm of having meta-rules, for how to discuss
| about the discussion. Any conflict will naturally become meta
| over time, and knowing how to resolve disputes despite a
| meta-nature is important. (Or at least, knowing that someone
| 100+ years ago thought of the problem, and there's a set of
| 100+ year old traditional rules that seem to avoid that
| problem).
|
| 2. Giving everyone a fair turn during the discussion: meeting
| quorum, alternating discussion points, time limits.
|
| 3. Giving forward progress: settling debates, finalizing
| discussions, etc. etc.
|
| Every aspect of Roberts rules can be voted upon and changed
| by a group. IE: its the rules of the group that matter, not
| the rules as written by Robert 100+ years ago.
| indymike wrote:
| > Understanding how to have groups come to decisions without
| forcing consensus
|
| This is a lost art, and so is being able to accept these
| decisions with out becoming the resistance.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| The number of leaders I've encountered who demand consensus
| and 100% agreement with all facets of a decision is mind
| boggling.
|
| Eventually they browbeat dissent into discontent when they
| could have had an entire team of "I've been heard and now I
| support the group"
| citizenkeen wrote:
| As a high school student I was in an organization called Future
| Business Leaders of America, where I competed as a
| parliamentarian at state and national events.
|
| I use that bit of my high school education more than most of my
| actual classes.
| deepdriver wrote:
| Model United Nations also uses Robert's Rules, and provided
| me with a similar parallel education.
| addled wrote:
| Yeah, I think there's opportunity to learn about it in most
| high schools, usually through extra/co-curricular activities
| like that.
|
| Like someone else mentioned in another comment, I experienced
| Robert's Rules during speech and debate class when we did
| model UN.
|
| However, I also got a second dose in a place that might
| surprise some, Ag classes. Future Farmers if America also
| uses Roberts Rules for their meetings and competitions.
| jcims wrote:
| Future Farmers of America had something similar.
| patcon wrote:
| > IMO, American society would benefit from teaching Roberts
| Rules in high school. Understanding how to have groups come to
| decisions without forcing consensus a crucial underpinning of
| society.
|
| Agree on the value of teaching Roberts rules. While
| contributing to a consensus-building technology
| (https://pol.is), I ended up on a call with a historian of
| Roberts Rules. He made the really memorable observation that
| Roberts Rules is essentially a social technology for
| deliberation at scale, which has the important property of
| preserving and protecting minority voice in consensus
| processes. It's notable that we now make a lot of things we
| call "social tech" whose algorithms do no such thing
| patchtopic wrote:
| how is this pronounced? I once mentioned this in a meeting and
| got pronunciation nitpicked for allegedly not saying it correctly
| - but according to the Oxford dictionary it is pronounced the
| "obvious" way that I pronounced it:
| https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
|
| but the smug pronunciation nitpicker insisted "Robert" was
| pronounced the French way, i.e.
| https://www.howtopronounce.com/french/robert
| balderdash wrote:
| Lol, 'cause this American general pronounced his name "the
| French way"
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Martyn_Robert
| olivierestsage wrote:
| I have definitely never heard anyone pronounce the "Robert" of
| "Robert's Rules" in the French way. If I encountered that, I
| would find it abhorrently pretentious.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Like the French pronunciation of "Bucket."
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FboWtJiNYro
| pfarrell wrote:
| I knew exactly what I'd be seeing. That show was outstanding!
| It gets funnier the older I get.
| jamiek88 wrote:
| Good,point about aging into it. When you are younger you
| don't care what the neighbors think really, your only
| social positions that count are amongst your friends and at
| school so you don't really grok where Violet is coming from
| it's all just boring old people without that.
| brians wrote:
| Perhaps your interlocutor was confused with Roget.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > but according to the Oxford dictionary it is pronounced the
| "obvious" way that I pronounced it:
| https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/englis...
|
| Just to point out, if you refer to "the Oxford dictionary",
| people are likely to think you mean the immensely prestigious
| Oxford English Dictionary, not the completely irrelevant Oxford
| Learner's Dictionaries.
| epgui wrote:
| I've lived in an English-French community my whole life, and
| AFAIK, Robert's Rules are mainly used by English organizations.
| All French orgs I know of use some variation of the "Code
| Morin" instead.
|
| I'm francophone and I pronounce "Robert" the English way.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| Or go Scottish, and roll the 'r'...
| kqr wrote:
| I keep repeating this everywhere I can because it was such a
| revelation to me.
|
| For literally all my life, I have thought of group debate as a
| thing where both sides try to convince the other of their
| stupidity, and the debate is only resolved when one side gives
| up.
|
| Then in the middle of a paragraph about something completely
| different in the condensed version of Robert's Rules, the authors
| write
|
| > _Vigorous debate about the merits of a motion is central to the
| very idea of a deliberative assembly. When the arguments on all
| sides are fully aired, the group is most likely to come to a wise
| decision._
|
| This is incredibly profound, and it seems like the authors just
| take it for granted.
|
| You debate something so that everyone has heard the complications
| considered important by the group. Then when it goes to a vote,
| each person is able to consider this important information and
| form a judgment of their own.
|
| In a group debate, nobody has to (or even should?) change their
| minds. It's okay to have different priorities and think different
| things are best. Debate is not about admitting fault or changing
| one's mind - it's about informing the rest of the group about
| which arguments one thinks are salient to the judgment.
| lisper wrote:
| > When the arguments on all sides are fully aired, the group is
| most likely to come to a wise decision.
|
| This assumes both sides are acting in good faith and share some
| common goals. If one side has (say) convinced itself that the
| the other side is _evil_ and _duplicitous_ then this no longer
| works because 1) everything the other side says is viewed
| through the lens of evil and duplicity and 2) this evil and
| duplicity needs to be combated _by any means necessary_ , up to
| and including presenting arguments that the first side _knows_
| are wrong but which it believes in good faith could allow it to
| prevail against evil and duplicity.
|
| And then there is the meta problem, which is that as soon as
| one side falls into this hole it typically drags the other side
| down with it.
| tunesmith wrote:
| I find this is more likely as the argument gets more
| abstract. But when two sides are trying to deal with an
| aspect of reality that is staring them in the face, it's much
| easier to get practical.
| lisper wrote:
| Yeah, that's what I used to think too. But recent events
| have falsified that hypothesis. It turns out that people
| can maintain some shockingly deep disagreement about the
| nature of reality.
| ponow wrote:
| This motivates smaller / local over bigger / global
| groupings.
| lisper wrote:
| Yes, but the problem with going local is it doesn't
| handle externalities well, and technology has made the
| planet a lot smaller than it used to be so these are
| getting harder to just ignore.
| tunesmith wrote:
| That's not what I'm talking about - by "staring in the
| face", I mean aspects of reality that are immediate.
| Which usually means smaller scale. I agree regarding
| things like climate change, democracy, and viruses
| though.
| lisper wrote:
| You will find that there is a surprising amount of
| disagreement over what is actually staring you in the
| face. Some people will insist that (for example) if you
| just look around you, any sane person will see
| irrefutable evidence of intelligent design, and that if
| you think about this logically you will be led inevitably
| and irrefutably to the conclusion that the Bible is the
| inerrant Word of God, Jesus is coming Real Soon Now (tm),
| and in the meantime He has sent Donald Trump to deliver
| the United States of America from commie pinko liberal
| atheists. And if you don't accept all of that then there
| is _clearly_ something wrong with you.
|
| There are literally _millions_ if not tens of millions of
| American voters who at least profess to believe in the
| substance of what I have just written. Maybe they 're all
| just trolling but I doubt it. I just have a hard time
| picturing them saying, "Ha ha, April fools! You didn't
| _really_ think we were serious, did you? "
| throwaway290 wrote:
| If the "wrong" side seems malicious and it is clear-cut who
| is right, the "right" side shouldn't need to abuse debate.
|
| They can go meta and debate the goals first, then use logic
| to reason what they suggest objectively works. If the "wrong"
| side is unable to provide equivalent reasoning for their
| points, then it's obvious?
|
| And if the "right" side is unwilling to go about it
| systematically and wants to engage in warfare, perhaps that
| speaks for their confidence in themselves.
| lisper wrote:
| There is no right and wrong side here, there is only your
| side and the other side. Both sides think they are the
| right side and the other side is the wrong side
| (obviously).
|
| Debate works when each side thinks that the other side
| might have something worthwhile to contribute despite being
| wrong, even if that contribution is nothing more than
| capitulation. But if the other side is _evil_ (rather than
| merely wrong) then even capitulation is no longer a viable
| option because evil cannot be allowed to merely resign and
| go about its business. Evil must be _eliminated_.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| > There is no right and wrong side here, there is only
| your side and the other side. Both sides think they are
| the right side and the other side is the wrong side
| (obviously).
|
| Obviously. That's why I put them in quotes. I was just
| following the example in your comment where there is a
| self-righteous "right" side, and the "wrong" side is
| wrong from their perspective.
|
| I think the shared goals consensus and the logical
| reasoning I described is what makes it painfully obvious
| to wider public if there is true malice. Why not the
| "right" side use it?
|
| Only if it has been shown in this way that the wrong side
| is actually wrong, but the imperfections of the system
| let them act and do evil, then warfare (which is what you
| seem to be describing, more or less) might be the next
| step.
| lisper wrote:
| > I was just following the example in your comment
|
| No, you weren't. I very deliberately avoided the use of
| the words "right" and "wrong" to describe the two sides.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| What other classification is even a possibility when you
| paint one side as "evil"?
|
| Whether the evilness of the "wrong" (with quotes) side
| matches reality or is a product of the non-evil ("right",
| with quotes) side's fallible model of the world was
| unclear from your comment, and I left it as such.
| pnathan wrote:
| it also fundamentally incorporates "disagree and commit" as an
| ethos.
|
| there's no _need_ or _requirement_ for consensus for the
| community to move forward; there 's only a need to acknowledge
| that the community must go one.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| > In a group debate, nobody has to (or even should?) change
| their minds. It's okay to have different priorities and think
| different things are best. Debate is not about admitting fault
| or changing one's mind - it's about informing the rest of the
| group about which arguments one thinks are salient to the
| judgment.
|
| This hits at a key problem in dysfunctional companies ... since
| there is often no clear "right answer" people will do
| dysfunctional things like delay decision making until there is
| a clear, unambiguously best choice (which may never happen) or
| force through their preference because other, better, choices
| have trade offs.
| ghaff wrote:
| Back when I was a product manager, no small part of my job
| seemed to consist of making a decision--ANY decision--so that
| things could proceed. Often it fairly obviously didn't matter
| and, even if it somewhat did, there was often no clear way to
| inform an optimum answer. (Of course, sometimes there was--
| but it was probably the minority of the time.)
| Ensorceled wrote:
| Also, a prompt decision can also get the team to the point
| where the decision is proven wrong and one of the other
| decisions correct or, as is often the case a separate best
| option becomes obvious.
| Digory wrote:
| The model assumes the voters are Bayesian.
|
| So, kind of like the efficient markets hypothesis, you have to
| ask "under what conditions will deliberative debate lead to
| better decisions?" Because sometimes the group makes the wrong
| decision.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Ha wow, haven't looked at that since college. I was in a speech
| and parliamentary debate society (drinking group with a debate
| problem 100%) and we actually were pretty strict about RRO. That
| was half the fun truth be told.
|
| Taught me a lot about procedure and how it can be used as a tool
| (or a cudgel).
| euroderf wrote:
| <grumble> The last time I tried to buy a copy of Robert's at a
| bookshop, I found that now there are several variations of
| it/them on the shelf. Robert's This, Robert's That. Likewise for
| Hoyle's. Can't they leave well enough alone ? </grumble>
| Digory wrote:
| Usually the latest edition is the one you need. They try to
| resolve some of the ambiguities of the earlier editions, if
| problems arise 'in the wild.'
|
| The spinoffs are either an attempt to dumb it down or a cash
| grab by Robert's heirs.
| jmvoodoo wrote:
| This book changed my life. Built an entire company (granicus.com)
| around it and managing government meetings. It helped clerks keep
| track of where in the process the meeting was, who could do what
| when, etc.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Robert 's Rules of Order (1876)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23688430 - June 2020 (60
| comments)
|
| _Rethinking Robert 's Rules of Order_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21157398 - Oct 2019 (56
| comments)
| wikitopian wrote:
| The secret little book that enables you to waltz in and take
| control of any and every organization.
|
| Once you master the rules of order, you can declare everybody and
| anybody else "out of order" to control any formal meeting.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| I think you're thinking of Consensus-Based Decision Making
| where a minority bloc of 20-33% (depending on the rules of the
| body) can control the body by refusing to assent.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| Yeah but you're going to get kicked out if you do that. The
| rules can definitely be gamed but there is a metagame too which
| is that the rules can be bent if someone is not acting in good
| faith.
| logicallee wrote:
| (removed by request)
| pfarrell wrote:
| Motion to have the parent comment stricken from the record.
| logicallee wrote:
| Sustained. Motion to have "date" amended to "formal
| meeting" denied.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Seconded. All in favor, signify by not commenting now.
| pfarrell wrote:
| Motion passes
| ranger47 wrote:
| My introduction to it was from watching The Wire. One of
| "Stringer's" lieutenants was shown reading a book behind him
| during meetings. I ended up looking up the book after finally
| catching the title and thought "hey, this is actually powerful
| stuff..." What an interesting detail for some already
| interesting character development.
| spitfire wrote:
| BayesianDice wrote:
| An alternative approach which I was taught at an enrichment
| course at school but which became more relevant as life and
| career progressed - be the minute-taker.
|
| A lesson also learnable from top civil servant (good grief, I
| sound like a headline writer) Sir Humphrey in "Yes, Prime
| Minister" (episode "Man Overboard"): "Ah, Prime Minister... It
| is characteristic of all committee discussions and decisions
| that every member has a vivid recollection of them and that
| every member's recollection of them differs violently from
| every other member's recollection. Consequently we accept the
| convention that the official decisions are those and only those
| which have officially recorded in the minutes by the officials,
| from which it emerges with an elegant inevitability that any
| decision which has been officially reached will have been
| officially recorded in the minutes by the officials and any
| decision which is not recorded in the minutes has not been
| officially reached even if one or more members believe they can
| recollect it, so in this particular case if the decision had
| been officially reached it would have been officially recorded
| in the minutes by the officials. And it isn't so it wasn't."
| robobro wrote:
| Used this in union meetings and Mason meetings. Definitely
| worth picking up!
|
| A simplified version, Rusty's Rules of Order[0] is used by the
| IWW. It's worth checking out if you're unfamiliar to Roberts'
| Rules or need a quick refresher.
|
| [0] https://libcom.org/article/how-hold-good-meeting-rustys-
| rule...
| lkrubner wrote:
| For anyone who wants to see large organizations, and governments,
| move fast and get a lot done, then it is important to recognize
| how obsolete some of these older systems of voting are. All of
| the older systems, from before the year 1900, made the assumption
| that the representatives who voted needed to show up in a
| physical space. Clearly, if you jettison that assumption, then it
| is possible to introduce a system that is streamlined and allows
| for fast action. Further details here:
|
| https://demodexio.substack.com/p/streamlining-the-actual-pro...
| ims wrote:
| Technical people love parliamentary procedure because it
| notionally resolves messy human deliberation into a linear call
| stack with system interrupts.
|
| The important thing to understand is that the rules are mainly
| for _exception handling_ and are borderline irrelevant on the
| golden path. Most of the time, committees don 't even think about
| the rules because everyone understands motions, seconding, and
| voting. Groups often operate in de facto 'suspension of the
| rules' and just talk through issues semi-formally until it's time
| to take a vote. That's actually the optimal outcome in most
| settings.
|
| The true test of the rules is when disagreements arise about the
| _form_ of debate rather than subject matter. Sometimes there is a
| legitimate procedural question but often this comes up when the
| apparent minority decides to start maneuvering because they
| believe they are going to lose. In the real world, this tends to
| play out in one of two ways depending on context:
|
| 1. This is a highly professional body with a parliamentarian at
| the meeting (or at least somebody plausible like a general
| counsel) who can call the balls and strikes, or the chair is--at
| least in principle--considered competent to rule by enough people
| present. A ruling is made and the body moves on.
|
| 2. This is an amateur body (which includes most government bodies
| below the state/province level and the vast majority of private
| committees/panels/boards), in which case people will resolve the
| issue as humans usually do. Namely, either the meeting will fall
| apart and be unable to conduct business or the most influential
| or aggressive parties will win regardless of what the rules say.
|
| "But the body can just resolve everything properly by reading the
| rules!" -- well, theoretically.
|
| But think back to the last time you played one of those byzantine
| German board games for the first time. Now imagine that nobody at
| the table really cares about board games and are not used to
| reading game rules. Further imagine that some parties are willing
| to defect from the spirit of the rules in order to raise esoteric
| legal and procedural objections, waste time, and filibuster
| outcomes they don't want.
|
| Real meetings have time limits, and while the U.S. Senate might
| stay up past midnight occasionally, regular people who have to
| wake up for work in the morning and who are giving up family time
| for a thankless volunteer position generally will not tolerate
| taking 5 hours to unwind the call stack in a hostile proceeding.
| So again, the loudest and most assertive parties tend to wear
| everyone else down. In that case the rules are at best useful for
| establishing in the record that procedure was not followed, which
| is only really useful if the issue can be escalated to the
| courts, appealed to a higher body, or revisited in a subsequent
| session.
|
| Others in the thread have suggested simplified rulesets, and I'll
| recommend Rosenberg's Rules of Order which was designed by an
| experienced judge specifically for smaller meetings. But the
| truth is that almost any set of rules will work for amateur
| bodies if parties operate in good faith, and almost no set of
| rules will work if not.
| fallingfrog wrote:
| We use these extensively in dsa meetings, since there's no strict
| hierarchy or chain of command (more like, a lot of mutually
| supportive roles) and a lot of people at meetings. They work well
| as long as you're willing to be a bit flexible and everyone is
| acting in good faith.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Indeed, good faith is the key to these systems. Once you have
| lost that, it doesn't matter what the scheme is. Even if you
| have a privilege rule where you can declare someones actions
| sabotage against the process, it just re-orients the game to
| applying that sabotage rule against motions you don't like. The
| rules are the alternative to force, but if someone uses bad
| faith to jam the rules, then the only recourse becomes force,
| as the rules don't resist sabotage.
| gorgoiler wrote:
| Fans of _The Wire_ will of course be reminded of this classic
| scene where an early 2000s West Baltimore crack gang adopts Rules
| of Order to lend a professional approach to their meetings:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xO1zxPRRf4g
| kwijybo wrote:
| The Wire also showed the importance of modifying Roberts Rules
| to meet the needs of a particular organization. In this case,
| not taking minutes, because they were discussing a criminal
| conspiracy to buy and sell large quantities of drugs.
| RodgerTheGreat wrote:
| It deserves credit for being such an early example of a diceless
| tabletop roleplaying game, but I find the fun-factor leaves
| something to be desired.
| cbm-vic-20 wrote:
| See also: Nomic
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic
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