This is not the first worth watching video, which shows the vision of world where everything is based on votes. Some time ago Ned Scott recommended to watch Black Mirror episode, which covered similar topic - I recommend it too!

But this time, let's focus on "Majority Rule", 7th episode of The Orville TV Series (imdb):

Episode teaser

I think that a voting-based-society is a very interesting topic, so let's me very briefly introduce "The "Orville" TV Series and the 7th episode of season 1 "Majority Rule" which in my opinion is a must-see episode for you, even if you do not follow the series!

The Orville TV Series

Before we are going to dive deep into an episode, lets me introduce to you very briefly the whole series:

If you would like to know more about this TV Series, please follow me, because you can expect from me a post: "The Orville - A Parody Which Is A Better New Star Trek Then THE New Star Trek" very soon.

And yes, this is a parody-style TV series, but if you would expect a humor like in "Spaceballs", then you need to know, that in The Orville humor is - in my opinion- perfectly balanced, to deliver meaningful stories in an entertaining way.

S01E07 - "Majority Rule"

In this episode the crew of The Orville explores the planet, which looks very like Earth from 21th century. The landing team is assigned to an under cover mission to rescue a missing researchers which studied a planet and its culture.

The landing team is not aware, that on the planet reputation of everyone is based on votes. A crew member (John) during a mission has done something stupid, what is considered as inappropriate behavior by a majority of locals. Now he needs to face a consequences:

Public Votes as Absolute Democracy

This episode is actually similar to Black Mirror "Nosedive" episode, which tells a story about a protagonist, which suddenly need to struggle with consequences of inappropriate behavior, which was not fully intended or which was not thought out very well.

Difference is that in Black Mirror there is no a conviction or a sentence for people with a an extremely low reputation. In Black Mirror such a person need to struggle with each individual which may not want to deal with "such a garbage". In The Orville this is shown as more extreme.

Is a public voting a DEAD END - can we do better?

It is very interesting, that we already have two videos about societies ruled by public votes, but in both cases... they showed to us - that this is not a good idea. Both shows try to convince us, that it is very easy to get into trouble, because everyone can have a tough day from time to time and everyone do sometimes stupid things.

Both movies shows that, votes should not be equal. I believe that most of us will agree that receiving a 1 vote for saying a complement cannot be equal to 1 vote for spending 2 hours helping to fix a car. Different activities require different ways to show gratitude. Equal votes can be a starting points, but it should be a way to make your vote more meaningful.

And... guys in The Orville, already seems to understand that:

Conclusion from The Orville: Vote should be earned

Equality vs. Reputation

Winston Churchill once said:

"Many forms of government have been tried and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all wise. Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried from time to time."

I believe that democracy is accepted by most of the societies, because everyone in it is or suppose to be equal. But the question is: are people equal?

Reputation is a partial solution. I believe we can agree, that in average people with greater reputation are better decision makers. In this sense, people with greater reputation should have more to say and have stronger vote. But this works only when those people decides about things which they really know.

I can be a excellent engineer with good reputation, but this doesn't mean that I know the answer to all problems. I do know how a healthcare should be funded from taxes and I do not know whether a makeup tutorial is worth of giving for it a $50 000 because... I am not an expert in these areas - do you?

I believe that it would be better if decisions about healthcare would be made by people who knows more about this than I.

Multiple Reputation Tokens, Game Theory and Free Market

I believe, that we are heading to tokenization of the world. This is a no-brainier for teenage kid to know, that when you play a video game it is much easier to finish a game with good score, when a game constantly give you a feedback about all resources and skills which you have:

In the real live I believe it will be much easier for me if I would know what I represents. For example I could have 20k ProgrammingPower, 5k JavaScriptPower and 7.5k PythonPower. Then an Job Interview about be a matter of checking my SocialSkillsPower and few other things. If I would like to learn more about JavaScript, then I would know to follow or ask for advice people with a better score than mine.

Do you know why global points system would also never work at scale? Because no one would be happy to have 3 476 863 764th position in the global rank.

But even being a such a middle-ranked person, if you would also be a huge fan of LEGO, having 17th position in a LisbonLegoBuilder Community, then probably you wouldn't care about your global score so much, because this local group would be probably much more important to you.

Now vs. Future

A paragraph above was a big digression from The Orville topic, but at the same time it was my way to explain to you my thoughts about current and future possibilities. We are living in very exciting times. The fact that points-based societies becomes more and more frequently a topic for discussion may means something.

What is your opinion about this topic? What do you think about "The Orville - Majority Rule" and "Black Mirror - Nosedive " episodes? Are we heading towards tokenization of the world? Or maybe you are thinking that single reputation score would be better - please let me know in the comments :)

And if you don't want to miss my "The Orville - A Parody Which Is A Better New Star Trek Then THE New Star Trek" article, make sure you follow me :)