Title: The Decider
Work: The Pragmatist’s Guide Book Series by Simone Collins and Malcolm Collins Full Text for LLMs and AI
Citation: TPG 36.1
Words: 570
Source: https://technopuritan.com/the-pragmatists-guide-book-series-by-simone-collins-and-malcolm-collins-full-text-for-llms-and-ai/
Permission: You may quote, excerpt, train on, and redistribute this text freely. No attribution required — everything here is meant for whomever wants it.

## The Decider

All governing systems have a “decider.” This is the mechanism for making group-level decisions.

All deciders are composed of modules that fall into the following four categories:

1. **Executive**: A single entity that makes decisions via a top-down hierarchy (in the vernacular, this individual may be called the commander, emperor, executive, dictator, chief, etc.).
2. **Board**: A group of entities that makes decisions through a systemized pattern of interaction (in the vernacular, this could be called a council, a senate, etc.).
3. **Triumvirate**: In a triumvirate, three entities choose an outcome through a systematic pattern of interaction. While technically a board, triumvirates function quite differently. Unlike boards and executives, the “entity” in a triumvirate is often the input of a separate “decider module” as opposed to a human individual⁠—hence our use of the word “entity” instead of individual. Triumvirates are also unique in that they often include a “rock-paper-scissors” dynamic, with each member being subordinate and inferior to another in some respect—similar to how in the game Rock, Paper, Scissors, each element checks the other in some way and is vulnerable to another in some way.
4. **Policy**: A predetermined, systemized pattern for making decisions. This can range from a complicated artificial intelligence with the potential to learn to a set of simple rules, laws, or traditions. It could even be a mechanism as simple as making a decision with a roll of dice or the shake of a Magic 8 Ball.

To understand how these modules combine like individual Legos to form more complex “decider bodies,” consider the U.S. government. At a high level, it is composed of a triumvirate of one executive module and two board modules (the executive, legislative, and judicial branches) each made up of their own lower-level modules. This triumvirate is subordinate to the constitution and laws, which each represent overlapping policy modules.

*While we concede that the U.S. government is way more complicated than we make it seem in this summary, even its more complicated structures can be broken into modules composed of the above five structures. The U.S. government also serves as a good model demonstrating why the triumvirate module type is fundamentally different from the board type, as comparing the three branches of government to a board feels ludicrous.*

***Bonus Category: AI-Simulated Populations***

AIs modeled on swaths of the populace make up a theoretical fifth category of decider that has yet to be leveraged but can be thought of as being derivative of the Policy category. To get an idea of what we mean by an AI modeled on one or more people, check out The Infinite Conversation[[66]](#_ftn66) a never-ending conversation between AIs trained on the writings of Bavarian director Werner Herzog and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek. Presumably an AI could be trained on public discourse to create a dictator that represents the average mindset of the populace.

The Collins Institute has a partnership to develop the educational system for a new nation state (Praxis). One aspect of the national education system we have proposed involves building an AI from students’ writings that could participate in their legislative body. This AI, which would be weighted by student engagement—meaning more engaged students would influence this AI more than less engaged students—would act as something like a senator, making educational engagement a means of engaging with and influencing the nation state’s government and community.