Thank you for putting this into words - I had been looking for a way to communicate exactly this sentiment.
Also, while I believe strongly in listening to experts, there is also the matter of building a strong democratic foundation. To me, this is what citizenship is all about: Listening to everyone, discussing any concerns raised, considering pros and cons, and trying to get to a point of rough consensus where there are (ideally) no real losers.
I kind of like @Gonna.eth’s idea about having citizens delegate to experts - but I would like it to only be an option, not a requirement. And it should be possible to only delegate for a round at a time.
That way, I might decide to delegate my citizen’s vote to, say, Carl in a round such as RF5, but I might decide to delegate it to LauNaMu or myself in RF6. That way, I, as the citizen, get to decide in each round what kind (kinds) of expertise I value for the task at hand.
Apart from the matter of decentralizing and democratizing power by distributing it among (in the future, I hope, many more!) citizens rather than a few fixed ‘badgeholders’ or ‘experts’, I think this has a crucial psychological/pedagogical/social rationale:
When you get to hold power, as a citizen, you also get responsibility. Without that, you naturally lack incentive to learn and discuss and ask questions and point out problems and come up with solutions. A certain apathy arises.
The past few rounds have brought important insights. I think a major issue with them, though, has been the lack of much debate, both internally among citizens, among citizens and guest voters (experts in RF5 and ‘random’ in RF6) and among citizens and other groups of the Collective in general.
As for citizens vs guest voters, debate has in fact been actively discouraged!
I understand why, in the name of the experiment. But I think we should also be clear that a lack of communication seriously handicaps the democratic process that might have been.
Of course there will always be experts who know more than random citizens about any specific domain. But no group of experts will be better voters in general than a well informed and caring group of citizens who are strong communicators and know how to pull in the experts where it makes sense.
The issue is: It takes time and effort to grow well informed and caring and communicating citizens of that kind. It is a set of skills that needs to be learned, through meaningful practice and application to real-world problems that genuinely concern you. And it is relationships and shared frames of reference that have to be seeded and nurtured.
You can’t just give random people power, tell them not to talk to the experts and see how they handle it, and then decide that they are not up to the task.
Well, you can, but you are not going to learn what a truly informed citizenship might be able to acomplish.
If the Citizens House is supposed to be all about focussing on the long-term sustainability of Optimism (and the Superchain), then I believe in the model of informed citizenship where it might be possible to delegate power to subject matter experts on a case by case basis, but where it is equally possible to vote yourself, and where there is always an incentive to learn and discuss and share context and consider many different perspectives and kinds of expertise - and then make up your mind.
Anything less than that would be a missed opportunity, the way I see it.