Ch. 6: How to Select an Elite

The rise of China has led many to question the effectiveness of Western democratic institutions. This was particularly the case following the spread of the Coronavirus. While large tracts of China went into lockdown, some Western elites castigated panic while preaching complacency, allowing the virus to spread unchecked.

But even before the Coronavirus, and even among some in the West, faith in democracy has been waning. This decline pervades all generations, with the young tending to have less faith in democracy than older generations.[72] In addition, there is rising support for authoritarian alternatives. This support is now being converted into policy in countries such as Hungary. As a way to revitalise civilisation, autocracy is a false hope which has rarely succeeded in reviving the creative capacity of any society: if autocracy could break the cycle of civilisational decline, then the capital of Europe would still be Rome.

One problem with the autocracy-vs-democracy debate is that different forms of democracy are rarely considered. Across Western countries, democracy largely takes the same form: party, parliament, and head of state. Different electoral systems abound, and are endlessly debated and calibrated, as any observer of Italian politics can attest. But unsurprisingly, such shallow reforms have not resulted in the rise of effective leadership. It is this which we need. Can it be developed, and if so, how?

A similar class of problem has been faced before in the West. In the eighteenth century, the Prussian Army was recognised as being among the strongest in Europe. This was not due to economic prowess, but rather to the exceptional military talents of four generations of Prussian kings. After the last of these – Frederick the Great – died, the performance of the Prussian Army declined. It was easily swept aside by Napoleon at the Battles of Jena and Auerstadt.

As described by Trevor Dupuy, the dizzying decline of the Prussian Army provoked some very productive soul-searching.[73] Here, we see in miniature an ingredient of societal decline, namely the idolisation of an outdated technique: the iron discipline and battlefield manoeuvres drilled to perfection that had contributed to past victories had lost their effectiveness.

The reformers, led by Gerhard von Scharnhorst, identified the larger problem: the operational and organisation genius brought by the likes of Frederick the Great was transient. The reformers wanted to make it permanent, a difficult task when they could not choose the commanders who had to be of royal lineage. Their solution was to institutionalise genius in the system of the army. If they could not select the commanders, then they could at least give them highly capable assistants to advise them. This led them to create the Army General Staff, an organisational innovation which would know great success and would be replicated in many other countries. What made it so successful?

Selection was meritocratic and partly based on examination. Military schools were established to radically improve the education of future General Staff members. The Prussian officer was encouraged to treat the educational process as a objective search for truth. They were frequently rotated between the line regiments and the General Staff. The result was a cohesive army where senior officers could observe promising future officers and recruit them into the General Staff.

Automatically selecting and promoting competent officers worked well for the General Staff. For well over a century after the reforms, the Army performed exceptionally well. Even during WW1, each German soldier killed or wounded more than one Allied soldier on average, while it took four Allied soldiers to kill or wound a German soldier.[74] According to measures such as score effectiveness, the German Army also outperformed other armies during WW2.

A similar reform task now faces our modern democracies: can we create a community that nurtures effective leadership, rather than simply hoping for it to turn up? Should we wish to do so, then just as the Prussian reformers did, we must define the traits of a governing elite we wish to develop. In the following, I will assume that the traits we need are foresight, competence, creativity, and charisma.

But most importantly, our new selection system must avoid the problems of the current one. These we will now catalogue.

6.1 Flaws in Elite Selection

The idea of creative elites was a topic that attracted the attention of Pareto and Toynbee. According to Pareto, societies face the greatest risk when transitioning from one elite to another, and suffered if the transition was blocked – as would happen if one type of elite, such as liberals or conservatives, monopolised the main institutions of society.

In Toynbee’s framework, elites may idealise outdated modes of thought, technique, or governance which inhibit them from solving the problems of the time. But how can one prevent elites falling into these errors of thought? One possibility is that they should be instructed only to pursue the Metasophist Imperative and not to idolise anything other than this. If they would take Metasophism seriously, they would learn the empirical basis of what is good, and how such factors can change over time. This would prevent mindless idolisation.

Acquiring a more nuanced view of the world may also combat the human tendency to twist one’s understanding of events to fit a narrative. As we discussed, the formation of such narratives can slow adjustment to a changing reality. Education can only be a partial solution, as we need to build an ongoing system which can sharpen the collective consciousness of the entire community, long after formal education has been completed.

We can summarise the above as follows: leadership in organistions and societies often lacks diversity, clings to ineffective values, and believes in false narratives. This situation is facilitated by hierarchical selection and a tribal mentality, both of which are prevalent across the West. How do they contribute to poor decision making? And could they be overcome by a Metasophist community?

Hierarchical selection

Most institutions throughout the West are hierarchies, and the selection of future elites is done by those at the apex of these institutions. For example, in many countries the party leadership often selects the candidates and, where applicable, their position on the electoral list.

In such a situation, many subordinates seek to please their superiors in order to obtain a swift ascendance through the ranks. The result is a proliferation of yes-men who lack the critical thinking necessary to sustain a civilisation. It also means that those at the top of the hierarchy can easily dispose of potentially gifted challengers. A typical example of this can be seen in Germany where Angela Merkel is sometimes called the Black Widow, due to her skill at sidelining politicians from within her own party such as Roland Koch and Friedrich Merz.

But there is another, perhaps even more insidious aspect of hierarchical selection: the similar-to-me effect.[75] This refers to the unconscious human tendency to prefer people of similar physical appearance, age, race and even values.[76] By allowing people to select those similar to them, hierarchical selection could thus delay the rise of a generation capable of forming solutions to current problems. To understand this, assume that most people become political leaders around the age of fifty. Their world-view and preferences could have formed around the age of twenty. Promotions today will be influenced by those same fifty-year-olds, who might unconsciously seek the qualities needed to solve the problems of thirty years ago.

To avoid these problems, our new system will develop an alternative to hierarchical selection. At this point, it is important to note that this alternative is not meant to completely replace hierarchical selection. The latter may very well be superior in some contexts, where a clear task needs to be achieved, such as the Manahattan Project or the Apollo program. The best system may very well be a sort of hybrid where hierarchies are used for execution, but alternative processes are used for the selection of creative elites. For now, let’s proceed with the task of designing this alternative.

The Tribal Mentality

Politics create a tribal mentality: simply by virtue of being a member or supporter of a party or faction, one is more likely to support its positions without thinking them through. This was the case put forward by political scientist Liliana Mason in her book Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became our Identity.[77]

But the tribal mentality can have other negative effects. Dissent may be perceived as disloyalty, so when the leader of a party changes the policy, a member will likely to fall into line. Groupthink and toadyism result.

If we wish to remove the irrational from politics, self-propagating and self-hypotising factions cannot be the main problem-solving entity. They must be supplemented, circumvented, or even transcended. We shall thus need another way of bringing people together to devise solutions, unmediated by established groups.

There is an analogue here with political creativity, as new political ideas are rarely introduced by old parties. For example, environmentalism was introduced by Green parties. At around the end of the 19th century, socialism arrived with a wave of new parties in France in 1879, Italy and the Netherlands in 1881 and finally the British Labour Party. It thus follows that to enhance the level of creativity, we shall need to make it easier for new groups to form without having to sign up to currently-existing factions. 

6.2 Forming the New Elite

In this section, I shall further develop the Youth Fellowship discussed in the previous chapter into a system capable of selecting and training future leaders who are charismatic, creative, and competent.

This task recalls a scene from the British sitcom Yes Prime Minister. In one scene, some activists and civil service apparatchiks worry about introducing small-scale democracy as then ordinary citizens would actually get to personally know their representatives, reducing the power of institutions such as parties and media to promote their favoured candidates.[78] This raises an interesting point. If you don’t know any of the candidates running for election, you are forced to evaluate them on the basis of media performances; this favours the emotional, the demagogic, and the attractive. Finer details regarding a person’s character, competence, and creativity will be blotted out; the degree to which they are favoured will be the degree to which they help run a campaign. If you select people on the basis of campaigns and ability to self-promote, you will end up with people good at campaigning and self-promoting. In fact, that may be all they think about. To hope that such a vain political class will think and act wisely is to hope in vain.

To ensure selection at a small scale, our new system can first take place in the groups of the Youth Fellowship to ensure that those selecting personally know the selected. But how small must it be? And how do we ensure that the group has sufficient knowledge to make this decision i.e. that they have gone through some task or trials that reveals the character of each person?

Let us thus create a process comprised of three rounds. Furthermore, let us divide all those born within a given year (e.g. all those born between 1st of September 2009 and the 1st of September 2010) into groups of one hundred. Such groups would all come from the same locality.

Before proceeding further, note that this is not a process set in stone. There are almost certainly better ways to design this process. But for now, it might give us an idea of how to introduce a new type of selection into politics. 

First Round: Local Action

In the first round, the group of one hundred is divided into four groups of twenty-five. Each group is given three years to do a project, aimed at benefiting the community. It could be a fundraising operation, an art project, or even a beautification or renovation of some area or building. Once the project is complete, each group would nominate someone they see as having contributed the most to the project — a Prime Contributor. Then the four groups and their achievement would put before a jury comprised of local citizens, drawn randomly. The jury would rank the projects, and there could be some kind of group reward depending on the placement.

At this stage we have selected a group of Prime Contributors comprising 4% of the cohort, who should possess above average conscientiousness and/or charisma.

Second Round: Practical Knowledge

To become more creative, one must often master current techniques and knowledge. The next round therefore facilitates the acquisition of practical knowledge in whatever the field the young Fellows are interested in. For each field of interest, we could gather twenty-five young people, drawn from across society, and give them the time and space during the summer to work on a project in this area. To this end, each Prime Contributor is charged with proposing a project, which should aim to replicate a technology or cultural work, to master a given technique, or another project which would help increase the creative potential of the young Fellows. It could even take place over two summers. For the project to go ahead, the Prime Contributor must recruit fifty fellows from their age cohort. The threshold of fifty means that half of those Prime Contributors from the First Round will be eliminated: 2pc of the cohort.

In order to ensure that the group is composed of a mix from across society is formed, only a small number of fellows should come from their immediate region. This selection could be aided by online communities corresponding to the online courses in highly specialised areas described in the chapter on the Metasophist University. Recruiting could start here. Furthermore, meet-ups could be facilitated so that people would get to know others in the online communities, thereby learning who they would be able to co-operate with.

Once this stage has been completed, we would have a pool of 2pc of the population, along with a record of them managing two groups across several years. That they were nominated as a Prime Contributor tells us they were of good character. If they successfully convened a group, then that indicates they have some amount of charisma and persuasiveness. Now we need a third round, to select for creativity. 

Third Round: Creation

In the third round, each Prime Contributor proposes a project for a Creative Cluster, as outlined in the previous chapter. In order to go ahead, it must attract the support of at least two hundred people from that cohort, and must have a story for how it will contribute to the Imperative. Selection could be done using a single transferable vote, where people state a list of preferences. If a project obtains two hundred votes, then subsequent votes for that project are allocated to their next preference. Similarly, the votes of projects with no hope of reaching the threshold will be “recycled” by being allocated to their next preferences.

Why two hundred? This threshold means that some only 0.5pc of the cohort will obtain enough votes to get their project through. The ones who do we shall call Telarchs, and the collective will be known as the Telarchy (meaning leadership by those whose goal is the Telos – the ultimate or final Good).

The Telarch’s right to convene a cluster should not have to be exercised immediately. They could postone this until the age of twenty-five or even thirty, as they may wish to propose a project that requires more expertise and knowledge to accomplish than an eighteen-year-old would usually possess. This is particularly true for projects in the technological and artistic sphere, where one must first acquire knowledge of technique.

How many people should be in a Creative Cluster? Each Telarch should pick a maximum of five people from their cohort to help them. Some missions may require more people; in this case, Telarchs could join together and have correspondingly larger clusters. For example, if they require fifteen people, three of them would need to jointly propose an idea. Such clusters could be funded for around three years. After this, either they must form a Chapter, which will be a sub-community within a broader Metasophist Community, or find private funding.

The Clusters should be relatively free to decide what kind of projects they work on. In addition to technological and artistic projects, they could also work on more political problems. For example, they may research a particular problem such as high suicide in a region, or identify how society can survive an event such as the eruption of a supervolcano. Or they may like to spend time developing a reform to the banking system or the legal profession. Some may say that it is utterly unrealistic to expect people of that age to solve problems. But one should not underestimate the benefits of letting people meditate on a problem for a long time, as it gives serendipity and unconscious mental processes time to chance upon an unexpected path to a solution.

Chapter Formation

New chapters are essential as it is these units which will introduce new ideas into Metasophism; each chapter is essentially a new instantiation or incarnation of the Metasophist spirit, and the founding impulse should usually be that the founders perceive a better way of working towards the Metasophist Imperative. At the same time, we must ensure that the culture of the chapter adheres to Metasophism. We must thus define a set of key practices to ensure that the chapter retains certain commonalities with the movement, especially regarding the search for truth. What these practices should be would be defined by a Prime Chapter — the first chapter of the movement, whose role eventual role is to safeguard competition among the chapters, but also to prevent them competing so much that they destroy each other.

What then would be the conditions for forming a chapter? First, normal members of the community would be able to establish a chapter, in addition to Telarchs. In order to form a chapter in a normally sized society, one could imagine that it should have the support of at least ten thousand people. However, this is only in the case where we are talking about a Metasophist society i.e. a state that has adopted Metasophism as a mode of organisation. In a non-state Metasophist community, the requirements for forming a chapter would be much lighter. In fact, as soon as there would be noticeable factions forming, different chapters should be formed. This then gives us a way of practising the suitable division of powers between the Prime and other Chapters.

6.3 Training the Telarch

By dividing the programme into a number of stages as we have done, we would ensure that the Telarch should have a number of desirable characteristics. Nomination as a Prime Contributor would indicate a good work ethic and character. Finally, they would need to be creative and persuasive in order to get others to support their project. The result should thus be a creative, competent, and conscientious governing class, with a certain degree of charisma.

However, we must maintain a constant skepticism about this scheme. The traits selected first will likely be the traits represented most. By selecting for creativity last, we may end up with a Telarchy that is less creative than we need it to be. The order of the rounds, and the number eliminated in each, is thus something to be calibrated over time.

A key characteristic is missing from the above: foresight. This is difficult to select for, as risks such as wars, financial crises, and pandemics only manifest once every decade or century. Moreover, different elite types are likely to understand the world at different times. A liberal many have been better able to predict the course of international affairs in the 90s and 00s, but would have been constantly surprised by the 10s. Therefore, having low foresight in one decade does not preclude foresight in another decade. In the case of high-frequency events, the true measure of someone’s foresight may not emerge until they are twenty-five to thirty years old. Therefore, it is perhaps unreasonable to measure people’s ability at such a young age and over such a short period of time. But even if we cannot directly select for it, we should at least cultivate it—but how? 

Developing foresight

Foresight involves the capacity to predict local, national, and global events, while avoiding the errors of conventional thought. Modern elites are continuously surprised because acquiring wisdom is simply not a priority in today’s world for the following reasons.

First, elites specialise in a narrow domain and otherwise tend to focus on their private life. The greater good is not something that will further their social status, hierarchical position, or their bank balances, so few spend much time thinking about it. To the extent people acquire knowledge on a broad range of issues, it is mostly so that they can participate in light conversation at social gatherings, where they will be keen to echo fashionable views. Should such views fail to help predict global developments, there is little to no reputational cost as “everyone” was wrong or “no one could have predicted so-and-so.”

Not all elites are like this, of course. But one could easily suspect that those who are occupy a majority of junior and middle-management positions in the public service. This would be sufficient to introduce groupthink and inertia into an organisation, hindering its creativity.

To appreciate the damage of such groupthink, consider the following example. In the early 2000s, if you criticised financial liberalistation, you would have been regarded as a crank – someone not to be taken seriously, even though such liberalisation had already proven to be volatile and damaging to societies in East Asia and South America. On the other hand, those who would have adopted the conventional view, even if it meant being wrong, would have borne no cost and would probably have rose to higher echelons.

The problems can be encapsulated as follows: our elite cannot predict the future; they have no incentive to do so; people who are right are not recognised; and those who are wrong endure no cost. The result is a consistent slowness in learning from world events.

In a society where truth is held in high esteem, those who have foreseen events accurately must be recognised, encouraged, and rewarded. We can achieve this by incentivising those who aspire to leadership to state their predictions, making the results available to the public. A template for such a system has already been provided by Philip Tetlock’s Good Judgement Project.

Under the Good Judgement Project, precise questions with verifiable outcomes are formulated. Participating forecasters are trained to think in terms of probabilities, and indicate the degree of confidence in their answers. A typical question would be “Before 1 October 2018, will Kim Jong-un cease to be supreme leader of North Korea?”.

The programme has been successful. For example, in forecasting tournaments organised by US intelligence, these voluntary participants outperformed experts, including those with access to classified data.[79] But the beneficial effects can go much further. If the forecasting records of aspiring elites are publicly available, then they will abandon models of the economy and international relations that have no explanatory power, and search for models that do. This would boost the demand for accurate models, incentivising specialists and academics to create them. Failed frameworks will be abandoned more quickly. Finally, it has been found that those who participate in forecasting tournaments become more balanced in their political attitudes, thereby providing us with a way to reduce polarisation in our divided age.[80]

Before implementing such a scheme across an entire community, the following questions would need to be resolved. First, the composition of the question-setting body would need to be determined (the same body who sets the questions would also need to evaluate them). This would most likely be managed by the Prime Chapter. The fields to be covered by such questions must be determined. Foreign affairs and the economy are two obvious candidates. Furthermore, as people have aptitudes in different fields, a balance must be struck. One solution to the above would be to make answering all questions optional, while ensuring a plentiful supply of questions. How all of this can be achieved shall be further discussed in the next chapter.

At this stage, the prospective leadership of the community should be charismatic, competent, and wise relative to the rest of their age cohort. We now need to ensure that they devote these skills to solving the problems of the country.

Closeness

Young Telarchs must be more than simple representatives. Each must maintain a personal relationship with those who nominated and worked with them at various stages — so around eighty people over all. This would help them understand the problems facing individuals at all stages in their life. What bad choices do people make? Why do they make them? Which government systems do citizens have difficulty interacting with? Such knowledge would help prevent Telarchs believing simplistic narratives and inaccurate abstractions. It would also provide a sort of early warning model for emerging social problems such as drug abuse, delinquency, and underemployment. The mechanism for ensuring such a connection is simple: the twenty-five who originally nominated the Telarch could have the power to remove them from the Telarchy, if there is proof that the Telarch made no effort to stay in consult them at least once annually.

Such a close relationship cannot be achieved currently as representatives usually have too large a constituency to serve and therefore cannot establish a personal connection with those they serve. In addition, they tend to be elected when older, and therefore do not think about problems when they are young when they may be better able to grasp the nature of the problem and would have more time to meditate on solutions.

Chapter Membership

Now that we have selected a pool of potential leaders in different fields, how exactly shall they be integrated into the broader community?

As mentioned, new Telarchs could create new chapters, or join existing chapters. In the case of the latter, it is up to the chapter to accept them or not: they must not admit those who don’t share their specific vision.

Some will want to join the Prime Chapter. However, membership of the Prime Chapter demands a certain neutrality in the aggregate. We can ensure this by ensuring that the Telarchs spend a minimum of three years as a member of a normal chapter, and can then be nominated to join the Prime Chapter. If one comes from each of say the twelve largest chapters, then we may ensure a certain neutrality. This would only be a solution when there are many chapters. We can reach this state faster by applying a cap on a chapter size—so that in the equilibrium, if the Community is sizeable enough, we could have a minimum of twelve chapters.

But what does it mean to join a normal chapter—what does it actually do? The purpose of the chapters is to identify a path to achieving the Imperative. Chapters should therefore receive funding in order in order to think through their particular vision, to be able to hire researchers and others to carry it out, to establish a media outlet to be able to inform the public about it. But a chapter should not be able to contest elections separately—this can only be done as part of a common front with other chapters, with seats allocated in proportion with the total number of members. A chapter does not need to do all of these things — it can start off as a media organisation, for example. This process, and the necessity for it, will be described in the next chapter.

If the Community came to create a number of organisations or firms, then we could set aside certain positions for Telarchs, among which they could be rotated. They would thereby learn what the flaws in one organisation are, and how they can be remedied based on practise in other organisations. The private sector may also learn from such an exchange. This scheme could take place before they work on the Round Three project, and can therefore be a preparation for that stage.

For those Telarchs who are interested in serving at an international level, one could envisage further language training by making such rotations and placements occur in different countries along with extra language training before their placement abroad. 

Summary

At this stage, it is good to summarise the advantages of the system described above and how it meets criteria we initially set out for a qualitatively different system of elite selection:

Close to the people: The fact that individuals are selected at quite a young age and from across the country will ensure that they come from a wide variety of backgrounds. As selection takes place at a very local level, we help ensure that both poor and wealthy neighbourhoods are represented. Ethnicities which tend to congregate into poor neighbourhoods should thus also be represented.

Non-hierarchical selection: Telarchs are never evaluated by those senior to them in a hierarchy. Rather, they are evaluated and selected by their peers or those they serve. This would help mitigate harmful tendencies which emerge in hierarchies, such as flattery, cronyism, and nepotism.

Not organised on the basis of factions: In the system outlined above, there is no role for established factions in controlling the selection. As Telarchs are selected by those who know them personally, the organisational function of established groups (advertising, printing and distribution of campaign material) is of no particular benefit.

Ability to devise solutions: In subsequent stages Telarchs are selected depending on the quality of the solution they devise, thus ensuring that are creative and competent.

This establishment of the Telarchy will I hope meet several goals. First, it will give the young every opportunity to work on the problems they see as important. This will eliminate the ability of established organisations to be complacent, setting the terms of debate and forcing people to wait their turn while society crumbles. No longer will the young have to spend ten or twenty years gratifying those senior to them; they will get all the resources they need from those around them, provided they can put forth an attractive vision. This structure could be applied to many fields, including architecture, science, politics, and media. If the sacralisation of outdated ideas is holding all these professions back, then the Telarchy may be a magic weapon to sweep away all the false idols which man has chose so unwisely to worship.

We now have a system that will ensure competent and creative leadership for the society that adopts it. However, we cannot wait so long for solutions to many of today’s problems. And among the major problems is the lack of a well-funded, truth-seeking media. How we could address this I shall discuss in the next chapter.

Next Chapter: Media for a Metasophist Society

Previous Chapter: Unifying a Metasophist Society

Endnotes

[72] Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk. “The Danger of Deconsolidation: The Democratic Disconnect”. In: Journal of Democracy 27.3 (2016), pp. 5–17.

[73] Trevor N. Dupuy. A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945. Prentice-Hall, 1977.

[74] Trevor N. Dupuy. A Genius For War: The German Army and General Staff, 1807-1945. Prentice-Hall, 1977, Location 3613, Kindle Edition.

[75] Peter Fiske. “Bias: Identifying, Understanding and Mitigating Negative Biases in your Job Search”. In: (Oct. 1999). URL: https://www.sciencemag.org/careers/1999/10/bias-identifying-understanding-and-mitigating-negative-biases-your-job-search

[76] Jerald Greenberg. “Perception and Learning: Understanding and Adapting to the Work Environment”. In: Behavior in organizations: Global Edition. Pearson Education; 10th Edition, 2014, p. 110.

[77] Lilliana Mason. Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity Paperback. University of Chicago Press, 2018.

[78] Yes Prime Minister, Season Two Episode Five. For the relevant clip, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwFDvMiBKeM

[79] Philip Tetlock and Dan Gardner. Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction. Random House, 2015.

[80] Barbara Mellers, Philip Tetlock, and Hal R. Arkes. “Forecasting tournaments, epistemic humility and attitude depolarization”. In: Cognition (2018). ISSN: 0010-0277. URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0010027718302798