Deliberation as Evidence Disclosure: A Tale of Two Protocol Types

Julian Chingoma, Adrian Haret

Abstract: We propose a model inspired by deliberative practice in which agents selectively disclose evidence about alternatives prior to taking a final decision on them. We are interested in whether such a process results in the objectively best alternative getting elected, thereby lending support to the idea that groups can be wise even when their members communicate with each other. We find that, under certain restrictions on the relative amounts of evidence, together with the actions available to the agents, there exist deliberation protocols in each of the two families we look at (i.e., simultaneous and sequential) that offer desirable guarantees. Simulation results further complement this picture, by showing how the distribution of evidence among the agents influences the outcome of the protocols.