Diversity Guard

The Diversity Guard is the institutional mechanism ensuring that subjective or high-impact decisions require concurrence from cognitively and culturally diverse reviewers. When contributions cannot be measured quantitatively–art, caregiving, ethical judgments–validation passes through councils representing distinct backgrounds, cognitive styles, and socioeconomic origins.

This is both anti-capture and anti-groupthink engineering. By mandating heterogeneity, the Guard reduces the risk that any monoculture–technical, ideological, or demographic–dominates Merit allocation or policy approvals. Early pilots in Detroit Free Zones test the model, requiring representation thresholds before implementing new policies.

The design draws on research in collective intelligence showing that diversity often outperforms expertise, and on audit practices in safety-critical domains that demand independent, cross-functional review.

References

• UnscarcityBook, chapter2 and chapter6
• Scott Page, “The Difference” (2007)
• PNAS 2014: “Collective intelligence in groups”