Thomas:
Thanks for your detailed comments. On one point we have agreement Douglas,
we have both got our dates set wrong on our computer. I was puzzeled that
your message was at the bottom of my date ordered inbox - really, Friday,
Feb 27, 1920 is further than I ever dared to err.
You wrote:
> I'm not sure "our system" was ever designed, I think it just grew. Perhaps
> we could design a better system, but who is to do the designing? We don't
> work well together, as Mr. Atlee has pointed out, so how can we succeed
> in designing a better system?
Thomas:
I'm sorry that you seem to have given up on the best idea I've seen. The
"who" of course is problematic if you limit yourself to a one shot try. I
would prefer a more plural form, say "whom" of many aspirants can produce
the "best" structure rather than system. (System: a complex whole; a set of
connected things or parts functioning together) (Structure: a set of
interconnecting parts of any complex thing; a framework.)
Try the formula "Structure determines the form of the processes" in which
structure is a defined state. Hard to get a grip on but perhaps an example.
Representative Democracy is in my opinion a structure for political
goverance selection. As a structure, it is predisposed to the concepts of
political parties and political parties exist like corporations over a long
period of time. So you get a model of government in which those selected
are focused on the survival of their Party which is often at variance with
those who selected them - the governed.
You said:
>
> The same comment applies to "how good our process is". It isn't.
> But what process have we for improving our process? Not one that
> works, I suppose, or we'd notice the process improving. Hands up how
> many people see things improving.
Thomas:
I view process as a direct result of structure - the formula - structure
determines the form of the process. Therefore, to improve process, then you
make changes in structure. If your structure is electing government through
the process of political party's and it is assessed by consensus that
politcal party's do not give good governance, then it seems to me that a
structure is needed that changes the process to something else.
Now, at one time, we had as a structure, heriditary monarchy. Over time, it
became apparent that we got a lot of stupid monarch's who created a stupid
nobility which did really stupid things with the resources of a country. So
we invented a new structure for the times - representative democracy. Now,
the times have changed - we no longer live in a time constrained
agricultural society in which it often took days or weeks for information to
travel a few miles to one in which information is instantaneous. We need a
new structure and from that will flow new processes which will produce
different results.
Now, this new structure can come on us willy nilly through historical
movements like globalization or can come to use through the design of
structures that allow a humane rather than capitalistic globalization in
which a structure is being created by those who influence or control the
market.
Now, I agree, that this does not solve the problem of the "who" or "whom",
but I think that they is we - yep, you and me and millions of others over
the next 10 years who are going to be creating all this noise on the
Internet - the new forum for change. Out of that discontent and collage of
ideas will arise political leaders who can articulate the consensus of all
this discontent. Much as the American and French Revolutions found leaders
to articulate the discontent within the monarchical societies. Perhaps this
time we can do it without a war or a gullitine (sp).
Respectfully,
Thomas Lunde
--
----------
>From: "Douglas P. Wilson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>Subject: Re: Co-stupidity
>Date: Fri, Feb 27, 1920, 11:46 PM
>
> Well 'co-stupidity' is certainly an interesting word. It seems somewhat
> similar to a word or phrase that I often use, 'error-covariance', but I
> prefer the latter because it carries a remedy along with it.
>
>> "Co-stupidity" describes the collective inability of groups, communities,
>> organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and
>> to deal effectively with what they find. ...
>
> We are not dealing with a universal truth here -- there are a few examples
> of groups, communities, organizations, and (perhaps) even societies that
> have functioned well, seeing problems and dealing with them effectively.
>
> But yes, it's mostly true, collective intelligence is much less common
> that collective stupidity.
>
> I can also agree with these statements:
>
>> The know-how exists with which to
>> dramatically improve our collective intelligence.
>>
>> We could build the capacity to be wise together instead of co-stupid.
>
> Yes, of course the know-how exists. I am one of those people who clain
> to have this know-how, so I have to agree it exists. Here you go:
>
> To improve our collective intelligence we need only use
> combinatorial optimization methods to match people so as to
> minimize overall error covariance.
>
> For some reason that escapes me I have an awful time getting people
> to swallow that last sentence. So whenever I find someone talking
> about improving our collective intelligence I look eagerly to see if
> they have found some new way of explaining things.
>
> But what I usually find is people who claim that we can improve our
> collective intelligence by just trying hard enough!
>
> Mr. Atlee starts out well:
>
>> It seems to me that the most powerful thing we can do
>> to deal with the social issues and opportunities we each care about
>> is ...
>
> (insert drum roll here)
>
>> ...to join together to increase our society's ability
>> to fruitfully deal with ALL the social issues and opportunities we face.
>
> Sorry, you've lost me. Isn't joining together precisely the problem
> to be solved? Is the difficult problem of how to work together
> to be solved by working together? Hmmm.
>
>> If we do that, then our issues will likely be handled better.
>> If we don't do that, then our issues will likely continue to be mishandled.
>
> Well, then, it looks like the issues will continue to be mishandled.
> Can we only figure out how to work together productively by working
> together productively? Then we're doomed.
>
> There's a slightly better attempt embedded in an earlier paragraph:
>
>> ... Once we are in a group or society, our collective
>> intelligence or stupidity has little to do with how clever or slow we are
>> individually -- and everything to do with how well our system is designed,
>> how good our process is, how wisely we handle information, and how well we
>> all work together. ...
>
> I'm not sure "our system" was ever designed, I think it just grew. Perhaps
> we could design a better system, but who is to do the designing? We don't
> work well together, as Mr. Atlee has pointed out, so how can we succeed
> in designing a better system?
>
> The same comment applies to "how good our process is". It isn't.
> But what process have we for improving our process? Not one that
> works, I suppose, or we'd notice the process improving. Hands up how
> many people see things improving.
>
> Of course collective intelligence depends on how wisely we handle
> information, but how does the author propose to make us wiser?
>
> Even though I'm obviously in a disagreeable mood, I won't disagree
> with the statement that our collective intelligence depends on "how
> well we all work together." I think collective intelligence IS just how
> well we all work together, so that sentence sure sounds like a tautology
> to me, and I have to agree -- it's true.
>
> I'm sorry for being so unkind, and my sarcasm is a bit excessive, but
> there is much too much of this stuff out on the net, and I'm sick of it.
>
> We can't solve society's problems with pep-talks about the importance
> of working together or exhortations to try harder. We need some of
> that "know-how" mentioned earlier. We need tools and techniques, or
> in other words, social technology.
>
> If part of the problem is
>
>> ... the collective inability of groups, communities,
>> organizations and societies to see what's happening in and around them, and
>> to deal effectively with what they find. ...
>
> then we need to address that problem directly. Here's an example, (maybe the
only
> example): You may have heard of the Delphi Method studied by the RAND
> Corporation some decades go. That's the name of a technique, a process,
> designed to help people reach good collective decisions and collectively make
> various predictions and estimates about unknown things like future technology.
>
> It was memorable (and perhaps unique) for actually addressing the
> problem, but unfortunately the Delphi Method didn't actually work.
> It was an interesting idea, but there was no mathematics behind it.
> I have a little rule of thumb that says if there is no mathematics
> behind something it can't be hi-tech and probably isn't worth much.
>
> As it turns out, it really doesn't matter how many people you ask to
> think about a problem, and getting people to submit ideas anonymously
> (to encourage free discussion) doesn't seem to help much.
>
> What does matter is who talks to whom, who works with whom, and
> whether those people are prone to the same kinds of error. "Who talks
> to whom" is the combinatorial part, optimization just means seeking
> the best, and being "prone to the same kinds of error" is (roughly)
> error-covariance.
>
> If two people have similar error-tendencies then they shouldn't be
> working together. We all have similar error-tendancies -- we are
> much more similar in the ways we make mistakes than most people
> realize. Nevertheless for each one of us there exists a few people
> with very different tendencies -- all we need to do is find those
> people and work with them.
>
> On http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/moretech.html I put it this way:
>
> There are people out there who share your interests but make very
> different kinds of mistakes than you do. It can be enormously to
> your advantage to associate or communicate with such people.
>
> There are people out there who not only share your interests but
> make almost exactly the same kinds of mistakes that you do. It can
> be terribly to your disadvantage to associate or communicate with
> such people.
>
> The Internet and the World Wide Web can make it easy to find
> people with the same interests as you, but currently it doesn't
> provide much help in discriminating between the ones that can help
> you avoid mistakes and the ones that will provoke you to make even
> worse mistakes.
>
> That's the problem in a nutshell, and the solution is actually measuring
> error-covariance by getting people to answer a lot of factual questions
> and cross-correlating their errors.
>
> More about this is to be found near the bottom of my new home page,
> http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html which you should look at,
> if only to read the rather exciting (to me) news at the top of
> the page.
>
> dpw
>
> Douglas P. Wilson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> http://www.island.net/~dpwilson/index.html
> http://www.SocialTechnology.org/index.html
>
