Emergent Stupidity

Fox News ^ | July 25, 2002 | Rand Simberg

[NonZeroSum]

I recently read an interesting article titled The Talent Myth

[NonZeroSum]

This could have application to a wide range of bureaucratic phenomena.

[Ravenstar]

Brilliant!

I am a rocket scientist and I have seen some of the decisions and I can only,on a preliminary basis(I have to check the Math!), conclude that you've found it!!

Ravenstar

[RAT Patrol]

ROTFL!

[Rytwyng]

ping

[Tauzero]

ping

[Consort]

[Ants], when congregated in a colony, the ant colony itself can behave in what appears to be an intelligent manner. Attack it, and it will defend itself, often in sophisticated and responsive ways.

People are just the opposite. Individually, the are great and creative and contribute to the greater good. Three or more people, however, can create a mob mentality and will often attack individuals and other mobs in the colony of man.

[reflecting]

HAHAHA! I think you have something here....federal grants could be made available for additional research..

[AZLiberty]

A brilliant researcher named Rudolph Starkermann has a body of work based on applying the notions of control theory and systems engineering to the behavior of people working in groups. His theoretical work, subsequently confirmed by extensive simulations, showed the fundamental limitations of "group thought". Although it is possible for many people to work together on "rule-based" activities (such as building automobiles), when it comes to problems that require real problem-solving (such as designing an automobile), productivity begins to decline preciptously at n=4.

Even with small groups, effectiveness is only achieved with the right kind of attitude -- a helpful attitude where all incoming communications and corresponding responses are intended to advance the group goal.

A good summary of Starkermann's work is included in William L. Livingston's Friends in High Places, an entertaining and enlightening book about how to solve complex engineering problems.

[Dukie]

The concept of "regression to the mean" is being demonstrated in the decline of stocks over the past several months.

Here however, it seems that the author is implying that the value of the whole is less than the average of its parts.

Is that your take ?

[Soren]

Speaking of complexity, has anyone checked out Netlogo? It is a program that let's you model complex systems and it comes with a number of models already set up that you can play around with. Pretty cool. It's a free download. On another note, has anyone read Stephen Wolfram's new book "New Kind of Science"?

[arete]

Interesting. Public school system? Thanks for the ping.

Richard W.

[Tauzero]

"Is that your take ?"

Yep.

Manias and panics are also examples of "emergent stupidity", IMO. :)

[Tauzero]

"On another note, has anyone read Stephen Wolfram's new book 'New Kind of Science'?"

Nope. Have you?

[Soren]

No, but my brother is half way through and enjoying it. A lot of 1 star reviews though on Amazon. I don't have the time right now to handle a 1200 pager.

[Rockitz]

I've not seen this effect, but I have seen the "loudest in a meeting wins the discussion" and the "most stinging personal attack" methods work very effectively on numerous occasions.

PS. I saw the wedding pics. Loved the twin garters! How was the honeymoon? ;oP

[TigerLikesRooster]

RE #8

There are two reasons which seem to contribute to this problem.

Smart people can screw up things because (1) the majority of them have large egos and (2) they like to make things more and more complex unless they are faced with the strong evidence against it. They tend to wallow on complexity if they can get away with it. Especially, the trail-blazer types make the life out of bucking the trend and not yielding to the consensus. So the result of many smart guys working together is to make intractably complex system which cannot work but satisfies their egos and love for a grand complex puzzle.

The best way is to have small working group of 2-4 who are complementary to each other.

Finally, there is another factor one needs to consider. When smart people from very different fields work together, they are pretty ignorant of the other people's area. So they lack perspective to evaluate even the general thrust of other's idea. So bunch of miscommunication and misjudgement follows. The result can be a dismal mess. It takes a lot of work to gain perspective on areas other than yours. I know it from my first-hand experience of routinely crossing discipline boundaries. Even in the same topic, for example, the human brain, the different discipline has different emphasis and perspectives. Talking about human brain in philosophy is a lot different from talking about it in psychology, which is also different from talking about it in neuroscience. Many times views of human brain in these area compte against one another.

[boris]

"On another note, has anyone read Stephen Wolfram's new book 'New Kind of Science'?"

I tried, but I was overwhelmed by the sterile, infantile, self-absorbed, trite and useless blather somewhere around page 20. Hubris overdose, excuse please.

--Boris

[boris]

"Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain."--Frederich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans.

[Rytwyng]

A bit off topic, but since you asked, the honeymoon was great. For those who wondered -- the dual-garter thing was my idea - she wore a lace garter under her dress, I wore a tartan garter under my kilt (which answers an ancient question.) And so we had two garter tosses.