House of Eratosthenes

It is said that people make better decisions meeting in large groups than they do on their own; rarely does anyone challenge this, but for some reason, there arises a need to keep saying it over and over again. I’ve not yet heard anyone seek to assert that a larger group of people can make better decisions than a medium-sized group of people, and I don’t think I will. The largest group I can see deciding things, is the group of United States voters deciding presidential and congressional elections; it remains an inter-generational constant that they, themselves, are terribly disenchanted and unhappy with what they, themselves, have been doing. So if there’s something to this theory of group-think superiority over individual-think, then there must be an optimal group size. There has to be a number, more than one but less than 300 million, inclined to make better decisions than groups of any other size. What an enormous benefit to humankind it would be to find that number. And yet, I’m not aware of anyone trying to look into it.

As mulish and resolute as these group-think advocates are when they argue the benefits of group-think, to the point of bellicosity, their defenses are limited to calling attention to the best of the group-think ideas, whereas when the virtues of group-think are called into question, the indictment is a consequence of — not the best ideas — but the worst ones. The defenses, frustratingly, are never organized around the question at hand, which is why & how we should tolerate the bad ideas. The meaningful disadvantage to the group-think authority is that the ether that binds the minds together concocts irrational, deplorable, indefensible and harmful ideas, speckles of scatology no single one of the minds would deign to claim. Ideas that make so little sense, do so much harm, and produce so little, that they are unworthy of an identity.

These items, which dwell at the nadir of the group-think performance curve rather than at the zenith, always inspire the indictment of the group-think model but are never the objects of it’s defense.

The group-think defenders impress me as wanting to be able to point at something and say “Aha! There, see, is an idea that is so ingenious, so beneficial for so many and harming none, so demanding of intellectual resourcefulness for it’s creation, that no individual could ever have conceived it, and behold, a group did so produce it. Thus it has been, thus it shall remain.” That seems to be the sentiment they desire to promote, desperately; and yet they cannot. It would be far more modest to say “at least the group has a mechanism internal to it to ensure no harm is done” — or that “said harm will be constrained, contained, and limited.” They can’t even say that. Perhaps that’s why I see the group-think model defended so often and so belligerently, when so few people are attacking it.

When you strip away all the embellishments of shoddy thinking and insincere portrayals of it, what you’re left with is: Examples of group-think production can be found, somewhere, if you look hard enough, that have more pleasing results than some of the most wasteful and least effective results of individual thinking. To put it another way: Group-think can be made to look superior if you do enough cherry-picking on both sides.

But the deleterious products of group-think, meanwhile, have become the plague against humanity in modern times. The idea no man owns and that no man should own, or would own, or could own. And we can’t get rid of them; we can’t stop them; we can’t even slow their approach or implementation. All of these countermeasures would require criticism of the group-think idea, and since the idea was born of the ether that binds the consciouses together rather than any one of the consciouses themselves, nobody is accountable to them. It cannot be ascertained what sort of enemy is being made by the man who would criticize it. So they can’t be criticized.

I can’t believe there’s anyone out there that thinks that groups make better decisions. There’s a Demotivator from despair.org that goes:

MEETINGS: Because None Of Us Is As Dumb As All Of Us.

What usually ends up happening is everyone talks at great length to guarantee their social status within the group, then they defer to the smartest guy in the room. After which, he solves the problem, but everyone wants their piece, so they muck with the solution until it’s no longer a solution, just another problem.

There is a counterpoint to the “no-one should own, could own” theory. Tangible items, hard property, the parts of things you can kick, sure. Stories? Music? It’s not a bad idea to guarantee that a creative mind can make money with his or her idea, but guaranteeing it in perpetuity is a bit ridiculous. OTOH, it’s one of those decisions we’re making up as we go, so if the society a hundred years from now wants to throw a family in prison because their child scrawled a misshapen Mickey Mouse, sure, why not? I don’t agree with it, but I don’t live a hundred years from now, either.

On point, most studies I’ve read suggest that groupthink is almost universally the least efficient way to make decisions, and that the decisions made are of generally poor quality if not outright failure. Unfortunately as a friend just pointed out, government is a bit of a special case, as it has needs of continuity (not all the decision-makers can die at once, or will do so rarely, but this is more bureaucracy) and at least the veneer of letting everyone have their say. Benevolent dictators make the best leaders, but there’s significantly less guarantee as to consistency down the line than with a group of all concerned parties. Ultimately both sets of needs led to the split of authority in the U.S., and we’ll see how it turns out. Given the significant success of the current system, I don’t think it’s going away any time soon, regardless of what “everyone” says.
- dcshiderly | 05/27/2008 @ 23:01

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