When I came to the third session of this subject and listened to Prof. Gilbert's lecture, I was recalling all the experience I had during every group discussion I went to in NTU.
Prof said that there are two ways to explain how decision might end: proportional to or inversely proportional to the number of people involved. Though, he said that it's likely that the first one is the most common situation, I must say that, from what I experienced, it isn't necessarily true.
First of all, of course, we need to know what and how the situation will look like. He mentioned that there are basically three kinds of problem that will require group discussion to obtain a result or decision. They are Cognition, Coordination and Cooperation. Cognition has something to do with the discussion that will end with exact or scientifically-written solution. Coordination requires the group member to coordinate their way of interacting with each other to achieve a solution. Cooperation asks for everyone to put their self-interest after everbody's goal.
You might think that as a university student, our daily situation will be something more into Cognition. That is true, if you're only talking about the main goal of the group discussion. But then, if you looked carefully, it turned out that most of the time, they are nothing but Coordination problem. It's the problem on how you should compromise your daily schedule to fit in additional time for discussion, how much time you and your group should spend so that the result is due on time, etc.
And the problem with Coordination [author's note: Coordination is already a category for a problem, and yet it still has a problem within it] is that there must be some kind of 'leader', whether you acknowledge it or not, and lesser degree of independence, because of course, you don't want to misbehave by being selfish. And these two things are already enough to make the Wisdom of Crowds concept impossible to take place.
According to James Surowiecki, the author of the book, if you want to have your decision result to be directly proportional to the number of people involved, then you must at least have these four conditions: Diversity, Decentralization, Independence and Aggregation. For further reading, please click at the link given, or simply read this book.
A real proof of Wisdom of Crowds can be seen on the concept of Web 2.0, especially Wikipedia. Since everyone has the same goal, which is to construct a free updated online encyclopedia, they have accomplished one of the four requirements: Aggregation. And since people all over the globe are contributing without any direct or indirect command coming from one of the parties involved, it is no doubt that the diversity level is pretty much diverse and no power is being centralized. We also know exactly that those who contribute are not joining in because they were told to do so. They all come together by their own will. It's all about Independence.
Now I know why sometimes I just didn't feel comfortable attending a group discussion. There were this afraid feeling of being called 'childish' or 'immature' when I was about to express my opinion. It should affect the degree of independence of the discussion. So, next time, I'm going to another discussion, I should just let everyone knows about the whole ideas in my head, but of course, I must consult first with myself to decide which one is appropriate or reasonable. After all, we still shouldn't deny the fact that we want to look great in front of everyone.
Prof said that there are two ways to explain how decision might end: proportional to or inversely proportional to the number of people involved. Though, he said that it's likely that the first one is the most common situation, I must say that, from what I experienced, it isn't necessarily true.
First of all, of course, we need to know what and how the situation will look like. He mentioned that there are basically three kinds of problem that will require group discussion to obtain a result or decision. They are Cognition, Coordination and Cooperation. Cognition has something to do with the discussion that will end with exact or scientifically-written solution. Coordination requires the group member to coordinate their way of interacting with each other to achieve a solution. Cooperation asks for everyone to put their self-interest after everbody's goal.
You might think that as a university student, our daily situation will be something more into Cognition. That is true, if you're only talking about the main goal of the group discussion. But then, if you looked carefully, it turned out that most of the time, they are nothing but Coordination problem. It's the problem on how you should compromise your daily schedule to fit in additional time for discussion, how much time you and your group should spend so that the result is due on time, etc.
And the problem with Coordination [author's note: Coordination is already a category for a problem, and yet it still has a problem within it] is that there must be some kind of 'leader', whether you acknowledge it or not, and lesser degree of independence, because of course, you don't want to misbehave by being selfish. And these two things are already enough to make the Wisdom of Crowds concept impossible to take place.
According to James Surowiecki, the author of the book, if you want to have your decision result to be directly proportional to the number of people involved, then you must at least have these four conditions: Diversity, Decentralization, Independence and Aggregation. For further reading, please click at the link given, or simply read this book.
A real proof of Wisdom of Crowds can be seen on the concept of Web 2.0, especially Wikipedia. Since everyone has the same goal, which is to construct a free updated online encyclopedia, they have accomplished one of the four requirements: Aggregation. And since people all over the globe are contributing without any direct or indirect command coming from one of the parties involved, it is no doubt that the diversity level is pretty much diverse and no power is being centralized. We also know exactly that those who contribute are not joining in because they were told to do so. They all come together by their own will. It's all about Independence.
Now I know why sometimes I just didn't feel comfortable attending a group discussion. There were this afraid feeling of being called 'childish' or 'immature' when I was about to express my opinion. It should affect the degree of independence of the discussion. So, next time, I'm going to another discussion, I should just let everyone knows about the whole ideas in my head, but of course, I must consult first with myself to decide which one is appropriate or reasonable. After all, we still shouldn't deny the fact that we want to look great in front of everyone.
1 comment:
There are specific types of discussions in which you should NOT edit your thoughts- brainstorming in search of new ideas is an example
Post a Comment