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Firehose
Posts:7
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| 12/12/2006 6:37 PM |
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Perhaps this is outside the scope of this project, but ..
The greatest ‘invention’ of civilization is the respect for truth, with a small or capital ‘T.’ For millennia, historians, philosophers, scientists and revolutionaries from many places on this planet have died to achieve this respect. Some may not agree with me, but the single greatest achievement of Western Civilization is to maintain this respect. It was and remains tough going, trying to overcome primitiveness and superstition.
So, the fact that someone asserts ‘we are smarter than me’ does not make it true.
Can the claim, ‘We are smarter than me’ be proved or dis-proved?
Let’s get some definitions started. ‘Me’ means any individual human, most probably an adult. ‘We’ means any grouping of ‘me’s’ larger than two, up to and including everyone. Being ‘smart’ is the tough idea.
What does being ‘smart’ mean? It almost certainly involves knowledge and intelligence. But what types of knowledge or intelligence? All of us together are not ‘smarter’ than Tiger Woods in playing golf. So, at least for one form of sports—physical activity—we cannot be smarter than ‘he’—Tiger Woods. Neither can all of us play the piano better than Vladimir Horowitz. Nor can we all compose a sonnet better than Shakespeare, or compose music better than Beethoven. To generalize, in skill-based activities for singles, ‘me is greater than we.’
Of course in this effort of community writing a book, many if not most of the tasks are intellectual, not physical. This needs to be emphasized if only to keep us on track. After all, many monks in the centuries before Gutenberg, wrote books. But what they did would today be called transcribing. The difference between writing and transcribing is simply creativity. In writing, the creativity is focused on the content and meaning of the text. In transcribing, the creativity could be more focused on beauty of the fonts of the text.
The achievements of any civilization is certainly a ‘we’ process. No single ‘me’ can make civilization, though many ‘me’s’ can. But then civilization is not merely about writing, however much good writing contributes to the process.
In order to achieve this community written book, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that the truth of the assertion ‘we are smarter than me’ be addressed.
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1ofus
Posts:103
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| 12/13/2006 6:32 AM |
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Firehose,
You are jumping here straight into the fire! Well done. You have stated very clearly the issues I have been struggling with.
The core of the book hypothesis is as you say a VAGUE STATEMENT and not a TESTABLE ASSERTION. Hence, it can not be falsified. However, it can be described and elucidated. This is why much of the written material in the Chapters of the book are a strange mix of cases (of differing scale and actualisation in practice) and meandering around explanations of terms and concepts.
It seems to me that a CLEAR STATEMENT of the SCOPE of the book is essential - in other words an unambiguous delineation of its boundaries is required. As you show by counterexample, the statement is nowhere nearly universally applicable.
Given that the book is expected to be written by many, the minimum condition for this to work is that WE all need to know WHAT we are WRITING ABOUT.
I would like to finish with dealing with the word 'smarter'. It is possible that common usage for it differs in USA and in UK. I also believe that the term 'smarts' has been used in Harvard Business Review to denote what I would call 'common sense' or 'know how'. This is not much to do with Intelligence, at least not as believe it to be defined. In fact, the current state in the psychology seems to be that there are several Intelligencies. Furthermore, these intelligencies can be hierarchically ordered!
So, not only do we need to have a definition of this QUALITY of BEING SMART but we also have to understand it as a QUANTITY. That is after all what is implied by word 'smarter' - not 'smart' (which is less) nor 'smartest' (being the most) but all shades in between. But, BETWEEN WHAT?
A word of caution. Going this route we may be attempting to do much more than is possible in this trans-disciplinary endevour. Coming from a family of one of the leading intelligence psychologist, it strikes me that this book is not the place to enter the murky waters of polemics.
Let us see wher this leads
Lilly |
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IanKenneth
Posts:1
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| 12/24/2006 3:37 AM |
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| "We" is greater than "me" if the series of "me" that becomes "we" are complementing each other. The aggregate smartness of "we" can be in a greater degree than "me" if the "complementary 'mes' smartness" is towards a common direction. |
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rluker
Posts:1
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| 01/27/2007 6:56 PM |
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| There are some ways in which "we" can be proven smarter than "me." The easiest is in the value of aggregate experience. If the me is exactly 50 years old and the sum total of we exceeds 50, we is smarter than me in aggregate experience. Less measurable, the value of aggregate experience increases the likelihood a single member of "we" has had a direct experience with "fact" than "me" has had. So the odds are, in most cases of information, we is smarter than me by virtue of greater direct expose to circumstances or "facts". |
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barry
Posts:72
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| 01/30/2007 1:08 PM |
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| I really like your post - is it possible that you would like to assist in moderating a chapter on this topic? Barry |
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Firehose
Posts:7
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| 01/30/2007 6:13 PM |
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Barry,
It's kind of you to think I can add some value. I've been deep into developing sftw which I had neglected. In other circumstances I would love to assist in moderating such leading edge effort. But I don't think I could commit more than 1-hr/week, if that, to such an effort.
That 'flum' fellow is certainly committed to this. And he shows enormous talent and dedication.
I must confess I fear something else: if I commit to 1-hr/week, the subject(s) will seduce me to such extent that I will be exceeding that with ease.
Thanks again for your consideration.
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bjacob
Posts:2
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| 01/31/2007 9:56 AM |
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| Interesting set of questions and thoughts. But to counter some of your premises...just as an exercise to continue the discussion. You claim that 'we' can not be better than 'me' in the case of Tiger Woods. I suggest that Tiger Woods without his caddie providing advice and his coach(es) would not be as good as Tiger Woods with that assistance. It is not so much that a group of us could not be as good as Tiger....but could not a group of people including Tiger, be better than Tiger by himself? |
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joe_flum
Posts:151
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| 01/31/2007 10:40 PM |
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I think we're missing something (or maybe hitting it on the head), but the Tiger Woods example seems to illustrate the fact that 'group intelligence' is fundamentally different in nature from what an individual does. There is no doubt that the help of others can influence and improve an individual's talent, but is that really the point. I get the sensation that we are trying to create a frame of reference using the wrong model here. Groups are not individuals. What actions are groups good for?
Instead of looking at how to 'replace' individual dominated actions, is it possible to identify the new types of behaviours that occur within community dynamics?
Just a thought,
cheers,
joe |
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shilpav
Posts:2
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| 02/01/2007 11:02 AM |
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Hi All,
I joined this group yesterday. I am very excited about the whole project.
I have some questions and am assuming that this is the right forum to post.
1] The link that brought me to this site mentioned something like
- a book written by community on 'management best practices'.
May be I am missing something here, but so far the chapters are related to
how we can do research, marketing, govern ourselves, and has examples of successful case studies.
When you buy a car, do you really care how many people were involved in it ?
Right from design, manufacturing, marketing etc many experts provide their services to make it a reality.
But, What 'we', as consumers care for is the mileage, looks, engine, cool features etc.
So, in my opinion the very fact that a community is writing the book should be transparent to the user.
It may be a good to know thing but that's not the selling point.
The selling point is end product that is greater than the sum of its individual parts.
Aren't we supposed to come up with best practices ?
2] Do you think that this collaborative management style is adopted by businesses only
when they had nothing to lose ?
3] Community members can help each other, foster better ideas resulting into better products.
But in reality, how many people readily share their knowledge with people in their own work group?
In fact, in most of the IT organizations that I have worked, people keep the knowledge to themselves.
How can the management facilitate knowledge sharing between individuals ? What would motivate people to do so?
Thanks for your time and response.
Regards,
Shilpa
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abhazard
Posts:3
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| 02/10/2007 8:36 AM |
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Shilpa,
A number of excellent points. I'd loike to answer some of your concerns here.
1) I think the fact that the community will write the book is, in fact, a huge selling point despite the fact that we don't know yet if it will produce a viable, nevermind superior book. I would guess that the reason for your stated excitement has much more to do with the process than the product. That said, I still think we have an opportunity to creat a very interesting book product.
2) Often community initiatives have been taken on by companies faced with problems that they simply could not solve in other ways. However, more and more people are seeing that these methods are effective and are launching new initiatives. It's even reached a point where companies are saying "we need to get some of this community stuff going" without even having a specific goal in mind for wht the community will do. (OI'm not recommending this approach, but it happens.
3) We have a chapter devoted to the challenge of convincing people to share with the community. I like to call it "overcoming the selfishness trait". In the end, the only way to do this effectively is to somehow convince people that it actually IS in their self-interest to share. There are all sorts of incentive programs that will help.
Thanks so much. I hope to see some of this good thinking make its way into the wiki. |
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egurowitz
Posts:1
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| 03/19/2007 6:31 PM |
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I think the best extant work addressing this question is Surowiecki's "Wisdom of Crowds" which answers it with a resounding "sometimes" and "under the right conditions" and "for some things." The Tiger Woods example is, in this light somewhat specious in that only one person can address and hit a golf ball, but by Surowiecki's thinking, a group including Tiger might be better at choosing a strategy, club selection (though there Tiger is nonpareil and so probably not much room for improvement), etc. Definitely better at choosing where to go for dinner.
Fascinating project - I signed up today and am very interested. Curious, though, why the registration drop-downs ignore consultants and consulting. Any bias there? |
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jspector
Posts:38
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| 03/22/2007 10:47 AM |
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Agree that Surowiecki's book is the starting point for all discussions about communities. It is what got me started thinking about the whole range of issues, some of which we're trying to address on this project.
I don't think there was any intentional bias against consultants (especially since Barry Libert and I were both consultants at one point in our careers!) - just an oversight.
--- Jon Spector |
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abhishek.thakore
Posts:22
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| 03/22/2007 8:29 PM |
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The We > Me requires us to perhaps think beyond the individual paradigm - so while no one can do a Shakespeare or a Beethoven, making their works modular could let the community build on them.
Similarly individual skill in artistic talent cannot be denied - the peaks of excellence shall perhaps continue to be reigned by individuals. What We>Me will do is give the rest of the society a chance to use those peaks, in many ways as starting points for building further, and building something totally different....
So maybe I could use that Tiger Woods video of him getting a hole, and add a tag like saying "get to the point" - and make an ad for my communication skills workshop!
So possibilities I believe are unlimited - we just need to think beyond ...
This is with reference to
[quote]All of us together are not ‘smarter’ than Tiger Woods in playing golf. So, at least for one form of sports—physical activity—we cannot be smarter than ‘he’—Tiger Woods. Neither can all of us play the piano better than Vladimir Horowitz. Nor can we all compose a sonnet better than Shakespeare, or compose music better than Beethoven.[/quote] |
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