I argue that from a group perspective, it’s sometimes better to have a spread of individual levels of confidence about the individually rational level.
In the same way that a depressive person can bring benefits to a group in the form of reducing irrational exuberance; in the same way an uneducated person can bring benefits to the group in the form of novel ideas outside the normally taught methods; in the same way a person with mania can bring benefits to a group by accomplishing a great deal in a short time, despite burning out quickly; etc.
Human diversity allows for many tricks to overcome stagnant agreement, but the key word in the sentence I quoted above is “sometimes.” I would also say “some” people should have negative traits, to provide a set of human minds that will reach in areas not sought by more rational, intelligent, balanced, well-educated people, on the off chance there might be something interesting there. But it should not be the norm, or the majority, or the most applied method.
Proportionally, I’d say your “sometimes” is likely less than 10 percent.
A better strategy may be to inject a 5% random walk from what is purely rational (actual value subject to further analysis), or to pick 5% of topics or actions at random to do a larger random walk.
That is to say, if there are 10 rationalists who agree that a particular action should be done with 99% certainty, perhaps one of them would roll the 5% randomness on that particular topic, and go a contrary path with potentially negative effects for him individually, but providing unexpected benefits to the group.
Is there any literature on how injections of randomness in this way might effect the value of rational decision making? “Literally everybody does the same thing” does not intuitively seem robust, despite a high degree of certainty.
In the same way that a depressive person can bring benefits to a group in the form of reducing irrational exuberance; in the same way an uneducated person can bring benefits to the group in the form of novel ideas outside the normally taught methods; in the same way a person with mania can bring benefits to a group by accomplishing a great deal in a short time, despite burning out quickly; etc.
Human diversity allows for many tricks to overcome stagnant agreement, but the key word in the sentence I quoted above is “sometimes.” I would also say “some” people should have negative traits, to provide a set of human minds that will reach in areas not sought by more rational, intelligent, balanced, well-educated people, on the off chance there might be something interesting there. But it should not be the norm, or the majority, or the most applied method.
Proportionally, I’d say your “sometimes” is likely less than 10 percent.
A better strategy may be to inject a 5% random walk from what is purely rational (actual value subject to further analysis), or to pick 5% of topics or actions at random to do a larger random walk.
That is to say, if there are 10 rationalists who agree that a particular action should be done with 99% certainty, perhaps one of them would roll the 5% randomness on that particular topic, and go a contrary path with potentially negative effects for him individually, but providing unexpected benefits to the group.
Is there any literature on how injections of randomness in this way might effect the value of rational decision making? “Literally everybody does the same thing” does not intuitively seem robust, despite a high degree of certainty.