A person “Pat” has a clever idea “X”.
A friend of Pat’s spots a flaw “f1” in X, and explains the flaw to Pat.
Pat, in a face-saving move, rationalizes f1 using excuse “e1″.
Another friend tries to point out another flaw “f2”, Pat adopts excuse “e2″.
…
Eventually, due to the helpfulness of friends, Pat has ready-made answers to essentially every criticism of the amazing idea, and is stuck.
I think this “face-sensitivity leads to polarization and entrenchment” phenomenon is one of the major problems with most current forms of combining human intelligence into teams more capable than their components.
Wikipedia’s mostly-anonymous cooperation seems like a step in the right direction, as do various forms of “wisdom of crowds” cooperation, including Hanson’s prediction markets and Netflix Prize-style blending of software experts.
could you elaborate on your last point please? I can’t parse it.
A person “Pat” has a clever idea “X”. A friend of Pat’s spots a flaw “f1” in X, and explains the flaw to Pat. Pat, in a face-saving move, rationalizes f1 using excuse “e1″. Another friend tries to point out another flaw “f2”, Pat adopts excuse “e2″. … Eventually, due to the helpfulness of friends, Pat has ready-made answers to essentially every criticism of the amazing idea, and is stuck.
I think this “face-sensitivity leads to polarization and entrenchment” phenomenon is one of the major problems with most current forms of combining human intelligence into teams more capable than their components.
Wikipedia’s mostly-anonymous cooperation seems like a step in the right direction, as do various forms of “wisdom of crowds” cooperation, including Hanson’s prediction markets and Netflix Prize-style blending of software experts.