Saturday, December 04, 2010
Blog # 12
I found Chapter nine of The Wisdom of Crowds regarding committee’s especially interesting. I’ve never been a fan of group projects or discussions, and after reading about the shuttle disaster and the group dynamics at play regarding the committee charged with assessing the extent of the damage to the shuttle now I know why. A few over-zealous and biased members of a group can completely destroy what little chance there may be of finding an acceptable response to a problem. Some people that are naturally less aggressive can be intimidated and/or coerced into inferior roles within the group and a lack of diversity of opinion can result with sometimes horrific results. It is this diversity of opinion that Suroweicki touts as the single best guarantee that a group will come up with a favorable response or outcome. While it seems collective knowledge is able to surpass any one person’s individual knowledge, there are apparently conventions to be followed that will allow for the group to be beneficial and reach competent solutions. Interpersonal dynamics regarding status and rank by the members of the group must be somewhat neutralized for a group or committee to realize gains from this type of problem solving mechanism. This is not to say that there is no room for leaders in a group setting, it just means that the leaders need to be cognizant of the fact that for a group to be successful everyone’s opinion must be heard. Confirmation bias, the unconscious seeking-out of information that supports one’s previously formed intuitive opinion, seems like a huge hurdle to navigate but like a lot of things once one is aware that the issue exists, the solution to the problem is not far behind. This seems to be the case with the shuttle disaster. The bias of the preconceived notion that even if the shuttle was damaged there could be nothing done to fix the problem apparently was an idea brought into the group, as opposed to being a product of the group had tragic consequences. Group polarization seems an interesting concept insofar as it can lead people to more extreme positions and conclusions than they had before even being in a group setting. This dynamic was in play regarding the shuttle as well. To not try and assess the damage to the shuttle through the use of photographs seems about as absurd and extreme a notion as could possibly be associated with the panel of experts. The shuttle was doomed when the foam insulation struck it, but there had to be away to save the crew. Maybe depositing the crew on the space station and then sending up another shuttle to retrieve them could have been an answer. The fact that groups are able to make smarter decisions faster and better than their smartest member apparently gives way to the notion that the group is always right. And as we’ve seen with the shuttle disaster, sometimes the exact opposite is true. Groups can and do make collectively dumb decisions, and some of these decisions are much dumber than any one member of the group would have come up with on their own.
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I also found Chapter 9 of Suroweicki’s Wisdom of Crowds to be interesting. However I’d like to point out that smaller groups tend to have more of the issues previously described. This is primarily due to the fact that there is more face-to-face contact which means influence from others is more direct and immediate. Large groups tend to include more member diversity and outspokenness. Also pertaining to NASA’s MMT case, the group had a mindset in place that the foam strike was not enough to damage the shuttle and if the strike had damaged the shuttle, that it was beyond repair. This problem solving method is essentially backwards since we do not evaluate anything but rather make the evidence fit.
This is one of the issues we saw with MMT which is known as groupthink; the problem in which a cohesive group whose members minimize conflict and reach a consensus without actually analyzing or evaluating the evidence. The group culture was heavily hierarchical so really any issues brought up by junior members were simply disregarded. And most likely as a result, the junior members usually didn’t comment since they would simply acquiesce to senior members. In essence, the members of the group were so ingrained with the NASA culture, they simply gave in to whoever was in charge.
As you pointed out, the lack of diversity is what caused the group to fail. The group polarization described is a direct result of the lack of diversity. As noted by Suroweicki, the lack of a devil’s advocate was a major factor in how the group derived its conclusion. The inclusion of a devil’s advocate or simply having more outspoken members, the group dynamic would have drastically changed and so would have been the result. We may never know if Columbia would have returned safely as a result but we do know that group diversity certainly would have increased their chances.
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