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Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

inc.com

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Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#41

Post by mannykannot »

If this were broadly true, large science projects like the the human genome mapping, LIGO, and especially the LHC, would have little chance of success.

In one of his autobiographical books, Richard Feynman has a passage in which he says that one of the best things about being at Caltech was the constant interaction with other talented people. The practice of science is much more collaborative than popular 'great men' hagiography portrays it.

I have no doubt at all that there are many examples where forced collaboration has been counter-productive, but the successes of modern science suggest that this article is completely wrong about the optimal conditions for creativity.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#42

Post by woliveirajr »

And that's why I hate that tendency that decisions and so on must be taken under -consensus-

If something will be decided by what everybody agrees, you're assuring it'll be by the lowest possible dominator, the lowest level that makes everybody understand and agree to.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#43

Post by mannykannot »

Quanttek wrote: post #24

Article seems pretty bad. It already starts of horrendously when they call the journal "ScienceDirect.com". That's just Elsevier's site. The journal is called "Personality and Individual Differences." Furthermore, this is how the study assessed creativity: > creativity was assessed with 10 items (e.g., “I have a vivid imagination”) from the International Personality Item Pool [...]. Participants rated the accuracy of…

There is a lack of critical thinking on the author's part here. He feels that these studies somehow support his position ("... something about creativity ... something resembling collaboration ... apparent negative correlation ..."), but when looked at in detail, they do not.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#44

Post by perpetualcrayon »

woliveirajr wrote: post #42

And that's why I hate that tendency that decisions and so on must be taken under -consensus- If something will be decided by what everybody agrees, you're assuring it'll be by the lowest possible dominator, the lowest level that makes everybody understand and agree to.

All we have to do is raise the comprehension level of (1/2 * n + 1) voters for democracy to work well. And it's not a perpetual cycle. The universe's complexity is finite.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#45

Post by QAPereo »

perpetualcrayon wrote: post #44
woliveirajr wrote: post #42

And that's why I hate that tendency that decisions and so on must be taken under -consensus- If something will be decided by what everybody agrees, you're assuring it'll be by the lowest possible dominator, the lowest level that makes everybody understand and agree to.

All we have to do is raise the comprehension level of (1/2 * n + 1) voters for democracy to work well. And it's not a perpetual cycle. The universe's complexity is finite.

The universe's complexity is finite.

For a given bounded region.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#46

Post by jondubois »

averagewall wrote: post #10
jondubois wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most wealthy people are moderately intelligent. Really intelligent people often are poor... Once you get rich, you get lazy because your money starts working for you and people around you constantly feed you with false confidence and optimism and this makes you even lazier. The smartest people I know are all poor in terms of wealth but sometimes they have high incomes. Intelligence is not a single thing because there…

Most(all?) types of intelligence are positively correlated. So if you have a natural ability at one of those things, then you're more likely to be high in the others too. Even something as simple as reaction time is correlated with IQ.

I completely disagree. Most engineers and mathematicians have low emotional intelligence compared to lawyers, real estate agents and business people.

Most engineers I know have trouble reading facial cues when interacting with other people. Also they don't realize when they are being manipulated and they are incapable of manipulating others to get what they want.

People who have high emotional intelligence can essentially read the other person's emotions while they're talking to them and they can use the feedback to adjust their speech to make it more convincing. I think that's definitely a form of intelligence and it requires a lot of practice as well as natural skill.

I've met some very uneducated people with very high emotional intelligence.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#47

Post by Veen »

jondubois wrote: post #7
mrhappyunhappy wrote: post #5

I wonder what their definition of an intelligent person is? Is it a person who scored high on a test, a master of his her profession or a high school dropout who was so fascinated with Bitcoin that he got in early and now a millionaire?

Most wealthy people are moderately intelligent. Really intelligent people often are poor... Once you get rich, you get lazy because your money starts working for you and people around you constantly feed you with false confidence and optimism and this makes you even lazier. The smartest people I know are all poor in terms of wealth but sometimes they have high incomes. Intelligence is not a single thing because there…

> Most wealthy people are moderately intelligent

They are if they made their own money. But there's no correlation between intelligence and inherited wealth.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#48

Post by dfee »

js8 wrote: post #26
giggidygig wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there such a thing as a non-creative person? I.e a person who actually thinks/knows/conscientiously decides they are not creative?

I think there are plenty people like that. In open source software, we see lot of people writing "exact clone" of some software (usually a game). And often, they get the job done. They decidedly don't want to be creative, they just want the clone of the thing. Actually, it's often how you get the work done. Too much creativity is a problem. Linus started his work on Linux kernel because he wanted a Minix clone. It wa…

This is nonsense. For some convoluted definition of “creative”, this perspective holds.

The open source clones you mention are arguably not technically innovative (or some other word that stems from “novel”), but I’d argue that releasing a clone under a permissive license is novel (and creative), too.

Re: Evidence that collaboration results in group-think and mediocrity

#50

Post by progman »

Oustanding progress usually comes from individuals, not from outstanding groups. Consider Newton, Archimedes, da Vinci, Jesus Christ, Luther, Gutenberg, Mozart, Einstein, Zuse, Edison, and others. They changed the world.

Unfortunately, there is also evil genius (in wickedness) of individuals [1]: Jack the Ripper, Hitler, Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hussein, etc.

[1] https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-all-time-worst-p...

Groups are usually always mediocre since there are not many geniuses. It explains why systems of extreme group thinking like Communism never work out.

It is interesting that even outstanding things created by comittee - Ada for instance - are barely successful while inventions of individuals - Wirth's Pascal, Kernighan's C and von Rossum's Python for instance -- were/are widely successful.

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