Knowledge Management Wisdom of crowds teamwork group think

Knowledge Management Wisdom of crowds; teamwork; group think 1

Wisdom of crowds ? n The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations n 群眾的智慧：如何讓個人、 團隊、企業與社會變得更聰明 When are two heads better than one? n 2

Platform at a “metaphor” n n some sort of hardware architecture or software framework that allows third party created software to run. Crowd sourcing? ¡ Netflix 3

The Netflix challenge Google Page. Rank Open sources movement Bottom-up instead of top-down; “Wisdom of the crowd” 4

Wiki’s self-improvement device 5

Wisdom of crowds n n n Do many always smarter than a few? Why are many smarter than a few? Under what conditions would many smarter than a few? 6

Cooperation and synergy n How to integrate the knowledge and skills of many different individuals in the process of producing goods/services? 7

Synthesize and synergy n Synthesize ¡ ¡ To synthesize a substance means to product it by means of chemical or biological reactions If you synthesize different ideal, facts, or experiences, you combine them to forma a single idea or impression Collins Cobuild Dictionary 8

The discovery of the SARS virus n Lessons from Scientific community ¡ Collaboration n ¡ Competition n n ¡ Decentralization/contest/criticism Bottom-up Reputation n n ¡ Division of cognitive labor Incentive mechanism Cognitive authority Communication n A platform of information sharing 9

How do scientists cooperate? n Division of cognitive labor ¡ ¡ Allow scientists to incorporate many different kinds of knowledge Guarantees a diversity of perspectives Scientists are more productive when collaborating Distributed cognition: no Science Czar, scientist (in general) are left to their own device 10

Knowledge generation in scientific community Questions n n How is new knowledge produced and accumulated? What’s the “infrastructure” for scientific discoveries? 11

Scientific ethos n Free and open exchange of information ¡ n Open publication Every scientist depends on the work of other scientists, and it’s the community as a whole that decides whether or not a scientific hypothesis is true and whether it’s original 12

The reward system n The reputation oriented reward system ¡ ¡ ¡ Competing for recognition and attention Make the self-interested behavior contribute to the benefit of the community Distributed cognition: no Science Czar, scientist (in general) are left to their own device 13

A matter of trust n n A successful hypothesis is a hypothesis that most scientists find credible, not a hypothesis that most scientists have tested for themselves and found to be true. Scientific scandals and frauds 14

What gives science veritistic superiority? n n A system of credit and reward that provides incentives for workers to engage in scientific research (a self-organizing, decentralized system) A system of disseminating scientific findings and theories as well as critical assessments of such findings and theories (transparency and trust) 15

A social endeavor n “There is no such thing as a scientific truth believed by one person and disbelieved by the rest of the scientific community; and idea becomes a truth only when a vast majority of scientists accept it without question. That is, after all, what we mean by the expression ‘scientific contribution’: an offering that is accepted, however provisionally, into the common fund of knowledge ” 16

The Matthew effect n n The rich get richer and the poor get poorer There is no democracy in science ¡ n meritocracy of ideas A heuristic device ¡ To economizing our attention n ¡ A trade-off between “cognitive efforts” and “accuracy” (knowledge market “signals”) Unintended consequences 17

Marketplace of ideas n Which is more efficient (in creation and in dissemination of knowledge) ¡ n Centralized planning vs. free market “the best way for a community to discover the truth is to ensure that a wide range of diverse views vigorously compete with one another in the public arena through critical examination” 18

Groupthink n The act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view 19

Groupthink and its psychological mechanisms n Social conformity ¡ ¡ Social comparison Spiral of silence n n n Spiral of conflict? Confirmation bias Imitation ¡ Information cascade n Matthew effect 20

Social Conformity n n A type of social influence that results in a change of behavior or belief in order to fit in with a group Normative conformity ¡ n occurs because of the desire to be liked and accepted Informational conformity ¡ occurs because of the desire to be correct 21

Asch’ classic conformation experiment in the 60 s. 22

Fear of social isolation (emotion) Positive feedback and preferential attachment ; diffusion of innovation 23

Spiral of silence n n n One's perception of the distribution of public opinion influences one's willingness to express opinions. The spiral of silence demonstrates why people are unwilling to express their opinions (publicly) when they are not believed to be in the majority. People feel an increasing pressure to conceal their views and opinions when they believe they are in minority. Individuals perceptions of the opinions of others is a critical factor in determining their willingness to express those opinions. Spiral of exuberance? (Positive vs. negative 24 feedback)

Confirmation bias n Confirmation bias ¡ Preference for information confirming one’s position 25

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Positive test n n Are you happy with your social life? Are you unhappy with your social life 27

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Confirmation bias 29

Sources of confirmation bias n n Avoid cognitive dissonance Overestimate the validity of confirmatory evidence ¡ The model emphasizes that perceived (as opposed to objective) diagnosticity determines the likelihood of information utilization. Therefore, inferential biases are possible when people overestimate the diagnostic value of a given piece of information. 30

The “confirmation bias” n “People tend to search out information that will tend to confirm previously held beliefs. n People tend to interpret new information as supporting previously held beliefs. n People tend to overweight information that supports previous beliefs, e. g. , “can I believe it” versus “must I believe it” People also actively seek information AFTER a decision is made (post-decision biases, e. g. , dissonance reduction) n 31

Confirmation bias n Prior impressions are remarkably persistent and resistant to change because 1. ambiguous information is interpreted as consistent with the impression. 2. impression-consistent, non-ambiguous information supports and increases one’s confidence in the impression, and 3. impression-inconsistent, non-ambiguous information is discounted or ignored. Hence, exposure to any type of information, even contradictory information, will increase confidence in the validity of prior impressions. 32

Lessons from Columbia disaster n Confirmation bias ¡ a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoids information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs n n n Why? (cognitive/narrow criteria and affective/cognitive dissonance) Whistle blower Coleen Rowley's Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller Group polarization (e. g. risky shift) ¡ Social comparison n The sequence of the comments matters 33

Irrational primacy effect n n A person is “intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, envious” Earlier items leave a stronger memory trace 34

Halo effect n people are good at doing A they will be good at doing B, C and D (or the reverse—because they are bad at doing A they will be bad at doing B, C and D). 35

Why imitate n n Information effects Direct-benefit effects ¡ Network effect; compatibility; positive feedback (social conversation; cultural fads) 36

Information cascade (cognition) n n Information implied by early decisions outweighs any one person’s private information a situation in which every subsequent actor, based on the observations of others, makes the same choice independent/or despite of his/her private knowledge 37

A B 38

The flip side of “the wisdom of crowds” Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch. Matthew 15: 14 39

Dissenting opinion 40

Private information n In an informational cascade, everyone is individually acting rationally. Still, even if all participants as a collective have overwhelming information in favor of the correct action, each and every participant may take the wrong action 41

To summarize n n When the Many are smarter than the few “The smartest groups… are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. ” Surowiecki 42

Specialization, then synthesize n “what you’d like is a way for individuals to specialize and to acquire local knowledge– which increases the total amount of information available in the system– while also being able to aggregate that local knowledge and private information into a collective whole, much as Google relies on the local knowledge of millions of Web-page operators…” Surowiecki, p. 72 43

Wisdom of the crowds? n n Diversity of opinions and backgrounds Decentralization/Independence ¡ n Private information/implicit knowledge and autonomous decision making Proper mechanism to aggregate the inputs ¡ ¡ ¡ The weather forecaster puzzle (knowledge in the social world, integration mechanism) Platform and forum Group decision mechanisms 44

Failures of crowd intelligence n n Homogeneity Centralization ¡ n Top-down Division ¡ Failing to share information n Compare SARS and 911 Imitation Emotionality 45