Aggregation Promotes Simplification?

Posted by Owen Densmore on Jun 06, 2004; 7:44pm
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Aggregation-Promotes-Simplification-tp519402p519404.html

Interesting slide set.  I think it helps me sharpen the distinction.

Collections of folks acting as an organization (bureaucracy) act like a
larger, dumber individual.  Aggregation is a sort of filter.  
Collections of people acted upon as a computer, however, have emergent
computational abilities.  They are great predictors of human behavior.

Actually, I've heard that in the voting realm, polls are more accurate
than the actual vote itself!  I.e. the bugs in the voting procedures
are bad enough and the statistics of polling are good enough that the
polls win.

I sent jbloom an email asking for more pointers.

        -- Owen

Owen Densmore         908 Camino Santander   Santa Fe, NM 87505
Cell: 505-570-0168    Home: 505-988-3787     http://backspaces.net

On Jun 4, 2004, at 12:53 PM, Frank Wimberly wrote:

> Here's a link to a .ppt presentation that, I think, argues for the
> contrary
> view or a view related to it.
>
> http://gladstone.uoregon.edu/~jbloom/opinion/Macro.ppt
>
> Frank
>
> ---
> Frank C. Wimberly       140 Calle Ojo Feliz       Santa Fe, NM 87505
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: [hidden email] [mailto:[hidden email]] On
> Behalf
> Of Owen Densmore
> Sent: Friday, June 04, 2004 4:43 PM
> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
> Subject: [FRIAM] Aggregation Promotes Simplification?
>
> Thinking about how organizations appear to be more error prone (read
> idiotic) as they grow in size, I suspect there has been some research
> in this area.
>
> Basically the idea is that as more people are added to an organization,
> the subtle thoughts of the individual are lost, acting a bit like a
> sieve, leaving behind just the simple core ideas shared by most.
> Somewhat like a Markov chain that stabilizes after a certain number of
> iterations.
>
> Does anyone have pointers to good analysis in this area?
>
> -- Owen
>
> Owen Densmore         908 Camino Santander   Santa Fe, NM 87505
> Cell: 505-570-0168    Home: 505-988-3787     http://backspaces.net
>
>
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