Beebo Brink

Hmmm, in the absence of any ability to run this experiment and thus confirm predictions and results, I nonetheless suggest that in favorable ecological/environmental conditions this society might flourish. But inevitably, when disaster occurred, the response time of rational, reasonable consensus would be simply be too slow. It is in time of crisis that authoritarian leaders emerge and take control; sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. But overall, judging by our success as a species, the odds for "better" appear to be higher.

So the island inhabitants would eventually all die in the middle of some raging debate because there was no one there to tell them to shut up and move their ass out of danger.

Just a wild guess on my part.

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CaleVinson

Wasn't expecting anything more than wild-guesses - just trying to see how deep the (probably completely justified) pessimism runs.

I'm not sure that the island inhabitants (lets call them, oh, I don't know, "Gilliganites" for short ) would debate themselves to fiery death as the asteroid descended/whatever.

And the reason I suggest that is that one of the characteristics of the people whose "brains can go there" is, I think, at least *some* ability to "step outside themselves". Its a trite and very possibly self-serving example, but one of the reasons I constantly joke about my being pedantic, anal-retentive, etc, is to remind myself of those tendencies, to *attempt* (no more than that) to see myself as others might (whereas from my perspective, I'm not pedantic, merely thorough, g'damn it! ).

So, yes, I could imagine the Gilliganites passing resolution #783 as the asteroid approached. But once the computer intoned "time to impact: two days" I could also imagine them saying "time for debate is over".

Hypatia Callisto

Thanks

Well, I don't know. I don't think we've explored all the options in education. These days neuroscientists really are making a lot of headway on how the brain actually functions and develops - and its a product of both nature and nurture, and the result can in fact feed back on itself by switching the genome. Adaptation does happen.

Our educational systems have not caught up - many educators are working with "theories" which often bear absolutely no resemblence to the sciences discovering exactly how we learn. Not only learn but our primal emotions such as fear, passion, love, pleasure, and pain and the role they play in all of that.

Not only that, but the sceptics have the upper hand when it comes to theories of knowledge too. The scientific method is a sceptical method to putting ideas to the test. It's another reason I like this debate board - ideas are put out there in a "survival of the fittest" atmosphere. Putting ideas out for debate is a GOOD thing, and if they don't survive serious criticism and testing, then the likelihood that its a bad idea and should be discarded is very high. Unlike some people, I don't have a lot of attachment to my ideas, and I would be happy to abandon an idea if it is verified to be false. That is because I am more committed to the *method* of sceptical inquiry than to any other of the ideas I believe in. And I believe education should concentrate more on methods to ferret out good ideas than on "just so" stories that merely serve to indoctrinate. We should endeavour to explain, not explain away.

So I do think there is room for improvement here in regards to education, and I have no idea how much improvement it could make.

I suspect it would turn out badly due to their isolation, because the most successful civilisations - like the Greek miracle - happened because it was on the periphery of the high civilisations of the Middle East. It was just close enough to have trading contact and therefore have access to their "good ideas" but just far away enough to avoid most of the wars that put an end to those civilisations.

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"To begin with," said the Cat, "a dog's not mad. You grant that?"

"I suppose so," said Alice.

"Well, then," the Cat went on, "you see, a dog growls when it's angry, and wags its tail when it's pleased. Now I growl when I'm pleased, and wag my tail when I'm angry. Therefore I'm mad."

"I call it purring, not growling," said Alice.

"Call it what you like," said the Cat.

Hypatia Callisto

I agree with you mostly, but I also believe that if every single one of those people were able to make sceptical inferences on the situation and make reasonable decisions on their own with the information on hand, it would require less need for an authoritarian leader to tell people to STFU and follow them out of danger

They could theoretically be able to motivate themselves to move their ass out of danger in sync without a commander.

Hypatia Callisto

There are two ways a group of people can move in sync without a commander

They were indoctrinated in a set of ideas that causes them to think in similar ways.

or

They have a method of evaluating their experiences to make decisions in a critical fashion.

The first has the capacity for people to run off the cliff or sit on the island while the volcano blows its top, the second has the capacity to learn how to build boats and find another island to live on.

Hypatia Callisto

The ideas want to be freeeeeee. Doesn't the Internet serve as a wonderful medium for ideas to be traded back and forth, to evolve as people can criticise them with more scrutiny? It's much easier for me to sit here and type my ideas into this message board, than say it was for me to express my ideas to any large extent before I found the net. I didn't have access to my own personal publishing empire, and neither does anyone else.

While one can say that the Internet gives kooks a platform to publish and spread their message, it also gives people a platform to debunk the kooks better than ever before.

nom nom nom takes some of the chocolate back

Hypatia Callisto

and of course I forgot the third option of sync

just copying the guy next to you... but that's not really much better than the first option of believing in a set of ideas you were indoctrinated into.

People have a natural tendency to copy others though. What I would prefer is people copying others because they have realised its a good idea, not because they saw a large group of people doing the same thing so "it must be right" ... sigh.

CaleVinson

The above is true, but we must be ever vigilant against those who use the net for darker purposes ......

CaleVinson

Have we ruled out the possibility of appointing a temporary "crisis commander", and then returning to rule by agreement later? Is the assumption that no-one can avoid self-corruption once they've experienced power, even if only for a short-time?





I'm sure, that *I* would make such a wise Crisis Commander for example, and remain completely uncorrupted by the experience ....

Hypatia Callisto

But nobody can have that much information in one person. A commander is doomed to make horrible mistakes if they can't delegate to people who have specialised knowledge in different areas...

So what is a commander doing, other than just coordinating these people who have more information than he does?

CaleVinson

They can still delegate, and seek advice as required. They're put in place for those times when "a bad decision now is better than a good decision tomorrow". Having listened to the arguments, they tie-break when different camps of experts can't agree. And yes, they coordinate, and point out to Professor Vinson that she's only a third of the way through her 60 Powerpoint slides, and at this rate the asteroid will strike before she finishes.

I'd also argue that "real" crises are far less frequent than our current leaders would have us believe.

Bard Jameson

Two things - one' I follow Beebo's line of thinking and believe that 10,000 Gilliganites of they type described would, without a structure of authority, debate themselves to death. Anybody here have much experience with committees? In my company we have what they call "matrix management", which basically means no one is in charge. It's a CF.

Two, I think in this thread as in others, the belief in the power of education is inordinately strong. It's as if we believe that education can be "done" to people, making them better human beings. IMO, education is something someone "does" to themselves, and so the impetus, the desire for it, has to come from within.

To the degree this is true, it seems to me that desire is weak, and resides in few hearts.

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Hypatia Callisto

I agree, and I am not discounting that the role of a central decision maker can't be good at times. But... I think that they become more important when more of us are unable to be good critics of our own decisions.

What they are, is essentially a critic who has the power to make a decision because people are less capable of making critical decisions in a rapid manner on their own.

I think evidence points out that in actual disasters, people who are well educated in how to spot and react to disaster are actually much more effective than a central commander trying to get a herd of people who are completely unaware of how to react timely in the situation.

CaleVinson

This assumes that there is a single unique solution to the disaster, that all who are knowledgeable enough should be able to see. The disaster may be such that we have options "A" (use our time and resources to build a cannon to shoot Bruce Willis face-first at the asteroid ) and "B" (use our time and resources to build boats to escape the island). Studies have shown that 50% of the population dies under "A" (due to asteroid fragments after Bruce has done his Glasgow-kiss on it ), and 50% dies under "B" (because we don't have time to build a sufficient number of boats). 80% die if we attempt to do *both* "A" and "B" (because Bruce is, um, prematurely ejected , and very few of the boats are completed to a seaworthy state).

So someone has to break the deadlock between the "A" and "B" camps.

A contrived example to be sure, but perhaps the underlying argument is valid.

CaleVinson

No Bard, I'm not sharing my chocolate any further !!!!!111!!!!

Hypatia Callisto

You summarised the "depressing" part for me.

And its more than just education, its the innate drive of curiosity itself. But when looking at children, most of them are intensely curious, with a beautiful sense of wonder. Is modern education killing that "sense of wonder" off, or are we just not getting the kids early enough to strengthen that sense of wonder so it can last for a lifetime? I don't know.

Hypatia Callisto

I disagree, my argument is that many eyes see more than one set of eyes. A set of people close to the earthquake will see the exact damage and exactly what needs to be done in the instant that it needs to be done to save lives. Different people will have different skills, but all of them near to the situation will be able to use their skills to help people to safety or to help injured until more specialised help can arrive.

Someone further down the road will not get that information in a timely manner and some people will probably be dead by then if people at the scene have no idea how to react.

Beebo Brink

I think there are a number of (escalating) social patterns that are leaching initiative, resolve and curiosity from each succesive generation.

Beyond the regimentation of our current education system, I think one of the most damaging effects it has is the segration of children into age cohorts. Instead of being immersed in daily activities of all kinds, mixing with a variety of ages that provide rich stimulus and models for behavior, students are basically lumped together in a group in which all the members share the same level of ignorance. Their ability to learn from each other is significantly restricted by their commonality of experience and maturity. And their exposure to adults is also largely limited to the regimented authority role of a teacher and a few hours of evening and weekend time with parents.

As parents take on more high-pressed, time-intensive careers or simply more jobs (as is common for less prosperous families), the length and quality of their interaction with their children is reduced. Which means that much less exposure to role modeling the way to be an adult.

Now add on to those conditions the increasing paranoia about allowing children to roam freely and explore their world. Letting children explore has always incurred the risk of injury or death, but it is only lately that the risk is considered unacceptable. So the opportunities for children are further restricted out of concerns for their physical safety, but at the expense of emotional and psychological growth. Indivudally they are safer, but as a whole they are more fearful and less capable of meeting difficult challenges.

Not every single child in our society is crippled by these trends, but I think the aggregate numbers are growing.

Hypatia Callisto

Speaking of disasters, why could people evacuate Thera, while so many didn't evacuate Pompeii or Herculaneum in the hours where it was possible to do so.

The Romans were certainly more "advanced" in every single way than the Minoans in the Bronze age... but the settlement of Akrotiri was utterly deserted while countless died in Pompeii. There was no reason for it either - there was enough time to escape the eruption of Vesuvius before it went into its deadly phase, and by all historical accounts many did. But many more were simply unaware of the danger they were in.

Did the Minoans know more about volcanoes than the Romans? I seriously doubt it, but they were much more of a seafaring people with smaller settlements, as evidenced by the large murals of boats. They had boats already at their disposal, living in an active seismological zone. All they had to do was get in and start rowing, I think.



So one wouldn't be building boats to escape the volcano... its far more probable they had efficient boats to do this.



And trade. Can't forget that... as Egyptian artifacts have been found on Crete in Minoan settlements, so they obviously got around.

CaleVinson

Don't get me wrong, I'm most definitely *not* arguing against having a knowledgeable, capable population, who can take "good, if not perfect" action locally.

I was just interested in exploring the "crisis commander" idea as one possible approach to dealing with the death-by-committee argument. That said, I do think that there will be times when the entire community will need to be galvanised as one, and the "right" solution will not be obvious at the time.

Perhaps such a society would need a "Holy Coin of Tossing" to decide in such crucial moments.

(ps. Let me just check - do you agree that "right" solutions may not *always* be determinable within necessary time-frames?)

Bard Jameson

Dumbing Us Down by John Taylor Gatto speaks to these trends in a succinct and compelling way.

Amazon.com: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling: John Gatto: Books

CaleVinson

I understand, I think, the argument, but I'm not sure I agree with it. Matrix Management is clearly insane (yes, it has made its leprous way into science) when applied to anything but a limited range of groups and tasks. And sure, we all the know the joke about the enormous breakthrough in the UN Security Council negotiations - they've agreed on allocations of car-parking spaces.

But I see these things as bad processes (and perhaps examples of not-overly-inspired people), rather than intrinsic limitations of leaderless groups. I often work in groups where we have to declare someone the "leader" on paper (lest management have a fit), but where the actual leadership (as opposed to filling out forms) is spread between three or four people, and even they act more as tie-breakers and wise councel, than as walls preventing decision making from below. And this model seems to work well.

Now, yes, does it scale? (ZOMG!, I'm channeling Linden! ) , etc, etc. And its just one data-point, so I could be completely wrong too - just a different take.

Surreal

Are we assuming a shared agenda?

Because if we're talking about the average pool of people, there will always be a percentage who use disaster for their own purposes either immediately as in looters or in the long term to bolster their power and wealth as in politicians.

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Surreal

Hypatia Callisto

Oh sure... I agree with that. But I've experienced a major disaster (hurricane). And I didn't see any widespread looting in the small town where I lived, the neighbors were helpful, while I have certainly seen looting and bad behavior by authorities in much larger cities with far more emergency services and poverty than where I lived. I wouldn't say this is universal behavior, and it seems to be worse with MORE authoritarianism and poverty, not less.