Re:Stupidity is a specific cognitive failing
by Barrin92 on Monday August 09, 2021 @03:20AM
(#28113542)
>In fact, the collective intelligence usually performs better on certain failure modes; it is easier for two people to find each other's blind spots than one person inferring their own
I'm not so sure I buy this one. A few years ago Amazon decided to silently delete 1984 from people's Kindle devices. One common refrain was that this is 'only the kind of stupid decision a collective can make', because no individual lacks the common sense to come up with that idea.
It's the kind of bureaucratic stupidity that you get out of mechanic, group momentum. I don't think individual stupidity is like that at all, there is a qualitative difference. Individual foolishness is maybe sentimental or stubborn or attached, whereas collective foolishness is sort of autonomous.
Kind of like a cult. Not only are blind spots harder to spot in homogenous groups, they even can conjure delusions up that nobody would ever even come up with on their own, because it takes the force of a 100 people to convince you that something is real that doesn't even exist.
I'm not so sure I buy this one. A few years ago Amazon decided to silently delete 1984 from people's Kindle devices. One common refrain was that this is 'only the kind of stupid decision a collective can make', because no individual lacks the common sense to come up with that idea.
It's the kind of bureaucratic stupidity that you get out of mechanic, group momentum. I don't think individual stupidity is like that at all, there is a qualitative difference. Individual foolishness is maybe sentimental or stubborn or attached, whereas collective foolishness is sort of autonomous.
Kind of like a cult. Not only are blind spots harder to spot in homogenous groups, they even can conjure delusions up that nobody would ever even come up with on their own, because it takes the force of a 100 people to convince you that something is real that doesn't even exist.