It's clear that collective minds can be better than single minds, but its clear to me this only really worse when they start to behave like committes or like mobs - so
this is when social structures break down (alienation) - so is this once you get above Dunbar's magic number 150? Does technology help people do group-mind thinking with larger groups ? I think it does (the IETF spent 10 years working well (til 1990:-)
before it went pear-shaped and became less than any of its parts (not just less than the sum of its parts)
if we don't solve this problem, then the human race is doomed to fail (to fail to solve climate change, population, or any other world scale problem)
we are human stumble-bums who' lurch from one random mix to another, and occasionally, some cascading idea leads to herding behind some new thing (enlightenment - good; fascism - bad)
Alien's will land and find our remains and say "could do better"....
why havn't we seen aliens?
because they look at our group mind and say "how dumb is that"....
yes its true, all of it - the internet doesn't really exist, so it must be.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
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- jon crowcroft
- misery me, there is a floccipaucinihilipilification (*) of chronsynclastic infundibuli in these parts and I must therefore refer you to frank zappa instead, and go home
1 comment:
Hmm, interesting to hear your opinions of the IETF now that I've experienced it first-hand... :-) Personally I think that whilst there are many signs that they're somewhat less than efficient, a lot of cool stuff nevertheless does happen (albeit slowly).
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