According to wikipedia, collective intelligence can be defined as " a shared or group intelligence that emerges from collaboration and competition of many individuals and appears in a wide variety of forms of consensus decision making" (Wikipedia).
I think this is one of the best methods that apply constructivism in teaching and learning environment. Because everyone can participate in both learning and teaching by sharing their knowledge.
However, I want to look at the weak point of this wonderful method. (Because I believe recognising weak points is the startingpoint of development for the better phase.)
Collective intelligence is supposed to make a decision which can be accepted and agreed to most of individuals in the group. That means the statement consented by majority of group would be decided as a truth.
Here is my question :
"What if only one person knows the truth and the rest of people believe their wrong answers are correct?"
Then the consensus would be made by the majority group with the belief "the more, the better". And the wrong statement would become a truth with the help of majority rule.
I have thought about this problem and these are my possible solutions.
People need to be critical about their understanding even though it is regarded as truth thanks to the consensus by many people. The hypothesis supported by many people does not necessarily mean that it's true.
And the person who is in minority group and strongly believes that his/her ideas are right should develop the belief enough to persuade the others rather than giving them up.
Then the collective intelligence can be validated and reliable qualitatively as well as quantitively.
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I'm not sure who first wrote of "The Tyrrany of the Majority (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2216858/posts has a grand read from de Tocqueville on the topic), but you are in good company.
ReplyDeleteI gather that our founding bureaucrats were very aware of this, and that was a driver in designing the Australian Constitution with the State's House, the Senate.
In modern electrical times, the problem is teaching the mindset - alien to children and many adults - that recognises the possibility that others beliefs are honestly held, and that courtesy is essential even in disagreement. The art of precise and courteous argument is often lacking in "tldr" chatboards (too long, didn't read)
The extreme of compliance to the group is mass atrocity; the extreme of individual certainty is assassination. Have you thoughts on teaching the balance point?
Julie
I think it's important to make a distinction between different kinds of CI - there is the idea of an aggregation of diverse individual decisions, on the one hand, and the idea of a collaboratively constructed understanding on the other. In the latter case, consensus is achieved by discussion and argumentation rather than simple majority opinion. However, a constructivist educational approach doesn't necessarily require that everyone comes to the same understanding - in sophisticated applications of this approach, diverse opinions are allowed to stand.
ReplyDeleteIf you're interested, here is a link to James Surowiecki's video (wisdom of crowds) explaining the conditions needed in order to create a "wise" crowd/prevent "group think":
ReplyDeletehttp://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3245963984462339517#docid=-4847099108689438208
Or, if you prefer to read:
http://www.randomhouse.com/features/wisdomofcrowds/Q&A.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds