The aim is to improve thought in general. No group can be smarter than
the smartest person within it, but given that most everyone has serious
limitations in their perceptual capacity that reside principally in the
emotional realm–usually ego, and excessive attachment to unexamined
ideas–it makes sense to use groups to further effective thinking.
If
the aim is to reduce emotionality, then some form of heuristic is
necessary. Thought cannot be unstructured. Edward de Bono has written
extensively about this, with his Six Thinking hats an excellent example.
For
my own purposes, I have developed a number of heuristics, including
formal use of continuums, and what I call Perceptual Breathing, which is
the constant movement from abstraction to concrete details and back
again.
As an example both the words Democrat and Republican are
abstractions. There is considerable ideological diversity among the
members of both parties, and there is also substantial divergence
between what people THINK the parties stand for, and what the actual
members, when elected to Congress or some other body, do.
Fox
News is an abstraction. It can refer to Shepherd Smith, Sean Hannity,
the people who own Fox. It can refer both to the newscast and to the
website. Referred to in aggregate, it would necessarily include not
just the hosts, but the people they bring on to represent alternative
views (which they do, often).
Most error in this world is the
result of basic ignorance, which is corrected through education, or from
an abuse of abstraction.
The creation and operation of large
scale systems is impossible without abstraction, but the necessity of
constantly reconciling ideas with realities, intentions with outcomes,
is absolutely central.
If you want people to think effectively in
groups, the most basic requirements are asking the questions: what are
we trying to accomplish; and “is what we are doing working”?
If more people asked those questions with sincerity, we would live in a much better world.
I
will admit to disappointment that the discussion on the other page
ended. I always win–which I define as reducing people opposing my
views to silence in the face of factually accurate and logical
supported, clear positions–but it always disappoints me.