Meeting with Simon

I had a meeting with Simon today (My dyslexia tutor), we started the meeting by discussing my dissertation's possible structure. After trying to figure out roughly what the work could contain, and what my main points are, Simon helped me build a skeleton which is provisional but makes some kind of sense. The main problem for me remains the fact that I still do not know why my subject (i.e. the wisdom of crowds, social capital and the Internet) matters. Another matter, is that those three areas of interest seem to be separate and could form three different dissertations. The conclusion was that we must find a way to bind the three concepts so that the dissertation is 'a dissertation' not three different subjects.

To help with these issues we have come up with the following question:

'How is the Internet affecting the quality of human interaction'.

The next stage which we both agreed I should take, is to step away from the subject for some time, to totally not to think about it. Supposedly, to the dyslexic mind which is constantly hungry for Information, this 'fallow period' - the absence of conscious interaction with the subject, is crucial for the surfacing of coherent and relevant ideas.

So, for the moment I plan to disengage from the subject and wait for a miracle to happen.

The provisional proposed structure for the dissertation.

the million dollar question

More on The Black Swan

Chapter 13 (9 of 12 1:01:20 - audiobook) Taleb talks about stochastic tinkering . Sounds like more about the benefits of failure. 

Chapter 14

(10(10 of 12 4:50 - audiobook) mentions power laws

(10 of 12 9:15 - audiobook) mentions memes

(10 of 12 17:30 - audiobook) mentions the long tail . As long as there's life there's hope. 

(10 of 12 34:15 - audiobook) 'Those at the top of the pecking order live longer', It makes me think that, if we live in a society governed by social capital and wisdom of the crowds people could be 'winners' often enough to make them live longer.

And the long tail, can be an allegory for the persistence of the record of past failures. This means that maybe we can be more assured that if we discover something important, we will recognise it as such. Even if it seems meaningless at the time of discovery, and even if it takes a while.

Chapter 15

(10 of 12 50:50 - audiobook) mentions the 80/20 rule

(11 of 12 1:03:30 - audiobook) Taleb talks about the way in which several popular science books, summarise the research of complex systems. They talk about, and make cross-references to phenomena such as power laws and self organising systems with the nature and social groups. There is even a mention of information cascades. 

He disagrees with all three authors' tendency to promote accuracy, he thinks that makes us blind to the unexpected and the unknowable.

Taleb warns against viewing models as confirmation of reality. 

My thoughts on 'Organisation + Automation + Integration' by The New Pamphleteer

In a blog post about the PRISM surveillance program, TNP says that 'The military have unmanned drones ready. So, it’s only a matter of time before the complex, confused and compromised issue of human agency is removed completely.'

I can't help but think of other ways in which this case can develop. For example, when you consider that it is becoming very hard to hide things online. Maybe it is not just harder for us, but also for governments. On the flip side of the coin to what TNP mentioned, consider the possibility of the NSA using the public to pick out the relevant data from the vast pool of intelligence. What would happen if the agency released that information into the hands of the american people? Sure, there is a lot of data, but there are also a huge crowd of americans with internet access and I will not be surprised if most of them want to live in safety. If the US government gave a few ground rules and monitored the proper conduct of participators as other online services do. It may be enough for such a system to work. I am not saying they should do it, but they could.

If enough individuals who are unhappy and worried about their government's actions publish their opinion online, it could make them look very suspicious, and possibly weak for not having the support of it's citizens. I can imagine that a government, subjected to globally visible criticism, such as the US would prefer to avoid so much negative publicity.

If a system, meant to look after my safety, was completely automated I would feel a bit worried. I would rather know that a system with a diverse and large amount of human supervision was doing that job. Furthermore, I would like to have access to my personal data gathered by it, and be a part of the monitoring scheme if I wanted too. To give a moment of my time to possibly maintain everyone safety and in exchange be able to control and see what I look like in the eyes of the system seems a potentially good bargain, considering the alternative.

Risk taking and failure for free

In The Black Swan, chapter 13 (9 of 12 39:35 - audiobook) Taleb talks of our problems with trial and error. With accepting that failures are necessary in life. Quoting Mark Spitznagel : 'you need to love to lose'.
He says (paraphrasing) that American cloture encourages failure unlike the clotures of Europe and Asia. A large share of the global innovation stems from america because, he says, American culture encourages risk taking.

This reminds me of Clay Shirky's chapter on the importance of failure for excellence, on how the social tools available online provide us with 'failure for free'.

A possible long between The Black Swan and The Wisdom of Crowds

The black swan part 8of12 around 46:20 Taleb says (paraphrased) that society as a whole can integrate multiple factors into its calculations. As a whole, society thinks outside the box:
Here's a place where Taleb recognises that the information society holds, when aggregated into collective knowledge, may be valuable.

Hedgehog community

Part 7 (audiobook) around 40:40m:
Hedgehogs vs Foxes, if a hedgehog ( a type of person) is likely to be surrounding itself around a single black swan (worry about one rare event in particular) than maybe by linking the hedgehog community, a group which contains, and may access all that knowledge put together can form.
That group has the potential to solve very complex problems because it has so much knowledge and the theories in the wisdom of crowd suggests that together it may also sort out the irrelevant data.
It may be able to do so as James Surowiecki suggests in 'The Wisdom of Crowds' (Chapter 1 Page 10-11):

'Each person's guess, you might say, has two components: information and error. Subtract the error, and you're left with the information.'
This suggests that together it can also sort out the irrelevant data.

It is important to note Surowiecki's reservation that 'even with the errors canceled out, it's possible that a group's judgment will be bad. For the group to be smart, there has to be at least some information in the "information" part of the "information minus error" equation. (If you'd asked a large group of children to buy and sell stocks in the wake of the Challenger disaster, it's unlikely they would have picked out Thiokol as the culprit.)

A blog to help me organise my thoughts

Hi,
I've created this blog hoping that when it comes to writing my dissertation which is due next year, I will have a source of reference to my different thoughts on the subject which I'm focusing on.
The first things that I would like to log our notes that I wrote on my phone in the last month. It's not a lot, and it may be that this blog will consist mainly of these kind of snippets of thoughts - I haven't made up my mind yet.

This first snippet I wrote while listening to 'The Wisdom of Crowds'(TWoC) and 'Here Comes Everybody'(HCE) (audiobooks):
group as 'greed detector'
is it possible that by looking for groups that we feel the need to belong to online we are increasing the likelihood of making better life choices?
When I say 'belong' I include 'interact with' even for the briefest moment, like answering a thread on Reddit or searching through Yahoo answers.
If we belong to the right group at the right time, which may be achieved by focusing on our individual needs and wishes not to be screwed or alternatively get the best deal etc., are we positioning ourselves in such a way that we benefit not only from our own wisdom but from the groups' collective wisdom?

more:
Chapter 9 (HCE) 'bridging capital' (it's not how many people you know) companies needed bridging capital for good ideas to form - reminds me of the Columbia disaster safety talks from TWoC

*Anna strongman

notes I took while listening to 'The Black Swan'(TBS)
The more information we are subjected to in the course of trying to solve a problem, the more likely we are to produce more hypotheses which lead us astray from the truth.
'The problem is that our ideas are sticky. Once we produce a theory we're not likely to change our mind. So those who delay developing their theories are better off.'
(Dyslexic, ADHD - do they have an advantage, because it is harder for them to focus on one conclusion for too long? Could that mean that a society with an increasingly shortening attention span has a better chance of preparing for / deal with an unpredictable future?)

* I think she belongs to CSM KX building - something to do with permission for exhibitions.