Group decisions
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If provided with good information a large number of people will make a good decision
The proposition is that if one gives large numbers of people good information, they will make good decisions. It is Aristotelian but recent research is holding the position as replica handbags Here are three substantive papers on the value of group versus individual decisions under specific conditions. They are not quick reads but they support the position of Aristotle that the more people you have involved in making a decision, typically the better the decision will be.
All of these can be downloaded free. Two are working drafts and if you have questions, please contact the authors directly.
1) This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network Electronic Paper Collection at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=611105
Aristotle and the Graces Bernard E. Jacob October 2004
- Alexander M. Bickel Distinguished Professor of Communications Law,
Hofstra University School of Law. This article has been supported both by summer grants and a sabbatical awarded by the Hofstra School of Law, for which I am grateful. Translations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Aristotle: Nichomachean Ethics, translated by Joe Sachs (Focus Pub. 2002) and from Aristotle: The Politics, translated by Carnes Lord (University of Chicago Press, 1984). One other bibliographic note: The Aristotelian corpus contains two works about human character and life choices, two Ethics; the longer of these two books is called the Nichomachean Ethics (cited as NE) and the shorter, the Eudemian; but any possible difference between the two is almost entirely irrelevant to our study, since Aristotle's book on justice is one of three which appear, word for word the same, in both Ethics. 1 Bernard Williams, "Justice as Virtue, in Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, A.O. Rorty, ed. (1980), pp. 189-199, 197. I am sorry about the capitalization, but since English tends to use justice both for the disposition or trait and for the actions it dictates, I 北京翻译公司 英语翻译 北京纸箱厂 feel I have to depart from Joe Sachs' willingness to live with the equivocation and to risk capitalizing. Throughout, I have used justice or a just act or acts for the terms that Aristotle uses in that sense (J? *\6"4@<, J? *\6"4") and words of opposite import, for injustice or unjust act or acts ( J? ?*46"). But I translate as Being Just what Aristotle discusses in Book Five as the character or set of traits of being just, *46"4@Fb<0, and its opposite, ?*46\", as Being Unjust. The Just Person, that is, the person possessing that character set (? *\6"4@H ) is then contrasted with the Unjust Person (? ?*46@H) who deliberately chooses to act unjustly or, to use Bernard Williams' language,'to lack the disposition to justice ? at the limit, not to be affected or moved by considerations of fairness to all.' 2 The Greek word for rules in this sense is nomoi (nomos in the singular), and it is taken to cover law, and not only law, but all sets, collections or instances of directives or guides, written or not, for behavior when they are generally known within a community and generally accepted as governing their subject matter. Robert Cover, among others, has made this sense of nomos well-known in a different context. 1 Aristotle and the Graces Bernard E. Jacob * This is a paper about Aristotle's treatment of the virtue of Being Just as a character trait or disposition and the Just Person who exemplifies that trait. What I mean here by a 'character trait or disposition' of Being Just is what Bernard Williams in Justice as a Virtue 1 recognized in 'one who is disposed to promote just distributions, look for them, stand by them, and so on, because that is what they are.' Twenty-five centuries earlier, Aristotle said much the same thing: 'Being Just 'is that by which the just person is said to be inclined to do what is just by choice.' (1134a1-2). Therefore this is not a paper about justice as such, and particularly it is not about justice in the sense of rules or the resolution of disputes. On the other hand, it is about the role of rules in Being Just. It addresses why rules, 2 and the Rule of Law, are, for Aristotle, central to Being Just, without always being sufficient to do justice. Aristotle's treatment of Being Just, however, is puzzling just because, in his long 2) Preliminary draft 8/6/04 All rights reserved Group Judgments: Deliberation, Statistical Means, and Information Markets Cass R. Sunstein * Abstract How can groups elicit and aggregate the information held by their individual members? The most obvious answer involves deliberation. For two reasons, however, deliberating groups often fail to make good decisions. First, the statements and acts of some group members convey relevant information, and that information often leads other people not to disclose what they know. Second, social pressures, imposed by some group members, often lead other group members to silence themselves because of fear of disapproval and associated harms. The unfortunate results include the propagation of errors; hidden profiles; cascade effects; and group polarization. A variety of steps should be taken to ensure that deliberating groups obtain the information held by their members. Because of their ability to aggregate privately held information, information markets substantial advantages over group deliberation. These points bear on discussion of normative issues, in which deliberation might also fail to improve group thinking. "Increased accuracy is a common justification for using groups, rather than individuals, to make judgments. However, the empirical literature shows that groups excel as judges only under limited conditions. . . . [G]roups performing tasks that involve solutions that are not easily demonstrable tend to perform at the level of their average members." 1 "The presumption that Iraq had active WMD programs was so strong that formalized [Intelligence Community] mechanisms established to challenge assumptions and 'group think,' such as 'red teams,' 'devil's advocacy,' and other types of alternative or competitive analysis, were not utilized." 2 "Sometimes important forecasts are made in traditional group meetings. This . . . should be avoided because it does not use information efficiently. A structured approach for combining independent forecasts is invariably more accurate."
3) * Karl N. Llewellyn Distinguished Service of Jurisprudence, Law School and Department of Political Science, University of Chicago. For valuable comments, I am grateful to Bernard Harcourt, Douglas Lichtman, Richard Posner, Adam Samaha, and participants in a work-in-progress lunch at the University of Chicago Law School. Many thanks also to Robert Park for extraordinary research assistance. Thanks above all to Reid Hastie, for a great deal of patient help and tutoring. 1 See Daniel Gigone and Reid Hastie, Proper Analysis of the Accuracy of Group Judgments, 121 Psych. Bulletin 149 (1997). 2 Select Committee on Intelligence, United States Senate, Report of the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, Conclusions, at 7. 3 J. Scott Armstrong, Combining Forecasts, in Principle of Forecasting 417, 433 (J. Scott Armstrong ed. 2001). 3) The logic of Reciprocity: Trust, Collective Action, and Law Dan M. Kahan, yale law school working research paper
Download from SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract_id=361400
Questions
What is a good outcome
Is a primary characteristic of a good discussion in a democratic context the outcome? (i.e. a good policy decision).
If this is the proposition, you will find that regularly such public decisions fall into the category of 'wicked problems' (Macintosh and Renton, 2004) of which there is not a definitive or right solution (Rittel and Webber, 1973). Therefore, authors of this theory advocate that solutions are reached via collaborative means, in such a way this may still not be the optimal decision but one where a high degree of consensus is reached.
The difference between now and the times Aristotle lived in, would be that people then were able to make a decision. Now we seem to circle the obvious with no one prepared to make a decision for fear of being wrong, or risk of a law suit for the unplanned for, with results, due to the fact no one could predict the future.
At some point someone has to take the initiative to steer the group towards a decision that is in the best interests of the group and looks out for the minority. A ship does not get to its destination without someone directing it on the path and saying how you are to get to the port.
You have to ask yourself whether any of the fine writers of the papers presented, ever had the responsibility of making a decision who's outcome decided the fate of real people, who faced real results in the end.
Sitting behind a safe desk, plunking away on a typewriter far removed from the dangers of the real world, it is easy to hypothesise on what if.