Group failures often have disastrous consequences—not merely for businesses, nonprofits, and governments, but for all those affected by them. – Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie
Context
The social psychology of groups conducting scientific assessments (e.g. the IPCC) is a topic that in IMO does not receive sufficient attention. For background, here are some previous CE posts:
Importance of intellectual and political diversity in science No consensus on consensus Do scientific assessments need to be consensual to be authoritative? Are climate scientists being forced to toe the line? We are all confident idiots Cognitive bias – how petroleum scientists deal with it This past week, there have been two articles on this topic, that provide important insights of relevance to the IPCC assessment process.
Groups
Sunstein and Hastie have a lengthy article in the Harvard Business Review entitled Making Dumb Groups Smarter. Excerpts:
The advantage of a group, wrote one early advocate of collective intelligence—Aristotle—is that “when there are many who contribute to the process of deliberation, each can bring his share of goodness and moral prudence…some appreciate one part, some another, and all together appreciate all. Unfortunately, groups all too often fail to live up to this potential.
Groups err for two main reasons. The first involves informational signals. Naturally enough, people learn from one another; the problem is that groups often go wrong when some members receive incorrect signals from other members. The second involves reputational pressures, which lead people to silence themselves or change their views in order to avoid some penalty—often, merely the disapproval of others. But if those others have special authority or wield power, their disapproval can produce serious personal consequences.
As a result of informational signals and reputational pressures, groups run into four separate though interrelated problems. When they make poor or self-destructive decisions, one or more of these problems are usually to blame:
Groups do not merely fail to correct the errors of their members; they amplify them. They fall victim to cascade effects, as group members follow the statements and actions of those who spoke or acted first. They become polarized, taking up positions more extreme than those they held before deliberations. They focus on what everybody knows already—and thus don’t take into account critical information that only one or a few people have. If most members of a group tend to make certain errors, then most people will see others making the same errors. What they see serves as “proof” of erroneous beliefs. Reputational pressures play a complementary role: If most members of the group make errors, others may make them simply to avoid seeming disagreeable or foolish.
If a project, a product, a business, a politician, or a cause gets a lot of support early on, it can win over a group even if it would have failed otherwise. Many groups end up thinking that their ultimate convergence on a shared view was inevitable. Beware of that thought. The convergence may well be an artifact of who was the first to speak—and hence of what we might call the architecture of the group’s discussions.
Two kinds of cascades—informational and reputational—correspond to our two main sources of group error. In informational cascades, people silence themselves out of deference to the information conveyed by others. In reputational cascades, they silence themselves to avoid the opprobrium of others.
Group members think they know what is right, but they nonetheless go along with the group in order to maintain the good opinion of others.
“Political correctness,” a term much used by the political right in the 1990s, is hardly limited to left-leaning academic institutions. In both business and government there is often a clear sense that a certain point of view is the proper one and that those who question or reject it, even for purposes of discussion, do so at their peril. They are viewed as “difficult,” “not part of the team,” or, in extreme cases, as misfits.
In the actual world of group decision making, of course, people may not know whether other members’ statements arise from independent information, an informational cascade, reputational pressures, or the availability heuristic. They often overestimate the extent to which the views of others are based on independent information. Confident (but wrong) group decisions are a result.
The upper waters of the Northeast Pacific Ocean contain very low frequency temperature fluctuations which have amplitudes of more than 1°C. Hydrographic measurements at 60°N, 149°W, and sea surface temperatures (SST) on a 5° grid over the Northeast Pacific are used to examine these variations. The very low frequency (VLF) 20- to 30-year fluctuation in SST found at and north of 55°N is not evident at lower latitudes. This VLF fluctuation exists throughout the water column on the shelf of the northern Gulf of Alaska. Contained within the hydrographic data on the shelf are responses to El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) forcing. However, ENSO responses are not evident in the SST data. The propagation characteristics of SST anomalies through the region are not consistent from one event to another. One SST anomaly moved eastward through the region over a 3-year period (1956–1959), whereas the 1983 anomaly appeared simultaneously throughout the Gulf of Alaska. Correlations with local wind stress and wind stress curl are very poor, implying that the temperature variability is not wind forced. The causes for these temperature anomalies are uncertain. Though climate changes due to increases in greenhouse gases might be amplified at high latitudes, heating due to global warming is discounted. Coupling of the temperature fluctuations with solar activity and lunar tides is possible especially at high latitudes and the periods of the temperatures, tides, and solar activity are well matched. In any case, the recent upper ocean warming is probably not a result of large-scale global change but is, rather, part of the VLF zonal signal. Below normal water and air temperatures should occur over the next 5–15 years. This VLF signal must be considered and understood before we will be able to measure the effects of high-latitude climate changes.
Originally posted by Doug85GT: Where the journey ends for the AGW alarmists:
This was flawed the first time you posted it. Nothing has changed since then.
You claim we’re better off ‘slitting children’s throats’ than acknowledging the impact humans have on the environment.
Yet the logic you use to justify ‘slitting children’s throats’ is the impact humans have on the environment.
He’s got a point though, if deniers like you just murder all the children we don’t have to worry about what kind of planet we leave behind for them. So circular. So logic. So psychopath.
Report: Solar photovoltaic output depends on orientation, tilt, and tracking
Actually been researching building a pan+tilt system. Interesting the the article calls them "rare". I get they're hard to build, has to use less electricity than net gains provide, but "rare"?!
Originally posted by cliffw: Google Scientists Admit Renewable Energy Can't Work
Google currently powers 35% of their datacenters with renewables. Source.
They've also invested over $1.5 billion in renewables. Source.
quote
Originally posted by cliffw: 97% of the scientists believe in Global Warming ? Global warming predictions proven wrong 97.4% of the time
WOW! An article that debunks the long held myth of "No warming in X years", from FOX NEWS!
At least Fox News got the study correct. To quote them (your link links to Fox):
"Can you rely on the weather forecast? Maybe not, at least when it comes to global warming predictions over short time periods."
"The climate models, Fitzpatrick said, will likely be correct over long periods of time. But there are too many variations in climate to expect models to be accurate over two decades."
