Basing Policy on "GPD" - Group Public Discourse As A Dynamic Measure of Cultural Adaptive Rate

   (Commentary posted by Roger Erickson)




How useful is GDP as a policy metric? Not very. Even the most rudimentary analysis shows that reliance upon GDP as a metric is embarrassingly naive.

In fact, even the simplest thoughts constantly remind us of the utter failure of the economics field to stay relevant to national demands, let alone national options. Let's try some added perspective. Look at our situation this way.

The culture of a nation-state is an organism, as alive as any one of it's citizens.

How do nation-states survive? By the agility of their national behavior, of course.

Given of course, that the agility of other nations changes, how do we keep the Adaptive Rate of our nation chugging along, within striking distance of the leaders in this endless marathon of human evolution?


Oh, maybe by not running the country into a ditch, or ruining our national "legs," "lungs" or "blood supply?" Perhaps by keeping all components well fed and operating to capability? And finally, by maintaining a Group Intelligence able to master all obstacles in what is not only a marathon race among diverse cultures, but a metaphorical combination of cultural marathon steeple-chase, decathlon and triathlon ... all rolled into one, and more?

In simple terms, having a brain is an integral part of being aware of our own Force Readiness. Forget just readiness of subdivisions of our nation. Is our entire democracy ready to handle any situation that might occur? The ability to be mobile is useless without a method for navigating. Without navigation, even the best vehicle in a race can be simply run into a tree, or driven off the course, or set afire by carelessly idiotic behavior of the occupants. Group Intelligence Readiness is the most important part of Force Readiness, but we don't treat it that way.

Why do such simple things even need to be said? Because the average economist - and to be fair, citizen - behaves as though blissfully unaware of such common sense.

Let's skip straight to the point. Why do we in the USA build everything EXCEPT Group Intelligence? As a dynamic asset, shouldn't Group Intelligence be a far more valuable metric to manage than a crude, static asset like GDP?

What provides Group Intelligence, and how do we wield it? How could we measure and manage it? 

Just as personal intelligence depends on the connectivity between the neurons in your brain, and how much you exercise those connections, Group Intelligence is held in the body of civil discourse which an electorate maintains. If we don't actively assess the outcomes of public discourse, how do we know if we as a nation are getting smarter ... or dumber? 

None of us is as smart as all of us, but ONLY if all of us are periodically in discourse with all of us, despite relaxing into periods of brittle efficiency, tuned to a static, unchanging context. As soon as context inevitably changes, those nations able to generate the most public discourse, soonest, will always generate more succeed. Generating that kind of public discourse doesn't happen by theory alone. Like any other behavior, personal or group, effective Public Discourse requires prior training, and active practice, and actual maintenance. Do we even have any methods for achieving and assessing and then maintaining group public discourse - GPD?

Lest you presume that "everyone knows this," here's an example of how pervasively this simple concept is neglected among all professionals, in all fields, NO MATTER HOW MUCH EDUCATION HAS OCCURRED! Here's a paraphrased correspondence with a colleague currently attending a highly specialized research conference, and depressed by the experience.

Research PhD: I am attending a conference in Vancouver (Keystone symposium on cytokines, inflammation, and immunity). Am depressed beyond belief. These people need to be chained to the wall and forced to reconsider Situational Awareness until they regain their senses. It kills me not seeing clearly what can be done practically about this sad state of civic affairs. I wonder how much a human community is different from a flock of parrots sitting and chattering on a large tree.

Me: So you're saying that they're savants about methods but blind to context and purpose? 

Research PhD: Exactly. To an astonishing extent. 

Me: That's a product of our prior education & training? We're all paid to DO stuff that's impressive locally, but irrelevant systemically. Isn't that a sign of a system that's outgrown it's assessment systems? If you think it through, that, eventually, always implies that we're too complacent to set national goals big enough to challenge our national capabilities? Assessment methods track goals, and our progress towards them. Without goals, feedback & assessment methods, we sit around posturing and nitpicking, letting our group agility go to pot. 

Research PhD: It's also a product of our biology. 

Me: Yet our innate biology is never a LIMITING factor. It got us this far. We're simply not leveraging it right now. 

Look at it this way. Exploratory personal/cultural BEHAVIOR gives us ample degrees of freedom to find indirect paths around our biological leanings or biases. That's what we do. Our limiting biological features nevertheless allow the greater degrees of freedom that our cultural features allow, which we have certainly not yet tapped out, or even fully explored. "We" are far more than the sum of our parts ... IF we practice and tune our interactions.

Individual or component traits do NOT dictate everything about group behavior or group outcomes. [Even though most orthodox economists stupidly presume that they do.]

Unfortunately, those internal biases allow us to KEEP trying to follow obsolete habits.  

In practice, however, there is no behavior in the real world that is not molded as a dynamic balance between conflicting, group influences.

So why don't our cultural practices ALWAYS overcome our initial bias to individual perspective, and thereby maintain enough Group Situational Awareness & willpower to KEEP outmaneuvering the sum of our always obsolete, individual habits? Simply a lack of practice at tuning our teamwork to be more than the sum of our individuals?

It's always a balance between complacency and motivation? Aka, ultimately, between loyalty to our grandparents & their culture (old personal/cultural habits) and loyalty to our grandkids' & their culture (emerging personal/cultural habits)? (Remember, Thoreau pointed out that our hoarded possessions - including our group habits - eventually possess us, as surely as it's shell limits a snail. Unless, of course, we actively navigate our own rate of change, by constantly selecting what patterns of individual and group habits to cull vs acquire & use). 

Our biology actually protects us there. Simply asynchronizing our life cycles helps ensure that there is always a mix of all ages present at all times. Further, we generate diversity by default. Our biology leaves us with the simple part. Generate more cultural diversity too, and then select from it. What could be more simple?

I'm more worried about our lack of public discourse, which leaves our Group Intelligence unpracticed, and hence clumsy & in poor shape. We have more than enough diversity. We're simply not putting in the practice at rigorously selecting from it.

So how would YOU propose managing our Group Public Discourse - GPD? Why can't we both have MORE of our Group Intelligence, and use it too? Continuously?