Talk About An Output Gap! It'll Persist Until We Lower The Barrier To Activating Group Intelligence

(commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

@#$%^&!!   Humans are capable of so much more than this!

The Ebook "Taken," documents horrors of child sex slaves

Why, in the 21st century, even as a 4th nation launches missions to Mars, is such a waste of human talent still so persistent and widespread?

The bigger story here is that dumb or neglected policy mistakes cause 10x more harm than all the damage which material aid mitigates, worldwide. That is exactly HOW and WHY "need" always rises to exceed humanitarian donations, year after year.

If we don't FIRST export examples, training and practice of improved policy making before blindly throwing material aid at tasks .... we ALWAYS encourage more looting than adapting, as the dominant, systemic local adjustment?

There is not a single situation on Earth that can be easily improved without paying attention to systemic, context-dependent inter-dependencies FIRST!

Tune the damn system! NOT just some of the components!

How? By helping people carfully tune their own contexts, before letting outsiders disruptively tinker with components in contexts that outsiders CANNOT be adequately familiar with!

Otherwise, it's usually as bad as pouring more gas into a leaking gas tank, in a rusting car with dangling parts still spewing sparks. Really? We can send a rocket ship to Mars, but we can't solve simple process problems in our own neighborhoods? Seriously?

If Data is Meaningless without Context .... then - frankly - the long term outcomes of random aid are meaningless too, unless interventions are carefully tuned to context, instead of just tinkering with random components.

Two partners need to practice together, if new dance steps are the desired outcome.

People trapped in a given context are - by definition - digging themselves into a hole, and need greater perspective more than anything else. If you as an outsider offer to help, they'll invariably ask that you jump in and help them dig.

Outside contributors have an equal but different dilemma. They have additional perspective, but inadequate "domain expertise." They cannot possibly fully know the context of those who need help, or they'd BE one of them.

Adaptive solutions, as countless examples document, come from building joint experience through interactions, so that affinity and motivation follow. Then, and only then, can participants EXTEND their vision of desired outcomes (goals higher than simply digging the hole deeper). Only then can the people originally stuck in the hole decide how best to alter their tactics, and find a better way!

By the time that process is done, they'll invariably ask for something OTHER than more shovels - which is what is usually easiest to "justify." And, as Gen. Patton observed, the solutions they come up with will be unpredictable, and NOT worth impeding. Plus, they'll amaze you (and themselves) with their ingenuity.

Put it this way. For God so loved the USA that SHE instructed Patrick Henry, Tom Paine, Tom Jefferson, James Madison, Ben Franklin, John Adams et al ..... to write the US Constitution .... BEFORE trying to hand out free food and clothing.

[i.e., She suggested that they first use their heads, to direct how BEST to use their hearts. Rumor has it that it was their daughters, sisters, fiances, wives & mothers et al, who relayed that sensible message. :) ]

If only we'd develop and use ALL of our available brainpower, instead of following the myth that 50% of them - or less - is adequate.


ps: Why is it so often true that gentle Sacreligion prods the most good out of all people, including bureaucratically organized religions? Is it because all people - even religious ones - will do anything in their power to avoid thinking, until absolutely necessary? And because shared laughter, as a neural catalyst, reduces the risk of staying around and activating those brain circuits - which burn lots of calories in order to execute logical pattern matching?

And, what's our next step, now that there are ~320 million of us in the USA? If shared laughter is so critical for reducing the risk of activating thinking in individuals ... what is the corresponding analogy - group laughter? - that lowers the risk associated with actually activating and leveraging Group Intelligence?  Is it the shared, group-behaviors of group acknowledgement, group sharing, and extending group affinity? Possibly? How could we find out? Practice? Sounds like exploring the return-on-coordination. Why the heck isn't that "Job1" in all economics textbooks? Instead of all the banal drivel called ISLM?

The Depth of Interdependencies Which Have an Effect on "Economics"

(commentary posted by Roger Erickson)

If you read the following article, it's hard not to appreciate the cascade of events and policy decisions which can alter the economics of the outcome state.

A Canadian Looks At Decision-Making In American Policy Outcomes

If we make enough elected officials exempt from enough things .... then anything is possible, right? Even on Wall St.

If we imagine going even a little way further down that path, we can then easily imagine a situation when overt preparations for and outright practice of even the most heinous of crimes, physical or financial, are not technically illegal. Right?

So group success tracks the quality of ALL prior decision-making? Where have we heard that before? Evolution as the sum of all Adaptive Rates? No wonder current NRA leadership is hiding some of it's narrow-minded excesses behind the excuse of religion. It's not even easy to discover who NRA leaders are, except through critics of the NRA, so alternate views of NRA leaders are offered here.

It's always time to consider how and when and why we should be actively shedding maladaptive habits, as well as searching for the rare, new cultural tools that actually improve, not just complicate, our cultural adaptive rate. When considering the economics of a group adaptive race, shedding burdensome habits and policies is usually more important than adding new ones, just like shedding unnecessary weight from a race car is more productive than adding more engine power.

That immediately brings up the question of group-wide assessment methods. Without adequate assessment methods, how will we - as a culture - ever know if we're making progress ... or regressing? The quality of our distributed decision-making obviously tracks our ability to gather a NET assessment of the sum of our distributed outcomes.

At this point you may be wondering how measures as diverse as GDP, childhood deaths, mental health costs, interest rates, security costs, fiscal spending and net policy development all intertwine.  Good!

Is the return on coordinating all those things discussed by economists? If not, how do you quickly explain return-on-coordination to our legions of under-prepared politicians and policy staff?  It's obvious that no one person can answer that question adequately. It takes a nation to raise and select a productive policy office holder.

What else can we add to this discussion of policy interdependencies? Maybe the observation that group success and survival is not purely about our distributed methods and distributed rights? And that adaptive policy development is obviously also about how we collectively use those methods and right.  Do we use them in ways that make as a nation greater than the sum of it's parts, or as a disorganized mob? Answering that question also takes a nation.

Where can we start? Everywhere, of course. Here's just one of many places to start. Are all members of the NRA our enemies? Or is it just a question of - quickly - bringing them into our NET assessment methods? Can all citizens reach consensus on desired-outcomes? If so, adaptive usage patterns for all our methods and rights will fall into place. If not, we're already on the path to civil war. Chew on those economics.