4 Failures of Deliberating Groups

Azadidome NOTES_Issue 1 Peer-feedback and Criticism_Internal Conflict

Key Words (Red: Words present in the reports. Orange: Not present in report however important for us in discussing certain concepts)

Deliberation: long and careful discussion

Group-think: groups of people which think exactly the same

Censorship: the prevention of expressing certain ideas or feelings.

Authority: a person or a group of people who supposedly have a lot of knowledge

Information Signals: the providing of other people with information

Social Pressure: the attitude which the organisation imposes on its members

Heuristics: he proceeding to a solution by trial and error or by rules that are loosely de-fined.

Eureka Problem: a decision which is brand new to the group

Personal knowledge: knowledge that is held by an individual.

Shared knowledge: knowledge which is held by the group.

Knowledge Annexation: the ability to compile knowledge from different areas

Opportunity Cost: the negative consequences of not making an alternative decision.

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4 Failures Of Deliberating Groups By Cass R. Sustein

Providing you with investing not interesting reviews.

Preface

We want to reduce the structural hierarchy in which the rich always have the ability to gain the most information and the poor must fight their way into getting hold of some of the information which may allow them to improve their own communities and groups. Hence, we will start with the definition and clarification of a few terms. We will have a PAC or Purpose, Audiene and Context Audit first so that the reader knows whether or not to invest his or her time in our pamphlet. This pamphlet aims to select certain reports by intellectuals and provide notes for these reports. A special page or pages for good reports will be delegated for some important quotes from these pamphlets.


PAC Audit

Purpose: To discuss the pros and cons of deliberation and the reasons why deliberation occurs in groups. Outline the ways in which deliberation within groups may increase the chances of reasoning fallacies are a failure of the group to be successful in achieving aims.

Audience: Upcoming groups, Groups which use deliberation, groups which want to use deliberation.

Context: This is most likely to come in the Internal Conflict of our organisation. It is of vital impor-tance to use the discussions within the organisation to our advantage. Every deliberation or discussion should be an attempt to move the organisation forward or improve the organisation. A good delibera-tion should try to exploit the knowledge which the members of the organisation have. Through the study of this report, a person may realise ways in which the deliberations they have initiated or were part of may have not been able to take a full advantage over the members.

Notes:

The blue part are the notes. The orange part is the analysis. The red parts are the titles of the analysis.

There is an assumption among most groups that deliberation or long and careful discussions is the best method to improve the quality of decisions. However, most groups arent able to live-up to their fullest potential because they are unable to carefully exploit all of the information which group mem-bers have.

4 main reasons for such failures:

1)Judging people on events before the deliberation

2)Cascade eects. The statements of predecessors are repeated.

3)Group polarisation. Attitudes and the ideas of the participants goes to opposite extremes.

4)Shared Information is prioritised over the personal knowledge of participants.

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Assumptions, truths and results

In most groups, the answer to all problems and conflicts seems to be deliberation or in simple words getting together and just talking it through.

Assumption: Deliberation allows for people to make better judgements and decisions to be made.

Truth: Group members exert authority and pressure over each other.

Result:Inferior decisions are made.

The author sites a writer by the name Irving Janis who coined a think tank term, group-think. This term suggests that in a group it may be expected that all of the members think in a similar manner.

Assumption: In order to maintain stability within the group, this means people are allowed to think whatever they want however they should be encouraged not to present it provided that it doesnt clash with any of the organisations theories and principles

Truth: Censorship occurs and the group becomes more of a cult

Result: The group makes decisions which do not exploit all of the information present.

In order to understand, the main reason why some groups fail to utilise deliberations to their advan-tage while others are fully capable of doing so. You should have a better understanding especially so-cial psychology.

The author suggests that their are two main psychological factors influencing the success or failure of deliberations within the organisation.

a) Information Signals: Providing other people with relevant information

b)Social Pressures: The attitude which the organisation provides for its employees.

These two factors if played or manipulated with correctly can lead the organisation to success as everyone within the organisation is heard and everyones view is being considered upon making a deci-sion. The decisions that are carried out are based on the feedback that is present within the organisa-tion.

This may also be exploited when trying to disintegrate a rival organisation. Changing or manipulating the social pressure of any rival organisation may lead to the organisations own success. When trying to take down a rival organisation spies may be sent to manipulate the organisation. However, just the mere understanding of the rival organisation and the exploiting of it may lead to the failure of the rival organisation.

However, the lack of understanding and appreciation of these two factors may lead the organisation to self-destruction. These factors act as a double edged sword you can use them however you want, ei-ther for your own success or that of your rivals. You may use them self-destruction or the destruction of your rival groups.

Frequent and unexpected splits within the party or organisation are a sign that the organisation is not paying enough attention to the information signals and social pressure.

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In the dogma or terms of Azadidome. The first factor is similar to our value of action knowledge an-nexation and the study of social pressure may be similar or even equivalent to the Environment tenet in our Science and Technology value of action. Hence, our studies in those particular fields may allow us to take advantage of Internal Conflicts. Due to this, we will be able to exploit deliberations in a better way.

A lot of times groups fail to annex or compile the points which each of their members have which is precisely the entire point of having multiple people involved in a deliberation. A group which is united and well-known however unable to make high-quality decisions when it is required of them is worth-less.

The author suggests 3 principal reasons why groups are successful during deliberation

a) The productivity of the collective is much better than the most productive member of the group.

b) Knowledge annexation is a well-understood topic

c) Synergy: The concept which states 1+1=3. Basically, synergy occurs when ideas are compiled in such a way that the final idea or plan is much better than the original plan or ideas s which the in-dividuals thought o separately. eg. If a group member understands dialectical materialism. How-ever, another person finds it confusing and doesnt really get the point of it. A synergy will occur if the group members with a new method of teaching dialectical materialism or split dialectical ma-terialism into materialist dialectics and dialectical materialism.

Brief Description Role of Information Signals and Social Pressure in the 3 reasons for suc-cess and 4 Reasons of Failure of Deliberation

Why does this occur? Let us study the two factors of which we stated earlier, information signals and social pressure.

Over here we are going to provide you with an analysis on why information signals and social pressures used in a negative or ineective way lead to the detriment of groups and if used in an eective way lead to the success of groups.

Social Pressure 1 and Failure Reason 1

When the group members speak with each other and have dierent views, they tend to argue and de-bate their views, with the intention to maintain their beliefs. Due to this, they have developed their own views in a dierent way. This increases confidence. However, as stated in our manifesto they do not gain anything new, in terms of productivity. Due to this, arrogance is built within the organisation as there is a lot of confidence built up within a particular person This may encourage them to exert more social pressure on other individuals within the political party or organisation. Hence, they may consider themselves superior to their fellow members however this may not be true at all. An ar-rogant person may over time become overtly aggressive. This built in aggression may increase the chances of judging other people. An arrogant or aggressive person may often tend to use past events in order to highlight were another person has got wrong an use that as fuel to increase his or her arro-gance instead of focusing the issue at hand. Which is the first reason why deliberations often fail.

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Social Pressure 1 and Successful Reason 1

On the contrary, if the same exact social pressure is to your advantage. Rules may be set in order to have deliberations under certain conditions or after some time. For example, if you study anthropolo-gy you will know that a lot of what you do and your style of thinking is based on the environment of not you but your ancestors were in. It is quite likely that back in the days in the era when our ances-tors were either living in caves, deserts or jungles, it was hard to get food and the members of a tribe may have died if they didnt strive for hunting or getting more food. Due to this, we get a general sense of accomplishment as we think that we are successful as we have placed food in our mouths. However, if our deliberation is supposed to be about say improving yourself. A member who has just finished his lunch may have a feeling that he is superior because he or she has eaten food and may be flawless or concerned about finding flaws in other people. This is one way in which sense perception even your own sense perception ends up deceiving you. An organisation having this in mind may cre-ate a rule which prohibits members to eat before a deliberation or even make all members participate in a day of fast to prevent the members from being involuntarily arrogant. This may allow for all of the members participating within the deliberation to be more productive. Hence, due to this, the group may be more productive than the productivity of its most productive member and

Information Signal 1 and Failure Reason 1

If a person has a higher degree of recognised education say a Doctorate they will be taken more seri-ously compared a person with a lower degree of recognised education say a High School Diploma. Due to this, the person with a High School Diploma maybe less likely to question the information provided by the person with a higher degree of recognised education. In addition, this is likely to de-crease the information signals. Hence, the group as a collective has less information in order to make good decisions. The group however may judge a person by the information signals that they have. Due to this, they may be judged on based on their previous experiences. If a person was an ex-convict. They may be judged as a criminal who decided to join a grassroots organisation for fun. This may lead to group polarisation and in the extreme cases block out ex-convicts from joining in forums, which is detrimental for the success of the organisation as ex-convicts might have certain experiences which allows each deliberation to improve, hence increase the success of the group.

Information Signal 1 and Successful Reason 1

Unlike the case stated above, a good deliberation will operate on the phrase, Each one, teach one, by Huey P. Newton, which states that every single person in the world regardless of political, religious, ideological or psychological standpoint can teach us something which we were earlier unaware o. If the group above was to be more intelligent and more smart they will invest some more time in dele-gating roles. In a deliberation, they will assign roles to each individual which may rotate from time to time. Maybe at times the ex-convict will be delegated as a initiator and will be encouraged to pick up 6 dierent books for all of the group members to read about the prison system, how to work out in an urban area and an interesting article about how people of a certain colour are more likely to be arrest-ed than another. An intellectual may improve his lifestyle and even his style of thinking by working out his biceps more or learning how to use basketball as physical means of communication.

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Using such a style of thinking we may be able to generate more paragraphs and come up with solu-tions. This is an extensive topic and you could just write an entire book on it. These ideas may be ex-plored in short stories and plays which may allow individuals to use their own imagination.

If Azadidome decides to create a manifesto or rule book for deliberations the 2 psychological factors, 4 main reasons for failure in deliberation and 3 reasons for success in deliberations should be thor-oughly considered. Of course, in consideration, with other works such as MSW(Maos Selected Works) and the manifestoes and so on.

The author mentions that statistics may be a method to find out which decisions my be made by groups. Looking at the citations I think if a reader is interested in such a topic

Two Sources of Self-Silencing

a) Information Signals

Assume if we have a person called Marx. Say if Marx believes that an X decision needs to be made. Imagine if all of the members of his group think that X also needs to be made. Marx may not pro-vide the reasons for why the decision X is best. Assume if his reasons are A, B and C .The other members of the group might think that X is true however for completely dierent reasons say F,G and H. This is what happens in an organisation. The decision X will be conducted mainly by Marx then the reasons A,B and C will be taken into perspective. If decision X will be conducted by other people within the organisation then then F, G and H may be taken into consideration. In this case, the decision made will consider the ideas of Marx and hence the end product may be like another decision Y. This may be good or bad.

In a group if two people lets call them X and Z have a lot of authority , then in order to gain more respect and power, members of the group may intentionally gravitate towards the decision made by X and Z. The information signals by them are generally seen to be more powerful and have more weightage compared to other people. In Marxist circles, say if Engels is quoted in a justification, the judgement say Y may be considered to have a mass of A. If another person say Fidel Castro said something which was better than what Engels said, it may only receive a mass of A-, however if you got rid of the titles and the credits. It will have a mass of A+.

There may be an assumption by a person lets call him Tom that the information that he may pro-vide lets call it A will be useless when considering decision B. However, if you phonetically spell as-sume you get Ass-u-me which means that Tom may fail both himself and his entire group due to information that is held back however may be helpful to the entire group.

In deliberations, people usually try to avoid providing limitations of their own conclusions. Howev-er, limitations may be important while considering whether the X or Y conclusion which may help the group decide in a better way

b) Social Pressure:

If the majority of the group members think of a particular decision A. Other members who may be in the minority might not want to speak out against decision A or suggest the limitations of decision A or suggest decision B. This is because speaking out as a loner is often dicult. A random person, lets call him Lenin may feel threatened to speak out against decision A even though he may have

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serious issues say X, Y,Z which the group may have to consider before conducing the decision A. If Lenin has previous knowledge and has taken decision A or been in a group which has taken decision A and failed, then Lenin may be leading his group to failure and may do so involuntarily because of social pressure. Even if the members of the organisation do not desire to do so.

People may tend to not speak against other people who seem provide their own opinion in a more persuasive and confident way.

To act more persuasive, people participating in a deliberation dont provide their own doubts about the decision which they have chosen.

Even if provided sucient evidence that a decision is likely to be detrimental, members choose not to disclose that they prefer another option or another decision.

Racial dierences, gender and other ethnic detail may prevent people to provide their opinions and ideas as they thing that their opinions have little prevalence. It is a proven fact that female re-searchers are less likely to self-quote than males researchers.

Failures on steroids

I realised somewhere through the middle of the reading that the reasons which I listed above are rea-sons for failures within deliberations. However, the author was taking about some other factors. He had a more psychological or metaphysical approach and I had a more logical approach this lead to some other interesting points. Some of which I think are extensions of my earlier stated failures achieved through a logical methodology. Personally, I think these failures are important and should be considered holistically in addition to my earlier stated failures. Hence, I called them failures on steroids as they are reasons why people fail however for people who are more serious about under-standing failures and may want to adjust deliberations within their own organisations or start new ones while considering the following principles.

A: Amplification of cognitive factors

B: Cascade eect

C: Group polarisation

D: Over-weighting of common knowledge

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Failures on steroids

1: Amplification of cognitive factors

These are type of failures associated with thinking processes. Someone interested in studying this in detail might want to read On Contradiction by Mao Tse Tung.

People often use Hereustics which allow them to arrive at facts or opinions which are predictably false or weakly supported.

Types of Heuristics:

Availability Heuristic: When people use the term err in English they are searching their brains for availability heuristic. An availability heuristic is based on the knowledge with the person has ex-amples of.

Media may be a big bias in this. For example, if people have seen terrorist attacks on the media very often they may be likely to think that such attacks are very common. This is also a common reason for stereotypes and biases based on ethnicity, gender and identity. A person may consider a terotrirst at-tack a very big threat were as more common stu such as

Familiarity Heuristic: Someone may make a heuristic as they are more familiar to it.

If a random person sees an Arab or Muslim person they are very likely to think of Muslim extremist terrorist organisation as they are used to them. However, Rumi or Ibn Al Hayhtam are not too famil-iar hence referring or assuming that they may poetic or think a lot about science may not be some-thing which comes to mind immediately.

Salience Heuristic: Created due to shock.

A terrorist attack on television may be more salient or more vivid to viewers compared to a report or book on terrorism. Hence, they may remember something more or be more awed. When people saw the video of extremists attacking two or 3 French Liberation magazine members they were more shocked. However, when 50-80 Adivasi people were killed in the East side of India in a massacre around the same date, most of them women and children, the world didnt even give a fuck because there was no video-graphic evidence of the massacre.

Sympathetic magical thinking: People may associate certain objects with certain ideas and may connect it with certain concepts.For example, a book with Arabic or Urdu writing may frequently be associated with terrorism. A book with French writing may be associated with being poetic. However, both of these may not be the case.People may make multiple heuristic and reasoning fallacies while making decisions while they are in a group. Due to this, it is more likely that mistakes are increased dramatically in groups of large num-bers.

Groups who associate their identity with the organisation may be more likely to agree with the deci-sions of the organisation. This is probably why an organisation continues on making a mistake. We may want to start making deliberations more like reading clubs at school to not only to maintain but

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to increase the quality of the discussions in which each member is delegated with a certain task. The reading clubs, Ive been in basically delegate each member a certain role in a discussion, each role is rotated.

Egocentric Bias: The bias which assumes that everyone in the world thinks like you.

The author states it is important to have people to have a variety of backgrounds and ethnicities. If you are discussing about dialectical materialist, a group with people with a degree ranging from Physics to Anthropology might do better than a group practicing a certain subject. In addition, it is important to have from dierent ethnicities as each person carries their own cultural background. If you have people from dierent cultural backgrounds you are less likely to think that everyone acts and thinks exactly the way you do. Hence, you are more likely to be open-minded and less stereotypical. In addition, each society even capitalistic society fills us with dierent attitudes and personalities. By having a varied ethnic or cultural group you are more likely to find the flaws within your own personal-ity and add them.

Hindsight Bias: The assumption that you have some kind of super-powers or extreme in-telligence skills of interpreting or predicting the future.

Luckily one type of bias that is removed or eliminated is the hindsight bias. Which is the assumption that a particular person predicted an event say the starting of violence in Iraq. There is likely to be a worship of idols or leaders in groups especially the reading club styled deliberation that I mentioned earlier.

The author also notes that groups tend to work better Eureka problems. Which are problems or decisions brand new to the group.

Taking advice from this report. I think that when trying to write-up or practice an activity which is already familiar with the group or even an individual, you should try adding a new element such as writing in a new format or a new style. This not only reduces boredom but adds a new element of in-novation and prevents arrogance from being much of a factor as no one has the upper hand in terms of having the best experience with such a problem.

2: Cascades

Process by which influence one another. And try to apply social pressure on each other to the point that the members refuse to disclose their personal knowledge. And repeat shared knowledge.

A lot of times the same mistakes or same decisions may be repeated and seen as policy

Informational Cascade: The Same information is passed from one generation to another. Howev-er, such an information may or may not be true.

Some information being passed from one generation may be important or vital. It may be hard for individuals to correct what their predecessors did wrong even though if they think that their informa-tion is wrong. Rebelling individually is very hard and requires a lots of guts. Not a lot of people have that though.

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Reputational Cascade: People know or are aware of their personal opinion and about some truths within the particular topic. However, they dont disclose this out of fear of a decrease in reputation among the members in their group.

Availability Cascades: We have assumed that people are in a sense which is completely rational. If the media is able to infiltrate your brain and make you feel traumatised. You may be morning for someone who you dont even know and for no reason. This may enter your deliberations and cause biases and be involved in arguments within the group which is totally irrelevant

3: Group polarisation

When you are deliberating within a group, you are forced to defend your views and your opinion, es-pecially if you are from dierent cultures. Due to this, the group is more likely to go extreme in its beliefs and ideologies. This is most likely because in most of the world deliberations or discussions are meant to be a mode for stress relief. In India we have a word "gap chaat. Which basically means dis-cussions which are meant for no purpose and around no central topic. In my opinion, this is the capi-talistic attitude that proletarians or workers and semi-proliterians or employees have been thought to have when amongst each other. However, this is extremely detrimental for community economics or community organisation. On the other, the leading capitalistic family have developed the art of having more decision based deliberations. In order to proceed, we must learn how to quit from ideological deliberations and advance to more plan based or decision based deliberations. Decision based deliber-ation at first may seem more uncomfortable because we are not used to it. I remember when me and Domekhan used to try to spark up decision or plan based deliberations those discussion would usually be the most hostile or uneasy or uncomfortable discussions however after the decisions that are re-quired are taken then you are thankful for the deliberation and though multiple minor victories and successes one may be motivated to continue this future. I dont say that you should never have ideo-logical or catching up deliberations however their needs to be a balance between each type of deliber-ation. Having a correct and optimised balance between each type of deliberation may help people in not becoming too polarised in a group. Hence, this prevent splits within the organisation which are created from small ideological dierences.

The lack of recognition and study in groups about the two factors of success within deliberations In-formation Signal and Social pressure. Groups must set ground rules which force group member even leaders to also follow the rules. Such rules should be set in recognition of the 2 factors of success with-in the deliberation working inside the 4 reasons for failure within deliberations, 4 failures within de-liberations on steroids and the 3 categories of success within deliberations.

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4: Over-weighting Common Knowledge

There are two types of knowledge that me and Domekhan learnt through out school subject Theory of Knowledge. One is Personal knowledge, which his knowledge that an individual personally has. The other one is shared knowledge, which the knowledge which the group as a collective has. What happens to us in a group, is when there informational signal which contains shared knowledge. There is an immediate recognition to that information signal. And this may be important when inter-nal deliberations are occurring.

This is why it is important for groups need to evaluate what we call in business terms opportunity cost. Or in psychology, Hidden profits.

Cognitively central people are those people who practically shared all their knowledge and infor-mation and don' have any more in the tank for other people to provide at the time of the delibera-tion. Cognitively peripheral people are those who have new personal knowledge which they have recently collected about the topic of deliberation. Groups respectfully value the information which the cognitive central people have. However, carefully exploiting the information of the cognitive pe-ripheral people usually helps an organisation advance further than it would have.

Further reading

Here are some sources which the author cited which we think will be important and in-vesting to read.

1) Smart Groups by Harvad Business School2) Infotopia by Cass. R.Substein3) Groupting 2nd Edition by Irving L. Janis4) Interaction with Others Increases Decision Confidence but Not Decision Quality: Evidence against Information Collection Views of Interactive Decision Making by Chip Heath and Rich Gon-zalez5) Social Corroboration and Opinion Extremity by Robert Baron6) Proper Analysis of the Accuracy of Group Judgments by Daniel Gigone and Reid Hastie,7) Experimental Evidence of Group Accuracy,Reid Hastie 8) Information Pooling and Group Decision Making by Bernard Grofman9) Comparing Micro and Macro Rationality, by Robert J. MacCoun10) Judgments, Decisions, and Public Policy by Rajeev Gowda and Jerey Fox11) Why Societies Need Dissent by Cass R. Sunstein12) Inside the Jury by Reid Hastie13) Team Medical Decision Making by Caryn Christenson and Ann Abbott14) Decision Making in Health Care by Gretchen Chapman and Frank Sonnenberg15) On Contradiction by Mao Tse Tung16) The Eect of Discussion upon the Correctness of Group Decisions: When the Factor of Majority Influence Is Allowed For,by 12Robert L. Thorndike17) Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment by Thomas Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman18) Availability: A Heuristic For Judging Frequency and Probability, 5 Cognitive Psychology by Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman19) The Perception of Risk by Paul Solvic20) Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and

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Amos Tversky21) Sympathetic Magical Thinking: The Contagion and Similarity Heuristics by Paul Rozin and Carol Nemeroff22) Heuristics and Biases by Gilovich, Griffin, and Kahneman23) Group Consensus Approaches in Cognitive Bias Tasks by Mark F. Stasson24) Bias in Judgment: Comparing Individuals and Groups by Norbert L. Kerr25) Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes by Janet A. Sniezek and Rebecca A. Henry26) Overconfidence and War by Dominic Johnson27) Effects of Attorneys Arguments on Jurors Use of Statistical Evidence by Edward L. Schumann and W. C. Thompson28) Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes by Glen Whyte29) Investigation of the Preference Reversal Phenomenon in a New Product Introduction Task by James W. Gentry and John C. Mowen,30) Escalating Commitment by Whyte31) Group Consensus Processes by Stasson32) We Knew It All Along: Hindsight Bias in Groups by Dagmar Stahlberg33) The Blind Leading the Blind by David Hirschleifer34) Why Societies Need Dissent by Sunstein35) Information Cascades in the Laboratory by Lisa Anderson and Charles Holt36) Information Cascades: Replication and an Extension to Majority Rule and Conformity-Rewarding Institutions by Angela Hung and Charles Holt37) Information Cascades in the Laboratory by Lisa Anderson and Charles Holt38) Are More Informed Agents Able to Shatter Information Cascades in the Lab?39) The Economics of Networks: Interaction and Behaviours by Patrick Cohendet40) Are More Informed Agents by Willinger and Ziegelmeyet41) Availability Cascades and Risk Regulation by Timur Kuran and Cass R. Sunstein42) Social Psychology: The Second Edition by Roger Brown43) The group as a polarizer of attitudes by S. Moscovici and M. Zavalloni44) Are Judges Political? An Empirical Investigation of the Federal Judiciary by Cass R. Sunstein45) Deliberating about Dollars: The Severity Shift by David Schkade46)Extremism and Social Learning by Edward Glaeser and Cass R. Sunstein47)Hidden Profiles: A Brief History, by Garold Stasser and William Titus48)"The Common Knowledge Effect: Information Sharing and Group Judgments, by Daniel Gigone and Reid Hastie49)The Impact of Computer-Mediated Communication Systems on Biased Group Discussion, by Ross Hightower and Lutfus Sayeed50)The Psychology of the Internet by Patricia Wallace51)Pooling of Unshared Information in Group Decision Making: Biased Information Sampling during Discussion by Garold Stasser and William Titus52)Hidden Profiles, by Stasser and Titus

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4 Failures of Deliberating Groups

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