<div dir="ltr">With hierarchy theory serving as a dressmaker's dummy, these statements:<div><br></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse:collapse"><div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">
<font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px">From Guy:</span></font></div><div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px"></span></font></div>
<div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px">"</span><span style="line-height:18px"><u>I think of collective intelligence as synonymous with collective information processing</u>. I would not test for its existence by asking if group-level action is smart or adaptive, nor do I think it is relevant to ask whether collective intelligence informed or misinformed individuals. I would say that in the classic example of eusocial insect colonies (like honey bees, for example) <u>there is no reasonable doubt that information is processed at the level of the full colony, which can be detected by the coordination of individual activities into coherent colony-level behavior</u>. <u>Synchronization and complementarity of individual actions reflect the top-down influences of colony-level information processing.</u> </span><span style="line-height:18px">It is the existential question that I think is key here, and I hope our conversation includes objective ways to detect the existence or absence of instances where a collective intelligence has manifested as a way to keep this concept more tangible and less metaphorical".</span></font></div>
<span style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif;line-height:18px"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br></font></span><div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">
<font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px"><br></span></font></div><div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px">From John Collier:</span></font></div>
<div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px"></span></font></div><div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">
<font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px">"Guy, This looks fruitful, but it might be argued that the exchanges of</span> information in a colony can be reduced to individual exchanges and interactions, and thus there is not really any activity that is holistic. This is what Steven is doing with his example of pyramid building. <span style="line-height:18px"><u><span style="background-image:none;background-color:white;background-repeat:repeat repeat">On the other hand, with ants, for example, it has been shown by de Neuberg and others that in ant colonies the interactions cannot be reduced, but</span> produce complex organization that only makes sense at a higher level of </u></span><span style="background-image:none;background-color:white;background-repeat:repeat repeat"><u>behaviour.</u> Examples are nest building and bridge building, among others. I assume the same is true for humans. </span><span style="background-image:none;background-color:white;background-repeat:repeat repeat">For example, in the pyramid case, why is it being built, why are people so motivated to cooperate on such a ridiculous project? Contrary to widespread </span><span style="background-image:none;background-color:white;background-repeat:repeat repeat">opinion the workers were not slaves, but they were individual people.<u> I doubt this can be explained at the individual level. If ants have complexly</u></span><u> organized behaviour, then surely humans do as well -- we are far more complex, and our social interactions are far more complex"</u>.</font></div>
<div style="font-size:16px;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:18px"><br></span></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="line-height:18px">seem to be the most interesting garment designs!</span></font></div>
<div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="line-height:18px"><br></span></font></div><div><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="line-height:18px">STAN</span></font></div></span></div></div>
<div class="gmail_extra"><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Apr 28, 2014 at 4:19 AM, Pedro C. Marijuan <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"><u></u>
<div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<br>
-------- Original Message --------
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">Subject: </th>
<td>Re: closing the session</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">Date: </th>
<td>Sun, 27 Apr 2014 16:30:44 -0700</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">From: </th>
<td>John Prpic <a href="mailto:prpic@sfu.ca" target="_blank"><prpic@sfu.ca></a></td>
</tr>
<tr>
<th align="right" nowrap valign="baseline">To: </th>
<td>Pedro C. Marijuan <a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank"><pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es></a></td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<br>
<br>
<font>Dear FIS'ers,</font><br>
<div style="font-size:12pt;font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
<font>In an effort to put the latest session formally to bed, please
allow me to highlight some of the excellent food for thought that was
put forward by the group in respect to "Collective Intelligence". I'll
attempt to roughly follow the chronological order in which the
discussion was received, and within this, I'll highlight passages that
I thought were especially interesting, salient, insightful or
provocative. </font><br>
<br>
<br>
<font>From Pedro:</font><br>
<font>"</font><u>Along the biggest social transformations, the "new
information orders" have been generated precisely by new ways to
circulate knowledge/information across social agents</u><font>--often
kept away from the previous informational order established. But there
is a difference, in my opinion, in the topic addressed by John P., it
is </font><u>the intriguing, more direct involvement of software
beyond the rather passive, underground role it generally plays</u><font>.
"Organizational processes frozen into the artifact--though not
fossilized". Information Technologies are producing an amazing mix of
new practices and new networkings that generate growing impacts in
economic activities, and in the capability to create new solutions and
innovations...Brave New World? Not yet, but who knows..."</font><br>
<br>
<font>>From Bob Logan:</font><br>
<font>"</font><u>What is a culture after all but a form of collective
intelligence.</u><font> Eric Havelock called myths the tribal
encyclopedia. With writing the collectivity of intelligence grew wider
as evidenced by the scholars of Ancient Greeks who created a collective
intelligence through their writing. The printing press was the next
ramping up of collective intelligence as the circle of intelligences
contributing to a particular project dramatically increased. The
ability to have a reliable way of storing and sharing experimental data
contributed in no small way to the scientific revolution. Other fields
of study thrived as a result of print IT such as philosophy,
literature, history, economics etc etc. The printing press also
contributed to the emergence of modern democracy. </font><u>With the
coming of electricity and electrically configured IT the collectivity
of intelligence passed through another phase transition</u><font>.
Marshall McLuhan reflecting on this development well before the
emergence of digital IT wrote:"</font></font>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">"<span style="line-height:115%">The university and
school of the future must
be a means of total community participation, not in the consumption of
available knowledge, but in the creation of completely unavailable
insights.
The overwhelming obstacle to such community participation in problem
solving
and research at the top levels, is the reluctance to admit, and to
describe, in
detail their difficulties and their ignorance. <u>There is no kind of
problem that
baffles one or a dozen experts that cannot be solved at once by a
million minds
that are given a chance simultaneously to tackle a problem.</u> The
satisfaction of
individual prestige, which we formerly derived from the possession of
expertise, must now yield to the much greater satisfactions of dialogue
and
group discovery. The task yields to the task force.(Convocation address
U. of
Alberta 1971)."</span></font></div>
<font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">
<div><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></div>
</span><span style="line-height:115%">"<u>And
now we come to the next phase transition in
collective intelligence that we may identify with the Internet and
other forms
of digital IT</u>. This development is both new and old at the same
time. It is old
as I have argued since language and culture, writing, the printing
press,
electric mass media each represented an internet of sorts
metaphorically
speaking. <u>What is new is the magnitude and scale of the
collectivity </u></span><span><span><span><span style="line-height:115%;color:rgb(0,0,139)"><u>today</u></span></span></span></span><span style="line-height:115%">, which allows a
total democratization of view
points and insights. Since a quantitative change can also be a
quantitative
change<u> the current era of intelligence collectivities is new and one
might even
say a revolutionary change</u>. For example a transition from
representative
democracy to participatory democracy. To conclude: Yes there is such a
thing as
Collective Intelligence - It has been with us since the emergence of
Homo
sapiens <u>and it defines the human condition.</u> As we push ahead to
explore new
frontiers of collective intelligence it is prudent to take into account
our
past experience with this phenomenon. Plus ca change plus ca le meme
chose".</span><span> </span><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
<br>
<br>
</span></font>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">From Steven:</span></font>
<div><span style="line-height:115%"></span></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">"However, <u>can
we measure the objective efficiency
of a group by considering</u></span><u> the problems solved by
individuals working
together in groups </u>such that we<span style="line-height:115%"> <span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%">may
identify whether there is an environment independent quantifiable </span></span><span style>addition
or loss of efficiency in all cases? Perhaps, but one suspects not. </span><span style>Bottomline:
I think you must stop worrying about collective intelligence and speak
to quantifiable efficiencies in all cases".</span></font>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">From Guy:</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"></span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">"</span><span style="line-height:115%"><u>I think of
collective intelligence as
synonymous with collective information processing</u>. I would not test
for
its existence by asking if group-level action is smart or adaptive, nor
do I
think it is relevant to ask whether collective intelligence informed or
misinformed
individuals. I would say that in the classic example of eusocial
insect
colonies (like honey bees, for example) <u>there is no reasonable
doubt that
information is processed at the level of the full colony, which can be
detected
by the coordination of individual activities into coherent colony-level
behavior</u>. <u>Synchronization and complementarity of individual
actions
reflect the top-down influences of colony-level information processing.</u> </span><span style="line-height:115%">It is
the existential question that I think is key here, and I hope our
conversation
includes objective ways to detect the existence or absence of instances
where a collective intelligence has manifested as a way to keep this
concept more
tangible and less metaphorical".</span></font></div>
<span style="line-height:115%"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></span>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">From John Collier:</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"></span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">"Guy, This looks
fruitful, but it might be argued that
the exchanges of</span> information in a colony can be reduced to
individual
exchanges and interactions, and thus there is not really any activity
that is holistic. This is what Steven is doing with his example of
pyramid building. <span style="line-height:115%"><u><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%">On
the
other hand, with ants, for example, it has been shown by de Neuberg and
others that in ant colonies the interactions cannot be reduced, but</span>
produce
complex organization that only makes sense at a higher level of </u></span><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%"><u>behaviour.</u>
Examples are nest building and bridge building, among others. I assume
the same is true for humans. </span><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%">For
example, in the pyramid case, why is it being built, why are people so
motivated
to cooperate on such a ridiculous project? Contrary to widespread </span><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%">opinion
the workers were not slaves, but they were individual people.<u> I
doubt
this can be explained at the individual level. If ants have complexly</u></span><u>
organized
behaviour, then surely humans do as well -- we are far more complex,
and
our social interactions are far more complex"</u>.</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"></span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">From Loet:</span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"></span></font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">"Beyond the case
of pyramids, one can think of
more abstract forms of social</span> organization <u>such as the rule
of law as a
supra-individual coordination mechanism</u>.<span> </span> <span style="line-height:115%"><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%">I
doubt that “collective intelligence” is the fruitful category. <u>As
in the
rule of law, it seems to me that codification of the communication
(e.g.,</u></span><u>
legislation and jurisprudence) are the vehicles</u>. In other words,
the quality</span>
of the communication is more important than the individual or sum total
of
reflections".</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">From Joseph:</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">"<span style="line-height:18.4px">...</span>Thus,
neither John's papers (please excuse me if I have<span> </span>missed
it), nor the postings so far,<u> have addressed the issue of<span> </span>knowledge
vs. intelligence</u>... I would like it to be explained in what this
intelligence
consists. In other<span> </span>words,
are we dealing with
knowledge-as-such (stored and shared data) or capability for effecting
change. John P. does say
that crowd capability is directed at processing knowledge, but does
this
exhaust the content of the concept of intelligence as capability?"</font></div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height:115%"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
<span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%"><u></u><u></u></span></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%">"My</span> next
point is the following: it is easy to see how
the interaction of<span> </span>two
individuals can lead to the
emergence of new behavior and capability of behavior. An example of the
former is interactional convergence. The second is a learning process. <u>I
tend to associate capability for<span> </span></u><span style="line-height:115%"><span style="background:white none repeat scroll 0%"><u>behavior
with intelligence</u>. The subsequent interaction of a third<span> </span>individual
with the result of the initial interaction, or one of the</span><span> </span>individuals
involved in it leads to further emergence of the same kind.</span><span> </span><u>Iteration
of this process, in my conception, focuses on the<span> </span>individual-group
interaction as its locus. On this basis, collective<span> </span>intelligence
appears with two or three people.</u><span> </span><span style="line-height:115%">My</span> first
question, therefore,<u> is whether one can in fact
consider that</u><u><span> </span>multiple
interactions at the same time
constitute collective<span> </span>intelligence
in themselves, or
whether there is always the need to take<span> </span></u><u>into
account the one-many relation</u>, as well as, joining Loet, the<span> </span>qualitative
aspects of the communications involved in the interactions".</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">"<span style="line-height:115%">John P.'s
response, to MY question, then, was as
broad as it was useful,<u> bringing out a clear tension between IT and
non-IT
perspectives.</u> The situation, the need for work on the 'nebulous
concept' of
intelligence is similar to that in the effort of some people, in China
and
elsewhere, to define an Intelligence Science as opposed to Artificial
Intelligence. <u>And was not the start of Information Science by Pedro
and Michael
Conrad in part as opposition to information as (just) technology</u>?</span><span> . </span></font><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">As
those familiar with my positions will know, I am much more interested
in non-IT-mediated
Collective Intelligence (NITCI), <u>which I agree exists provided one
takes a
process standpoint which is focused not only on outcomes but 'upstream'.</u>
Here
is where John P.'s reference to 'ability to perform' comes in for
further
analysis. <u>In my conception, the existence of, and interaction
between,
collective and individual processes is not only possible but a basic
logical
and ontological feature of intelligence in general</u>....</span><span style="line-height:115%;font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">One
possible next step would be <u>to define both Individual and
Collective
Intelligence in terms of the cognitive process of CREATIVITY</u>.
Absent this, the
most powerful capability for Promethean outcomes will not be
intelligence in my
book.</span><span style="font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif;line-height:115%"> </span></p>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">So I hope
that this summary is useful in highlighting what was clearly a
fascinating discussion. </font><span style="font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">Please
accept my personal thanks for your participation, and for lending your
insight and experience to the cause. </span><span style="font-family:'times new roman','new york',times,serif">There's
no doubt in my mind that this discussion will have a long lasting
beneficial impact on my research, and if you'd like to continue the
conversation in some form, please don't ever hesitate to get in touch.</span></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">Thanks so
much!</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">Best,</font></div>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif">John Prpic</font></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><span style="line-height:115%"><br>
</span></font>
<div><font face="times new roman, new york, times, serif"><br>
</font><br>
</div>
</div>
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
</font></span></div><span class="HOEnZb"><font color="#888888">
<br>
<pre cols="72">--
-------------------------------------------------
Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Centro de Investigación Biomédica de Aragón (CIBA)
Avda. San Juan Bosco, 13, planta X
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Tfno. <a href="tel:%2B34%20976%2071%203526" value="+34976713526" target="_blank">+34 976 71 3526</a> (& 6818)
<a href="mailto:pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es" target="_blank">pcmarijuan.iacs@aragon.es</a>
<a href="http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/" target="_blank">http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/</a>
-------------------------------------------------
</pre>
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