Purpose of a Discussion group III

Always remember the assertion:
Surowiecki asserts that what happens when the decision making environment is not set up to accept the crowd, is that the benefits of individual judgments and private information are lost and that the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member, rather than perform better (as he shows is otherwise possible). Detailed case histories of such failures include:

Extreme	Description
Homogeneity	Surowiecki stresses the need for diversity within a crowd to ensure enough variance in approach, thought process, and private information.
Centralization	The Columbia shuttle disaster, which he blames on a hierarchical NASA management bureaucracy that was totally closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.

We have all left the hierarchical organization  where unquestioning obedience is the norm. Some of us have still not left the model mentally and still recreates the mental model. Even for the OROP debate, we have this over arching mental model that is clouding our judgment of what is appropriate, what is impropriety, what is open discussion etc.

If you use an inappropriate mental model for a debate/fight, all your judgment will go wonky. ( The debate/fight just has no place if you are a serving soldier/officer  because, there you just accept what is dished out to you and you do not argue back or fight for your rights. Implicit obedience and acceptance of the decision of authority is the norm.)

Don't use a patently inappropriate mental model in this open internet discussion group where there are no "holy cows" and every idea/opinion/strategy/plan/argument  is open for discussion and are questionable irrespective of the originator of the same.

NOT having a "healthy skepticism"  for the establishment and hierarchy and an unhealthy reverence for  ideas just because it emanated form your "erstwhile seniors",  you may find yourself in an awkward corner of the discussion landscape and especially so if you have archaic ideas like "senior bashing"  for genuine questioning of any of the ideas.(If all our "seniors" are 100% right, there should be no court cases against our "seniors" decisions and at least no court wins against our "senior's" decisions!). Aren't our "seniors" human? Supreme Court judges can err in their judgment, but not our  "erstwhile seniors" ?

While it is perfectly alright to wait  longer time in the hope of growing up and out of this debilitating intellectual disorder,  please do not inflict such disorder on others and especially in  the tone and tenor  of " let me tell you how you should respond to your erstwhile seniors". While you are at liberty to critique every idea that is expressed as harshly as possible, any attempt to prescribe how we all should think will find harshly denounced.

The reason is not far to seek:

1. " the need for diversity within a crowd to ensure enough variance in approach, thought process, and private information."
2. Surowiecki asserts that what happens when"when the decision making environment is not set up to accept the crowd, is that the benefits of individual judgments and private information are lost and that the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member, rather than perform better (as he shows is otherwise possible).

We do not want the centralization in judgment "that is totally closed to the wisdom of low level engineers"  as Suroweiky put it so plainly for the benefit of those who can not grow beyond the hierarchical  environment.

Can the regular Army function with such "irreverence for the hierarchy? Obviously NOT.
But even there, an Army  like the  US army is attempting to inculcate it through their "after action reports"!

For more on AAR go here: http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/army/tc_25-20/tc25-20.pdf

If regular Army can have an  AAR after every action, to suggest that we (the retired fogies) can NOT  have an after action analysis post the TV debate on OROP  ( a movement based on political pressure and not based on Op Order and conduct of operation directed by the senior most general) is to be irrational to the point of being nit-witted and  senseless.

Extreme homogeneity and extreme centralization in thinking should be avoided like plague.

Lastly, what intrigues me is why our concept of "seniors" does not extend beyond the military in the ruling hierarchy? We can critique the President, the PM, cabinet misters, Supreme court judges including Chief Justices, HC judges, parliamentarians, the IAS big wigs (and even all the world's Generals who fought in the world wars)  but NOT our own military "erstwhile seniors"! How is that for logic?
Why? Because they are "holy cow"?

Thanks for your time and I sign off unless some one helps me  find flaws in  my logic and arguments.

Purpose of a Discussion group II

Wisdom of Crowds over individuals should  motivate us to put our heads together but independently!
Read on:

The Wisdom of Crowds

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See also: Wisdom of the crowd

The Wisdom of Crowds
Cover of mass market edition by Anchor
Author	James Surowiecki
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Non-fiction
Publisher	Doubleday; Anchor
Publication date	2004
Pages	336
ISBN	978-0385503860
OCLC Number	61254310
Dewey Decimal	303.3/8 22
LC Classification	JC328.2 .S87 2004

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.
The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members, and also closer than any of the separate estimates made by cattle experts).^[1]
The book relates to diverse collections of independently-deciding individuals, rather than crowd psychology as traditionally understood. Its central thesis, that a diverse collection of independently-deciding individuals is likely to make certain types of decisions and predictions better than individuals or even experts, draws many parallels with statistical sampling, but there is little overt discussion of statistics in the book.
Its title is an allusion to Charles Mackay's Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, published in 1841.^{[citation needed]}

Contents [hide] 1 Types of crowd wisdom 2 Four elements required to form a wise crowd 3 Failures of crowd intelligence 4 Connection 5 Applications 5.1 Prediction markets 5.2 Delphi methods 6 In popular culture 7 Criticism 8 See also 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links

[edit] Types of crowd wisdom

Surowiecki breaks down the advantages he sees in disorganized decisions into three main types, which he classifies as

• Cognition

Thinking and information Processing

Market judgment, which he argues can be much faster, more reliable, and less subject to political forces than the deliberations of experts or expert committees.

• Coordination

Coordination of behavior includes optimizing the utilization of a popular bar and not colliding in moving traffic flows. The book is replete with examples from experimental economics, but this section relies more on naturally occurring experiments such as pedestrians optimizing the pavement flow or the extent of crowding in popular restaurants. He examines how common understanding within a culture allows remarkably accurate judgments about specific reactions of other members of the culture.

• Cooperation

How groups of people can form networks of trust without a central system controlling their behavior or directly enforcing their compliance. This section is especially pro free market.

[edit] Four elements required to form a wise crowd

Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed investors in a stock market bubble. According to Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:

Criteria	Description
Diversity of opinion	Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
Independence	People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
Decentralization	People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
Aggregation	Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

[edit] Failures of crowd intelligence

Surowiecki studies situations (such as rational bubbles) in which the crowd produces very bad judgment, and argues that in these types of situations their cognition or cooperation failed because (in one way or another) the members of the crowd were too conscious of the opinions of others and began to emulate each other and conform rather than think differently. Although he gives experimental details of crowds collectively swayed by a persuasive speaker, he says that the main reason that groups of people intellectually conform is that the system for making decisions has a systematic flaw.
Surowiecki asserts that what happens when the decision making environment is not set up to accept the crowd, is that the benefits of individual judgments and private information are lost and that the crowd can only do as well as its smartest member, rather than perform better (as he shows is otherwise possible). Detailed case histories of such failures include:

Extreme	Description
Homogeneity	Surowiecki stresses the need for diversity within a crowd to ensure enough variance in approach, thought process, and private information.
Centralization	The Columbia shuttle disaster, which he blames on a hierarchical NASA management bureaucracy that was totally closed to the wisdom of low-level engineers.
Division	The US Intelligence community, the 9/11 Commission Report claims, failed to prevent the 11 September 2001 attacks partly because information held by one subdivision was not accessible by another. Surowiecki's argument is that crowds (of intelligence analysts in this case) work best when they choose for themselves what to work on and what information they need. (He cites the SARS-virus isolation as an example in which the free flow of data enabled laboratories around the world to coordinate research without a central point of control.) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA have created a Wikipedia style information sharing network called Intellipedia that will help the free flow of information to prevent such failures again.
Imitation	Where choices are visible and made in sequence, an "information cascade"[2] can form in which only the first few decision makers gain anything by contemplating the choices available: once past decisions have become sufficiently informative, it pays for later decision makers to simply copy those around them. This can lead to fragile social outcomes.
Emotionality	Emotional factors, such as a feeling of belonging, can lead to peer pressure, herd instinct, and in extreme cases collective hysteria.

[edit] Connection

Surowiecki presented a session entitled Independent Individuals and Wise Crowds, or Is It Possible to Be Too Connected?^[3]

The question for all of us is, how can you have interaction without information cascades, without losing the independence that’s such a key factor in group intelligence?

He recommends:

• Keep your ties loose.
• Keep yourself exposed to as many diverse sources of information as possible.
• Make groups that range across hierarchies.

Tim O’Reilly^[4] and others also discuss the success of Google, wikis, blogging, and Web 2.0 in the context of the wisdom of crowds.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

Purpose of a Discussion Group

The purpose of any Internet Group discussion (and ours is NOT different) on any subject is to express/ascertain  how individual members view a topic from various perspectives so that the members of the group benefit overall from the perspectives of so many different minds. Those who express their views are NOT "imposing their views" on any members. In contrast, they are submitting their views on any subject so that others can examine it and validate it  or critique it and  refine it  to bring out an aspect that might have been missed by the original initiator.

That is the purpose of all discussion.

 If we are using the forum to just share internet links, then we could as well go to some of the link aggregators who publish all the interesting links  of every day. (There are many on the internet and they do a far better job than any individual member of this group can ever do. e.g http://popurls.com/ )They publish every day of the week, month and year  all interesting links where interesting content is available and no individual member of the group can beat them on their coverage and quality because it is the contribution of active members of a very large group!

If any one has fundamental problem in understanding the following  concepts, it is not worth engaging in a discussion before the fundamental concepts are straightened out from the mush of cobwebs in the head:

1. Is expressing views imposing  one's  view on others? (We are all independent individuals and no one can impose ones view on others. To  assert that all those who express their views by the very act of expressing itself are "imposing their views" on others is not only missing the point but engaging in "personal attack" on the  members who express their views questioning their intention and motivations. )
   
2. Attacking/ supporting,  however fiercely,  ideas expressed ( not attacking individual who express ideas )  is to be welcome by all members. An idea get refined further and further as more minds examine it and bring out some aspect or perspective the original author might  have missed. Human mind has inherent limitations and to think otherwise is arrogance.
   
3. When expressing views on a subject/idea, it is in no way a denial of opportunity for others to express ideas if they have any. (one person expressing n ideas in n different mails does not prevent or constrain some one else to express his ideas on the subject. The only way one can "prevent" others from expressing their ideas is by covering their keyboard and enter key and thus preventing them from sending out a message. 
4. The other way of preventing one from expressing ideas is by statement such as: "Enough is enough"!(That is preventing free flow of ideas and expression of it. Is it so difficult to understand?)
   
5. On the other hand, with every mail/idea expressed in the group, one is submitting ones views for examination by others and hence rendering more opportunity to express ideas or perspective the original author might have missed.  (To assert that others are prevented from expressing ideas when few people express their own  is   simply not only  untrue but even cynical and diabolic..)
   
6. When we are engaging in a discussion in this group, we are very clear that the M of D or M of F is not going to use the ideas expressed in this group to make their decision. To think otherwise  is an irrelevant consideration because we are trying to influence our community so that we can examine dispassionately whether we have a case at all and also whether our case for it can be argued more convincingly.
   
7. So equally true is that  the newspaper articles, TV interviews  or open debates like the one we had last week are also of the similar nature and it does not change the decisions taken in the M of D or M of.
8. But what is true unequivocally,  is  that the discussion facilitates examining the issue  from perspectives one mind could not have conceived and it facilitates crystallizing many aspects which might have escaped one mind if we were to lock ourselves in a room and were to think up the various aspects of the issue.
   
9. In fact, the whole purpose of a discussion forum is this and if some one has problem understanding this, it is too fundamental and will need some serious surgical intervention  to correct the perception. The open discussion facilitates getting the mush cleared from your head. If you approach the discussion with a closed mind, no one on earth can help is also evidently clear.
   
10. If all that is needed to examine an issue is to ask the following questions:
1. Are the members of IESM who presented case known to you personally?
2. Are the members of IESM who presented the case unselfish and devoted to the cause?
   
3. Were the members of the IESM who presented the case your erstwhile colleagues?
4. Were the members of the IESM who presented the case your erstwhile seniors?
5. Were the members of the IESM who presented the case doing it with their own time?
6. Were the members of the IESM who presented the case doing doing it for a selfless service?
7. Were the members of the IESM who presented the case doing it at a great cost to their health and peace at home
11. and, if the answer to any of the questions above is yes, then you support the ideas expressed by them is totally opposed to the fundamental tenets of any discussion in a discussion group. Of course it could be your personal philosophy, but I have every reason to assert that "Please for God's sake, do not impose it on me, and I am sure you have the sense to honor the  simple request!
    
12. If an alternate idea is an assault on authority of seniors and is termed as "senior bashing",  there may be serious problem of under supply of rationality. ( What's right with America is the willingness to discuss what's wrong with America.. [Harry C. Bauer])
13. Disagreeing with "our seniors" is NOT blasphemous. It is stupidity to think so. It is blasphemous to impose such stupidity on others. Although Aristotle studied under Plato in his academy for most of his life, he fundamentally disagreed with his teacher on just about everything. So did Newton disagree with Aristotle on most of his thesis. If they had not critiqued their "seniors", world would have been poorer to day.
    
14. Ideas are right or wrong NOT on the basis of WHO expressed it but on the basis of the intrinsic strength of ideas.
15. On almost every issue, major and minor, public opinion has shifted over time. Examples: slavery, women's rights, Indian mascots. How did this happen? Through debate. It may not have happened fast enough for you to perceive it, but it happened. The winning arguments eventually changed enough individual opinions that the collective "public opinion" changed.
16. You can choose to be part of that process. Or you can choose to let it happen without your input.  You can choose to support every thing that your "colleagues and seniors" propounded with out questioning it. That is a choice you make.  If you have made that  your choice, perfectly alright. Don't thrust  your own concept of what is right  on others is all I can assert. (It is better to debate a question without settling it, than to settle a question without debating it.)
17. "I'm reasoning with people, not preaching at them. If they don't see the reason of my arguments, they're being unreasonable."
18. To say that "If you are NOT satisfied with the ideas as propounded, then you start your own movement" is as ridiculous and stupid as saying that "there should be no discussion, no debate and no refinement of ideas. Take it the way it is, if you are not satisfied, go start your own movement/ party/organization etc."
    
19. The above under cuts the very fundamentals of open discussion  and shakes the  very foundations of democracy itself and does not merit any further discussion or any application of ones mind. There is no negotiation on the very foundation of discussions.
    
20. Even in a political party, internal discussion and debate are to refine the strategy and action plan. To say that "either agree with the powers that be or get out and start a party  of your own" under cuts the democratic approach to problem solving.
    
21. And,  when one is expressing ones view, the very purpose of submitting the view for further examination  by the group itself is sufficient statement that it could be faulty and invitation   to examine it  and validate it or point out the weaknesses in it. One does not have to state further:" I agree that it may not be correct"! That is understood and that is the fundamental tenet of all discussion.
    
22. To say that Barka Dutt can express her views, other TV channels can express their views,  news paper editors and writers can express their views, the authorities in the government can express their views but you the veteran  can not express the views  because you are bound by the fact that you are the veteran  and because they are your "erstwhile colleagues and seniors" is nothing short of insanity and stupidity.
    
23. "Attack the ideas expressed, not the people who expressed it, their motives or intentions" seems to be forgotten. If it so difficult to get, you can not have open discussion.
24. Lastly, the appeal for "enough is enough" is the most ridiculous. That is stifling the discussion. ( We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is a false opinion; and if we were sure, stifling it would be an evil still. )

Do you think I am talking non sense? Does it make sense that we need open forum to express our views unconstrained by such appeals to "shut up" but under  the cloak of so called "sane voices". I have no patience for such "pseudo sane voices".


If you are in an argument to "win", then, I'd say you are in it for the wrong reason. It's tempting to believe that our own way of thinking should be the final word on a subject and that, perhaps, the world would be a better place if everyone agreed with our point of view. It's also tempting to attach too much personal currency to the fate of your argument. You are not your argument; it stands and falls on its own merit and has nothing to do with your worth as a human being.  The point of arguing is to get closer to the truth.  That should be the prime motivator.

All that is stated above does not change whether we are in our 20's 30's ...... or 60's or 70's or any where in between. Validity of an argument stands apart from any attribute of the people participating in it not excluding age!

The take home from all this:

1. You have only the right to start a discussion on any topic you want,
2. but what you have NO right to is  to terminate it by saying "enough is enough".
3. If you had enough of it, go climb a coconut tree and play the fiddle.
4. You have all the right to take what ever view including licking the ass holes of those who are above you while climbing the coconut tree,
5. but what you have NO right is to demand your demeaning demeanor from others participating in the discussion, calling it " Senior bashing" or what ever you like. 

Thanks for your time and attention.

Nath

(Would you happen to know what the relationship is (if any) between the words "demean" and "demeanor"? Funny what questions arise after only a small amount of alcohol. -- Mary Maxwell, via the Internet.
It seems logical to conclude, even when sober, that there would be some connection between "demean" and "demeanor." Not only does "demeanor" contain the word "demean," but both words have to do with the general subject of behavior. My "demeanor" is how I behave, and if I behave badly, I am said to have "demeaned," or degraded, myself in the estimation of people around me. "Demean" and "demeanor" seem to go together, as gin and tonic do, I am told. It's a bit of jolt to discover, therefore, that the two words have absolutely nothing to do with each other.)

Indian Salary Guide

http://www.kellyservices.co.in/res/content/in/services/en/docs/indiasalaryguide2010.pdf

Lt Comdr's win Case for Pension in AFT

It was announced  that " we have won the case for the enhanced Pension payable to Lt Cdrs, filed by Cdr Avtar Singh and well fought by Cmde Sukhjinder Singh. The judgment was pronounced this morning by the tribunal bench headed by Justice Mathur and Lt Gen M Naidu. Copy of the judgment will be available only in a couple of days and the same will also be promulgated for your info.The Lt Commanders will now be entitled to a pension of 50% of what the serving Lt Commander in service are drawing. It may make a difference of about Rs 4000 in their pensions" : Message received from Vice Admiral Harinder Singh

Isn't that what OROP for this rank means?
Does that mean a judgment is required for every rank starting with
soldiers right up to Lt Gen?
Isn't that ridiculous?

____________________________________________________________________
Col Sri comments: Law is an ass Sir! Sad.
____________________________________________________________________

Now that Lt Cdrs got OROP, their pension will  be hiked up to 50% of the serving Lt Cdr's pay.
Cdr's  pension is still based on the non-OROP basis.

There will be a time when Half of Lt Cdr's pay  will be higher than the retired Cdr's pension.
So, a retired Lt Cdr will get more pension than a retired Cdr.
So we will again go to the court pointing out the anomaly.
Then, that will be corrected after a court case.
Then Capt IN Retired will go to go to the court for the same anomally.
Then that will be settled by the court.
Then Commodore will go to court. That will be settled after a court order.
Then, Rear Admiral will go to court. That will be settled with a court order.

 ( I hope I am right. The Rear of an Admiral is always lower than the Vice of an Admiral! Where does the Vice reside, on the head, I presume! All vices originate in the head, so does the wisdom, I am told. So, the rear end  is always lower than the  head .  Royal Navy, I must admit, was not stupid  when they chose the Rear  to be lower than the Vice)

Then Vice Admiral will go to court . That will be settled with a court order.

Then Admiral will go to court.

Oh, sorry, he does not have to go to the court. He already got the OROP because, hold your breath:   he was on fixed pay  and hence the wise G of I Secretary of  M of D ( Finance) have already decided that those "human beings"  getting a fixed income  deserve OROP with out the need for going to court.

Courts are not ASSes ( in spite of what ever our friend Maj Ravi  would assert)  Government are asses, because  courts,  in our adversarial  system of adjudicating disputes only adjudicates on the issues brought to it on the basis of  a complaint received from the Plaintiff.

It is the Government that is full of asses  (like you and me, as we were in it for substantial part of our lives)
Once  asses, we will remain asses for ever.  So, our lives are gone case.

Hope our children escape  asininity, unless it is passed through our genes! 
We are the Asses, not the laws.  SAD.

 Law makers could be asses, but not the laws.

NDTV Debate on OROP: Fixed Pay Scales & OROP

I understand the woman IAS Secretary level officer   made the argument that the case of those who get enhanced pensionary benefits ( like for  Presidents, MPS,  Secretaries, Chiefs) is because they draw a fixed salary.

It is the most ridiculous argument!

Why not get a  fixed  salary for all ranks and Bingo, the whole army becomes eligible for OROP!  ( Fallacies can be divided into categories according to the psychological factors that lead people to commit them, and they can also be divided into categories according to the epistemological or logical factors that cause the error. This is called irrelevant reason. Fallacies of relevance include fallacies that occur due to reliance on an irrelevant reason.  This fallacy is a kind of non sequitur in which the premises are wholly irrelevant to drawing the conclusion.)

Irrationality  has  no limits when it comes to bureaucracy ( which is not necessarily confined to the civil, unfortunately)  is all I would conclude and all these generals participating in the debate could not demolish her in front of the camera? What a shame? Do we lack this much in critical thinking?

The lady IAS officer's  fallacious argument based in irrelevant reason can easily be demolished in few seconds!


__________________________________________________

Non Sequitur

When a conclusion is supported only by extremely weak reasons or by totally  irrelevant reasons, the argument is fallacious and is said to be a non sequitur. However, we usually apply the term only when we cannot think of how to label the argument with a more specific fallacy name. Any deductively invalid inference is a non sequitur if it is also very weak when assessed by inductive standards.
Example:

Nuclear disarmament is a risk, but everything in life involves a risk. Every time you drive in a car you are taking a risk. If you're willing to drive in a car, you should be willing to have disarmament.