scholarly journals General Collective Intelligence as the Emerging Paradigm in Human-Centric Design for Sustainability

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy E Williams
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Green Growth ◽  
Process Improvements ◽  
Design For Sustainability ◽  
Living Things ◽  
Design And Manufacturing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Functional Components

A recently developed framework for modelling cognition defines General Collective Intelligence or GCI as Collective Intelligence (CI) with general problem solving ability. Where CI uses the intelligence of crowds to optimize decision-making, a GCI must also optimize the choice of problem to solve. This framework represents a GCI as an adaptive problem solving system with problem solving segmented across a hierarchy of problem solving domains, one of which is adaptation through cooperation between functional components of the system. This domain defines how functionality is segmented across different components of a system in order to maximize outcomes, or in summary, balances centralization with decentralization. Where one function is more important to overall fitness than another, centralized cooperation prioritizes that function so that overall outcomes can be maximized. Decentralized cooperation maximizes outcomes for all participating components equally to remove the barriers that align decision-making with the interests of a subset of the group, which forces groups to solve the wrong problems. One such group problem is design and manufacturing for sustainability. Recent work has challenged the idea that process improvements will yield technologies with enough of an increase in efficiency to permit green growth while still reducing climate and other environmental impact. This paper proposes that designing all products and services according to the principles of GCI gives sufficient competitive advantage to businesses that cooperate to reduce consumption and increase sustainability, to make green growth not only possible but reliably achievable. This paper also provides an overview of what GCI based design and manufacturing of products and services for sustainability looks like. Leveraging GCI to achieve sustainability is explored as an example of biomimicry, and nature is shown to use the same approach to design living things. From this perspective, organisms are a collection of cells that cooperate to optimize functional designs according to well-defined principles in order to maximize the sustainability of the organism as a collective. Sustainability is represented as a mathematical pattern of stability implemented through these principles, a pattern which the 3.5 billion year history of the earth has thoroughly tested, and which therefore is robust enough to be replicated in all products and services, and once launched is stable enough as a pattern of cooperation to be sustainable in all organizations.

scholarly journals General Collective Intelligence and the Constraints to Group Decision-Making

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy E Williams
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Group Decision Making ◽  
General Problem ◽  
Group Decision ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Group Problem ◽  
Group Problem Solving ◽  
Decision Systems

This paper addresses the question of how current group decision-making systems, including collective intelligence algorithms, might be constrained in ways that prevent them from achieving general problem solving ability. And as a result of those constraints, how some collective issues that pose existential risks such as poverty, the environmental degradation that has linked to climate change, or other sustainable development goals, might not be reliably solvable with current decision-making systems. This paper then addresses the question that assuming specific categories of such existential problems are not currently solvable with any existing group decision-systems, how can decision-systems increase the general problem solving ability of groups so that such issues can reliably be solved? In particular, how might a General Collective Intelligence, defined here to be a system of group decision-making with general problem solving ability, facilitate this increase in group problem-solving ability? The paper then presents some boundary conditions that a framework for modeling general problem solving in groups suggests must be satisfied by any model of General Collective Intelligence. When generalized to apply to all group decision-making, any such constraints on group intelligence, and any such system of General Collective Intelligence capable of removing those constraints, are then applicable to any process that utilizes group problem solving, from design, to manufacturing or any other life-cycle processes of any product or service, or whether research in any field from the arts to the basic sciences. For this reason these questions are important to a wide variety of academic disciplines. And because many of the issues impacted represent existential risks to human civilization, these questions may also be important by to all by definition.

scholarly journals New forms of intellectual activity in globalized society

foresight ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sergey B. Kulikov
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Social Space ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Machine Intelligence ◽  
Intellectual Activity ◽  
Content Type ◽  
History Of ◽  
History Of Culture ◽  
Political Economic

Purpose The purpose of this paper is the foresight of new forms of intellectual activity in society. Design/methodology/approach This research examines the ways of predicting the development of intellectual activity. To reveal the topic, the author uses semiotics and the method of building possible worlds. The author explores intellectual activity in terms of sign systems. From this angle, the logic of the narrative expresses the order of the organization of intellectual activity. This approach reveals the connections between images of possible worlds and decision-making methods. Findings The author conceptually outlines the forms of intellectual activity in a globalized society. A globalized society is a complex of political, economic, cultural and scientific ties that spread throughout the world. The foresight of new forms of intellectual activity allows conceptually sketching the practical use of proper decision-making methods. These methods involve the use of artificial machine intelligence, collective intelligence, etc. Forms of intellectual activity are related to the worldbuilding that cause the development of culture through the development of knowledge. The description of forms of intellectual activity shows a promising way of humanitarian research in a globalized society. Research limitations/implications The research implies technological metaphors related to the history of culture and the role of intellectual activity in it. Practical implications The author examines the practical possibilities of applying traditional humanities for the development of new forms of intellectual activity in a globalized society. Social implications In the social space, exposing the effectiveness of traditional humanities helps to assess the consequences of using intellectual activity in practice. Originality/value The originality of this research is associated with the identification of links between the conceptual provisions of semiotics and the method for building possible worlds.

scholarly journals Beyond IQ: The Importance of Metacognition for the Promotion of Global Wellbeing

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 54
Author(s):  
Lav R. Varshney ◽  
Aron K. Barbey
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Mindfulness Meditation ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Social Problem Solving ◽  
Metacognitive Awareness ◽  
Metacognitive Skills ◽  
Virtuous Cycle ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Societal Problems

Global policy makers increasingly adopt subjective wellbeing as a framework within which to measure and address human development challenges, including policies to mitigate consequential societal problems. In this review, we take a systems-level perspective to assemble evidence from studies of wellbeing, of collective intelligence, and of metacognition and argue for a virtuous cycle for health promotion in which the increased collective intelligence of groups: (1) enhances the ability of such groups to address consequential societal problems; (2) promotes the wellbeing of societies and the individual wellbeing of people within groups; and, finally, (3) enables prosocial actions that further promote collective problem-solving and global wellbeing. Notably, evidence demonstrates that effective collaboration and teamwork largely depend on social skills for metacognitive awareness—the capacity to evaluate and control our own mental processes in the service of social problem-solving. Yet, despite their importance, metacognitive skills may not be well-captured by measures of general intelligence. These skills have instead been the focus of decades of research in the psychology of human judgment and decision-making. This literature provides well-validated tests of metacognitive awareness and demonstrates that the capacity to use analysis and deliberation to evaluate intuitive responses is an important source of individual differences in decision-making. Research in network neuroscience further elucidates the topology and dynamics of brain networks that enable metacognitive awareness, providing key targets for intervention. As such, we further discuss emerging scientific interventions to enhance metacognitive skills (e.g., based on mindfulness meditation, and physical activity and aerobic fitness), and how such interventions may catalyze the virtuous cycle to improve collective intelligence, societal problem-solving, and global wellbeing.

scholarly journals General Collective Intelligence as Biomimicry of Nature’s Design and Manufacturing Processes

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andy E Williams
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Collective Intelligence ◽  
Manufacturing Processes ◽  
Complex Design ◽  
Design And Manufacturing ◽  
The Future ◽  
Adaptive Problem

This paper explores the current limits to the complexity of design and manufacturing processes that can be reliably created or executed by humans, as well as exploring the general categories of products that can’t currently can’t reliably be manufactured as a consequence. This paper also explores how nature removes those barriers to complexity in its design and manufacturing, as well as how nature removes the barriers to the complex cooperation through which this complex design and manufacturing become sustainably viable, and how General Collective Intelligence replicates the adaptive problem solving processes by which nature does so. Finally, this paper explores why the type of products that can’t currently be manufactured, and why the patterns of complex cooperation that can’t currently be reliably executed, are both critically important, and therefore why General Collective Intelligence is critically important to the future of manufacturing.

Elaborating the role of reflection and individual differences in the study of folk-economic beliefs

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Arceneaux
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Individual Differences ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Evolutionary History ◽  
Behavioral Responses ◽  
History Of ◽  
Economic Beliefs

AbstractIntuitions guide decision-making, and looking to the evolutionary history of humans illuminates why some behavioral responses are more intuitive than others. Yet a place remains for cognitive processes to second-guess intuitive responses – that is, to be reflective – and individual differences abound in automatic, intuitive processing as well.

Islands of Stability: Engaging Emergence from Cellular Automata to the Occupy Movement

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Pickering
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cellular Automata ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Collective Decision ◽  
Collective Decision Making ◽  
Occupy Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S

"Instead of considering »being with« in terms of non-problematic, machine-like places, where reliable entities assemble in stable relationships, STS conjures up a world where the achievement of chancy stabilisations and synchronisations is local.We have to analyse how and where a certain regularity and predictability in the intersection of scientists and their instruments, say, or of human individuals and groups, is produced.The paper reviews models of emergence drawn from the history of cybernetics—the canonical »black box,« homeostats, and cellular automata—to enrich our imagination of the stabilisation process, and discusses the concept of »variety« as a way of clarifying its difficulty, with the antiuniversities of the 1960s and the Occupy movement as examples. Failures of »being with« are expectable. In conclusion, the paper reviews approaches to collective decision-making that reduce variety without imposing a neoliberal hierarchy. "

Truth Matters: Cognitive Integrity as an Intervention for Self-Deception

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenia Isabel Gorlin ◽  
Michael W. Otto
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Problem Solving ◽  
Autonomous Agents ◽  
Therapeutic Interventions ◽  
Empirical Validation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Adaptive Problem

To live well in the present, we take direction from the past. Yet, individuals may engage in a variety of behaviors that distort their past and current circumstances, reducing the likelihood of adaptive problem solving and decision making. In this article, we attend to self-deception as one such class of behaviors. Drawing upon research showing both the maladaptive consequences and self-perpetuating nature of self-deception, we propose that self-deception is an understudied risk and maintaining factor for psychopathology, and we introduce a “cognitive-integrity”-based approach that may hold promise for increasing the reach and effectiveness of our existing therapeutic interventions. Pending empirical validation of this theoretically-informed approach, we posit that patients may become more informed and autonomous agents in their own therapeutic growth by becoming more honest with themselves.

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