Epistemic Free Riding

Free riding occurs in the practical domain when some action is rational for each group member to perform but such that when everyone performs that action, it is worse overall for everyone. Dunn argues that some surprising empirical evidence about group problem-solving reveals that groups will often face cases where it is epistemically best for each individual to believe one thing, even though this is ultimately epistemically worse for the group that each member believes in this way. Dunn’s work is thus an extension of work on the division of cognitive labor and ways that group inquiry might differ from individual inquiry.

Diversity, Rationality, and the Division of Cognitive Labor

Existing models of the division of cognitive labor in science assume that scientists have a particular problem they want to solve and can choose between different approaches to solving the problem. In this essay I invert the approach, supposing that scientists have fixed skills and seek problems to solve. This allows for a better explanation of increasing rates of cooperation in science, as well as flows of scientists between fields of inquiry. By increasing the realism of the model, we gain additional insight into the social structure of science and gain the ability to ask new questions about the optimal division of labor.

When science becomes too easy: Science popularization inclines laypeople to underrate their dependence on experts

Science popularization fulfills the important task of making scientific knowledge understandable and accessible for the lay public. However, the simplification of information required to achieve this accessibility may lead to the risk of audiences relying overly strongly on their own epistemic capabilities when making judgments about scientific claims. Moreover, they may underestimate how the division of cognitive labor makes them dependent on experts. This article reports an empirical study demonstrating that this “easiness effect of science popularization” occurs when laypeople read authentic popularized science depictions. After reading popularized articles addressed to a lay audience, laypeople agreed more with the knowledge claims they contained and were more confident in their claim judgments than after reading articles addressed to expert audiences. Implications for communicating scientific knowledge to the general public are discussed.

Ultrasociality and the division of cognitive labor

Gowdy & Krall describe the development of ultrasociality in terms of economics and the division of labor. We propose that the division of cognitive labor allows humans to behave in an ultrasocial manner without the radical evolutionary changes that are experienced by other species, suggesting that species may traverse different paths to achieve ultrasociality.