I started on Friday talking about aggregation of information and its potential in producing objective and spherical knowldedge. The day after (on Saturday) I noted the emergent behavior such networks can develop.

Just a reminder; these series of posts are supposed to highlight the difference between having a set of experts in your network/community/system/blogroll/name-it-as-you-wish and having an open public, without posing any restrictions. In other words the series are about the fundamental difference between Google’s Knol and wikipedia.

Today I will continue this series of posts, explaining the four preconditions necessary for a correct aggregation.

Diversity; an example

Let us consider a blog with liberal political content, which mostly references other liberal blogs. It is logical to presume that the knowledge aggregated from these blogs will also be liberal – an one sided view of the political system. The network these blogs create, will in its turn mostly gather users who also agree with this perspective. The impact to the collective information is obvious; it will treat all political matters liberally. But apart from that, the network will consist of a small liberal group of people excluding other opinions and accordingly viewers. An objective network (meaning one that sees subjects under different perspectives) cultivates constructive discussions and therefore draws the interest of a wider public. It also sets the tone in which discussions take place and a common goal that people can join in attempting to reach.

Diversity of perpectives

Emergent systems manage to function so well, because a collective macrobehavior is achieved when the system consists of a multitude of agents, each one attributed with a simple operation. In other words emergence is accomplished (among other reasons) due to the multitude of different agents. Emergence relies on the diversity of its agents.

The Condorcet Jury theorem, which I also mentioned in an earlier post, relies on the fact that in a diverse group the chances that at least someone will propose a new, radical idea is increased. Also influence between individuals or clustering of opinions are less likely to appear in a diverse group. This means that the information collected will approach an objective view of the subject.

Diversity of expertise

A diverse group does not only imply collecting a set of different perspectives about a topic. It also means creating a group of individuals with different grade of expertise and knowledge. Homogeneous groups have the tendency to refrain from investigating alternatives, they find it harder to continue learning and thus bring less new information in the community. Less experienced members will provide fresh aspects and propose questions, which under different circumstances would not be expressed.

Conclusion

We must keep in mind that the focus of a community is not to consist of wise individuals. Instead it concentrates on making wise decisions. I do not suggest here that a diverse group of uninformed individuals could collectively succeed more than one of experts. But an assemblage of people with various degrees of insight, may give better results than a few specialists.

Naturally, when i use words like ‘creating a community’ or ‘producing collective knowledge’, I do not mean that you can just choose who contributes to your network. (you might be able to guide it a bit, but in the end its out of your hands). On the contrary the traits, challenges and participators of your network will act as a magnet to a diverse group.

The question that emerges is: ‘Do you want to be open to everybody and hope for the best, or do you want to invite only experts and observe a clustering of knowledge and perspectives?