There’s been a fair amount of discussion of that sort of thing here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-rationality There are also groups outside LW thinking about social technology such as RadicalxChange.
Imagine you took 5 separate LWers and asked them to create a unified consensus response to a given article. My guess is that they’d learn more through that collective effort, and produce a more useful response, than if they spent the same amount of time individually evaluating the article and posting their separate replies.
I’m not sure. If you put those 5 LWers together, I think there’s a good chance that the highest status person speaks first and then the others anchor on what they say and then it effectively ends up being like a group project for school with the highest status person in charge. Somerelatedlinks.
That’s definitely a concern too! I imagine such groups forming among people who either already share a basic common view, and collaborate to investigate more deeply. That way, any status-anchoring effects are mitigated.
Alternatively, it could be an adversarial collaboration. For me personally, some of the SSC essays in this format have led me to change my mind in a lasting way.
There’s been a fair amount of discussion of that sort of thing here: https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/group-rationality There are also groups outside LW thinking about social technology such as RadicalxChange.
I’m not sure. If you put those 5 LWers together, I think there’s a good chance that the highest status person speaks first and then the others anchor on what they say and then it effectively ends up being like a group project for school with the highest status person in charge. Some related links.
That’s definitely a concern too! I imagine such groups forming among people who either already share a basic common view, and collaborate to investigate more deeply. That way, any status-anchoring effects are mitigated.
Alternatively, it could be an adversarial collaboration. For me personally, some of the SSC essays in this format have led me to change my mind in a lasting way.