Given a group objective function so well defined that only measurement errors and uncertain expectations make choosing the optimum nontrivial, there remains the difficulty of obtaining group members’ honest estimation of the outcome distribution of the plans under consideration. Further, you want to do better than just averaging estimates; you want to combine information without double-counting.
When (as in reality) people’s actual preference for the group decision isn’t exactly the stated group objective, I’m daunted by the difficulty of soliciting their reasons+evidence in such a way that they can’t dishonestly push the decision toward their desired outcome.
I guess I didn’t consider the iterated version of this—same group, many decisions, where it seems you can actually do something about the dishonesty: make people expose their actual forecasts of the variables in the group objective function; give more voting weight to those who are more accurate (about predicting the results of whatever choice is implemented).
Smells like the prediction markets suggestion of several other comments.
Given a group objective function so well defined that only measurement errors and uncertain expectations make choosing the optimum nontrivial, there remains the difficulty of obtaining group members’ honest estimation of the outcome distribution of the plans under consideration. Further, you want to do better than just averaging estimates; you want to combine information without double-counting.
When (as in reality) people’s actual preference for the group decision isn’t exactly the stated group objective, I’m daunted by the difficulty of soliciting their reasons+evidence in such a way that they can’t dishonestly push the decision toward their desired outcome.
I guess I didn’t consider the iterated version of this—same group, many decisions, where it seems you can actually do something about the dishonesty: make people expose their actual forecasts of the variables in the group objective function; give more voting weight to those who are more accurate (about predicting the results of whatever choice is implemented).
Smells like the prediction markets suggestion of several other comments.