Jared Diamond on 'Failures of Group Decision-Making'

The other day our servers got hit with a virus scare. While we were without our 'electronic tools', I borrowed Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed from a colleague. In the book Diamond deals with a question posed by Joseph Tainter in The Collapse of Complex Societies: "How did so many societies make such bad mistakes?"

After taking us on a tour of ancient societies as well as contemporary societal failures, Diamond works toward "Practical Lessons." So, "How did so many societies make such bad mistakes?" In grappling with the question Diamond's students, along with Tainter, identified what they call "a baffling phenomenon": Failures of group decision-making on the part of whole societies or other groups. Diamond sets up four categories of potential failure:

… First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Second when the problem does arrive, the group may fail to perceive it. Then, after they perceive it, they fail even to try to solve it. Finally, they may try to solve it, but may not succeed.

Focusing in on the third — failure to even attempt to solve a problem once it is perceived — Diamond identifies a variety of factors that keep groups from attempting solutions, including:

• Rational behavior problems, i.e clashes of interests
• good for me (as an individual, corporate body, or ruling elite), bad for you and everybody else
• good for me (or us) now, bad for everyone later; e.g. shortsightedness rationalized by discounting
• Irrational behavior problems, i.e. collision of needed new values with deeply held values
• collision with deeply held religious or sectarian values
• collision with deeply held secular values, e.g. individualism, communalism, technological optimism, technological pessimism, group cohesion and protection from outsides (e.g. dislike for groups like "environmental groups" who first perceive and complain about a problem)
• crowd psychology; individual interests cowed by group pressure (e.g. groupthink, Abilene Paradox)
• psychological denial (subconscious suppression due to, e.g. "painful emotion")

In attempting solutions we have to get beyond rationalizing. Rationalizations include, according to Diamond:

• It's not my problem, it's someone else's problem
• The future has always (near-term history) proven to be better (technologically) than the past, therefore the problem will take care of itself. This boils down to "Technology will solve our problems."

Will we make it out of our current messes that increasingly well-up on a global scale, as well as welling-up locally in more and more places? Diamond sums up his assessment of our prospect at the end of his book:

I'm a cautious optimist. … [O]n the one hand, I acknowledge the seriousness of the [environmental and other] problems facing us. If we don't make a determined effort to solve them, and if we don't succeed at that effort, the world as a whole within the next few decades will face a declining standard of living, or perhaps something worse. … On the other hand, we shall be able to solve our problems — if we choose to do so. … Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them. The future is up for grabs, lying in our own hands. We don't need new technologies to solve our problems; while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most pare we "just" need the political will to apply solutions already available. Of course that's a big "just." But many societies did find the necessary political will in the past. Our modern societies have already found the will to solve some of our problems, and to achieve partial solutions to others.

… [It depends] on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time then problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. This type of decision-making is the opposite of the short-term reactive decision-making that too often characterizes our elected politicians ….

Comments

[John Feeney]

"This type of decision-making is the opposite of the short-term reactive decision-making that too often characterizes our elected politicians …."

That's a key, I think, and is the challenge. Both politicians and corporations seem mostly to make decisions based on short term gain without enough concern for long term consequences. Finding a way to break that habit would have a lot of value. (Seems like getting lobbyists out of the political equation would be a good step too.)

[signature103]

From the Diamond quote: "On the other hand, we shall be able to solve our problems — if we choose to do so. ... Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them."

Are we going to step on the environmental breaks and skid out of control? The pace we are doing the damage may be too rapid for us to gain control before we metaphorically crash.

I just hope someone teaches us how to pump break soon.

[Myron Paine]

Diamond did not "dig" very deep to find a society that would match his all ready formed conclusions. When I first started reading about Greenland, six years ago, I swiftly learned most of the themes that Diamond wrote about in his book Collapse.

Now, after six years of research I have just read the TRUE history left by the Norse in Greenland, entitled the "Maalan Aarum" (Walam Olum) meaning "Engraved years." The Norse felt the hunger caused by over grazing their pasture lands. Many of them left to "the other side" (of Davis Strait--America).

Those who stayed lived mostly on food from the sea. When the Little Ice age closed the options of those remaining they too walked on the ice to "the other side."

The Norse in Greenland faced two great ecological challenges. In both cases they decided, as a group. and left while they still had options. As a society they were successful, as Algonquin speaking tribes in North America and not as Norse in Greenland.

Where in the world of the 1300s, dominated by Popes, Kings, Khans, and other dictators, were there groups of people who could decide their own reaction to changing ecological conditions? Probably only in Iceland and Greenland, where the democratic “Althing” was the governing body.

The Vikings (Old Norse) succeeded against over whelming odds. They occupied 1/3 of North America when their cousins the English and the French landed on their shores. Diamond wrote in his previous book how germs, guns, and steel could destroy civilizations. He was perceptive in that book, but in Collapse he apparently rushed to print without doing his homework.

One of the rare civilizations in the 1300s with democratic government overcame two major ecological disasters by taking the best option available—moving. That survival of a democratic group under great stress is the story Diamond should have written about.

Myron

[John Feeney]

Myron,

Interesting comments. I'm not too clear though on where you disagree with Diamond. (I haven't yet read Diamond's book. Perhaps you're referring to something I just haven't read.) I would think that the Norse having to leave their home as a result of overgrazing might constitute a "collapse" of their society. But if they were able to carry on or reinvent themselves as the Algonquin speaking tribes, perhaps they could be said to have averted collapse. But then it becomes tricky to define "collapse," no? I mean, what if a group has to leave their home due to environmental degradation, and 20% of them survive to rebuild a life elsewhere. Has that society collapsed? Anyway, just some thoughts.

[richard]

Small comment: The term 'Abeliene Paradox' is incorrect. It is called 'Abilene Paradox'.

Slightly more relevant comment: I'm not quite sure why this paradox is relevant here.

[Dave Iverson]

richard,

thanks for the catch on the proper spelling of Abilene Paradox. I am horrible at seeing such errors in my own work.

I think the link between Crowd Psychology and the Abilene Paradox is straightforward: People want others to take the first step and "speak up" in a group setting, but when no one else does each individual does not either. Thus the whole group wanders off to someplace no one (or almost no one) wants to go.

In the Collapse case, I suspect that the majority of people don't want, say, "the market" (individual choice/Madison Ave. directed) to dominate all life decisions, but since too many remain silent, else are too uninformed to enter into active converstaion, else have no proper means to enter into the converstaion, the whole of the body politic is lead by the minority.

See too: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox

[John Feeney]

Heh, I hadn't heard of the Abilene paradox. There does seem to be some kind or kinds of groupthink that go on with regard to these things. Could be an Abilene paradox sometimes or maybe there's also the "bystander effect":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_Genovese

It seems there's at least a combination of "There's nothing I can do," and "Someone else will do something."

Maybe those old social psych classes from college will come in handy after all. :)

[mulp]

It doesn't help in making decisions that the theoretical framework for making decisions involving trade-offs and scarcity, aka economics, rejects the concept of environment being finite or limited.

If economists described the economy as a description of the relationship between the factors of the environment, which is the center of everything, the transactions involving the environment would naturally be priced.

Without the tools of economy, like money, the factors of the environment had limited independence from it, with a circular flow that was small and immediate. As the tools of economy become more sophisticated, tools that allow the several years of labor expended in two months to be paid over thirty years. That disconnects the construction from the environment so those involved in the activity don't readily connect to the environment.

Money and finance are not intuitive; we trust they work, but can easily validate the trust by referring to the theory. If the theory provided the basis for paying for environmental services, they would be included and trusted automatically.

Just think of the irony; people everyday make plans for investments that span decades, either trading labor today for goods three to five decades later, or goods today in exchange for labor over the next three decades. But dealing with environmental issues that require planning ahead two decades to see results, and all of a sudden, the problem is nearly intractable.