Author: Michael Hogan
Collective Behavior Algorithms and Group Size: dynamic choices are most accurate in small groups.

Collectivism and Individualism: it’s not either/or it’s both

A commentary on ‘Big Mind: how collective intelligence can change our world’ by Geoff Mulgan

Sabotage in Academia: understanding the nature and causes of sabotage in academia
Sabotage in the workplace is not something we think about every day, and it might seem strange to think about sabotage behaviours playing out in academic work settings. Sabotage has been described as any form of behaviour that is intentionally designed to negatively affect service (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002 p. 166). Worryingly, 85% of service employees consider sabotage to be an ‘everyday occurrence’ in their organisations (Harris and Ogbonna, 2002). When researchers investigate employee performance in academia, they tend to focus on research performance (Edgar and Geare, 2011), or the relationship between research performance and teaching quality (Cadez et al., 2017). They rarely think about sabotage.
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Collective Intelligence in the Holocene – 7: living systems and the unbearable likeness of being

Collective Intelligence in the Holocene – 6: time perspective can enhance our understanding of the evolutionary process
Collective Intelligence in the Holocene – 5: the rocky evolution of discipline

Collective Intelligence in the Holocene – 4: moving upstream

A woman was relaxing by a river, enjoying the sights and sounds and fresh air, when suddenly she noticed a person upstream struggling to stay afloat in the water. She dived into the water, swam out as fast as she could, and helped the person ashore. Catching her breath after the rescue, she glanced upstream, only to spot another person adrift in the river. Again, she dived in, swam out, and rescued the person.
In the next five minutes, the woman rescued two more people. Standing by the river, exhausted and almost completely out of breath, she saw another person adrift in the water. She started walking upstream, along the river bank. A passerby asked her, “Aren’t you going to help him?”
The woman replied, “Not this time. I’m going upstream to see if I can do something about whatever is causing all these people to fall into the river”.