Maybe it wasn't, but then the point wasn't to exactly describe what the institution was (is it consensus or groupthink?) but rather to warn against groups being the solution. My point is they could either alleviate or exacerbate the problem.
Yes, individuals with similar thoughts agree with one another (consensus) but could not that conse…
Maybe it wasn't, but then the point wasn't to exactly describe what the institution was (is it consensus or groupthink?) but rather to warn against groups being the solution. My point is they could either alleviate or exacerbate the problem.
Yes, individuals with similar thoughts agree with one another (consensus) but could not that consensus also be the result of groupthink? Take any trend or "common/trendy" idea over the past decade and is it the result of consensus or groupthink? I think we have seen incursions of groupthink masquerading as consensus over the past decades. It's no accident that a lot of those that succumbed to the Covid narrative were proponents of "orange man bad" narratives as well as "the imminent danger of Climate Change."
Indeed, institutions are not individuals. That's my point. Whether it is consensus or groupthink isn't for me to decide, my point is that the group got together and for whatever reason, agreed or where coerced on the narrative that emerges, and whatever happened was not good.
Is consensus necessarily good? What if they all agree on something that is a bad idea?
Is groupthink a top-down process? Not necessarily. It could in fact be a old/young process. Or an outside/in process. The beauty of the narrative, regardless of its origins, is it turned a dubious practice at best into a social obligation (your mask protects me, your vaccine protects me.)
The problem with your final paragraph is that often "consensus" is an illusion. How many people really like the movie Twilight? How many would prefer to eat at McDonalds if that local steakhouse had a similar pricing structure (although wait a few months and maybe we will make it there).
Who says that consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud?
Just saw this from you: "Who says that consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud? "
Well, I say consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud. Why? Because that's what consensus means. It is CONSENT, not coercion. It actually means consent, which is voluntary. Coercion is clearly involuntary (see Don Corleone's offers which can't be refused). Fraud is also involuntary.
Words have meanings and you don't get to make your own up.
Consensus is literally from "consent," from Latin, "agreement, concord," from Latin consentīre "to join in feeling, be in agreement, concur in opinion".
I agree that words have meanings, that's why I looked it up. Maybe what I need, what we all need are hard cover books where they can't go in and change the definitions of words whenever the whim takes them there.
According to a number of sources this is what it says the definition is, and maybe it has been changed.
According to Merriam-Webster, consensus is “general agreement : unanimity” or “group solidarity in sentiment and belief”
According to Cambridge Dictionary, consensus is “a generally accepted opinion or decision among a group of people”
According to Dictionary.com, consensus is “majority of opinion” or “general agreement or concord; harmony”
While your read on the word and its origins might indeed be the correct read of it, in the definitions provided, there is no footnotes or conditions that say that an agreed upon position can't be influenced by nefarious means.
If I receive a happy meal with my vaccine was it given to me involuntarily?
While I can see your understanding of the word "consensus" what I ask is, how can you know the motivations behind those that came to the agreement? Also, failing fraud and coercion, can people also come to a agreed upon conclusion and still be incorrect in their opinion?
One of the podcasts I listen to is "the illusion of consensus" and my thoughts on it as well as all the bs from the beginning of the pandemic is questioning things like "all the scientists of various institutions agree vaccines are safe."
That was my point throughout here, that while a bandwagon could very well be an indicator of something being a correct strategy, it may also very well be quite horribly incorrect.
Coercion is involuntary. But may not necessarily appear so. If I give you the carrot, you may not need the stick. It may change your mind and heart in such a way that changes predisposition towards an idea you previously thought was unpleasant.
Or you may not have thought about such a notion at all.
So if pro is the opposite of con, does that mean consent is the opposite of prosent?
It's okay to play word games which is what you are doing. However, nowhere in the discussion of consent/coercion/fraud is there some overriding Platonic concept of "nefarious" or "correct" or "incorrect." That's simply a red herring taking us away from the actual question (as I recall, must consent be consensual and arise bottom up from individuals, or can consent somehow drift down from the elite . . . did I recall that correctly?)
We are not discussing whether a position or idea is "correct" or not, but simply whether it is voluntarily agreed to by the general population (a "consensus") or it has been force-fed to the hoi polloi by the elites (top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud).
The truth is no one actually gets to pronounce whether a certain something is "correct" or "nefarious"--those are opinions. However, each individual should retain the right not to be coerced into dangerous injections. If the public had known that the jab would be 1) unnecessary and 2) carry a 10% severe adverse reaction ratio, then they would not have taken it.
If the public knows that entering WWII carries with it a possible 4-5% casualty rate (death and injury) it can certainly reach a consensus and go to war. Or not. If the government lies to them and says military casualties will be "rare and mild" then we have a fraudulent deception, even if the public, misinformed, volunteers to fight.
The Chinese concept of the Rectification of Names is extremely valuable in this regard. If we do not carefully define our words and use them only correctly (that is, with their correct meanings) then, basically, we're all screwed. Because we won't be able to communicate, and we won't understand each other, therefore we won't be able to cooperate efffectively and build things (including societies and cultures) of quality.
I am not playing word games. Before I begin, what do you think my intention is here? I have offered you the definition of consensus citing three sources. If I were to play games, would not the thing to do would be to rationalize and play off these definitions as I see fit?
Your interpretation of the question being asked is:
(as I recall, must consent be consensual and arise bottom up from individuals, or can consent somehow drift down from the elite . . . did I recall that correctly?)
When rather the question addresses the following original idea presented:
"We fix relationships by swarming.
Our main problem is corruption of our systems. In medicine, food, government, and everywhere. We don't trust these systems anymore.
The solution to the corruption is new decentralized and transparent systems, called Human Swarm Intelligence systems.
Humans solve problems better in groups. Like a think tank, you can be part of the solution."
My assertion was that groups can solve problems and can also make them worse. That determination of a correct course of action should not be dependent on group agreement necessarily.
Millions of doses of vaccination can't be wrong, right?
You also stated:
"We are not discussing whether a position or idea is "correct" or not, but simply whether it is voluntarily agreed to by the general population (a "consensus") or it has been force-fed to the hoi polloi by the elites (top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud)."
We are talking about a lot of things. One of them being exactly that. The assertion inferred by the original post was that "groups solve problems" my contention is that "groups can also cause problems."
Also in regards to your question, how much of our perceived consensus is actually predicated on "top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud."
You said in one of your recent responses the following:
"Individuals have thoughts, and individuals with similar thoughts agree with each other (consensus); it is a grass roots, bottom-up process. When enough of them agree with each other, that is group consensus."
Thoughts don't exist in a vacuum. How did those individual thoughts come to be? Are they internally driven thoughts? Could not these thoughts come from something read, something heard, maybe received on a news report or in the mainstream media? I would hope most people think in terms of not only what is being broadcasted to them, but also what they think about what is broadcasted to them which then leads to having original thoughts of their own.
They may very well by internal thoughts. But what if what we perceive as a grass roots, bottom down process, isn't that at all, but rather the result of similar thoughts coming from an external source?
An example from the 1970's. We didn't have computers back then until the late seventies, only a couple of television channels, radio programs, and yet a lot of us know weird trivia about Mikey from the life commercial and Pop Rocks. Spider eggs in Bubble Yum, Many of us thought our society was going to be ended by nuclear war or killer bees. Are these grass roots thoughts?
"The Chinese concept of the Rectification of Names is extremely valuable in this regard. If we do not carefully define our words and use them only correctly (that is, with their correct meanings) then, basically, we're all screwed. Because we won't be able to communicate, and we won't understand each other, therefore we won't be able to cooperate effectively and build things (including societies and cultures) of quality."
We're already seeing that. Herd immunity was one of the definitions recently changed. And there are many other health related terms that have been "amended." When I endeavor to look things up, I get very dismayed when I see so much has been "Coviditorialized™."
Concepts , and traditionally held truths are also being amended. Imagine having constant discussions about the standard process of getting a vaccine approved to market. There are all sorts of mental gymnastics at play in regards to this. Saying that trials were run in parallel.
Well this has ballooned out of control, hasn't it?
Your original comment, which I thought--and still think--is flawed, was this:
<< What are institutions but really the fronts for group consensus.>>
To me it's still a meaningless statement. Why? Because as noted, ad nauseum, group consensus means a group has been formed by individuals (that's how we get groups) and they have voluntarily agreed on something or other: an issue, a cultural question, a human value, a political decsion.
The end, finis.
Institutions are the polar opposite of a group forming a consensus. FDA, CDC, HHR, DOJ, WHO, UN, Harvard University, the Papal Enclave, NATO, etc.
Institutions are not formed by individuals coagulating and forming them, they are formed from the top down by political entities. They have, often, a quasi military hierarchy where policies are determined and policies, edicts, are formed.
Institutions try to convince the population via "narratives" which are like legal briefs: only selected facts are offered on selected narrated timelines with selected ticking clocks.
If you don't send 300,000 troops to South Vietnam to "fight for freedom" then the Yellow Peril will engulf the world and it will be too late for us.
Well, gosh, now that you put it that way, let's send the boys over.
No popular consensus ever promoted a foreign war. Never, not once. It was all institutional.
That is why Institutions have zero overlap with group consensus. They are antithetical, opposites.
Yes, it has ballooned out of control. And you're wrong in that institutions do have overlap with group consensus.
I know what you think it means. That isn't necessarily what it is. I didn't say, for instance in my original comment...that was within the overall comment that "all institutions are fronts for group consensus."
And my argument is regardless, it isn't the point. Regardless of how decisions are made, whether it is groupthink or consensus, that is not reason alone to think it is good or bad.
And my opinion is, its meaningless to split hairs here on whether the group agreeing on something is either from the top down, or grassroots up, or laterally, or diagonally from an alternate dimension, they can either be right or wrong. Regardless of one person or one thousand people have an idea, the amount of people having that idea either coerced upon them or that they got on their own on a deserted island, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
That's my problem with either consensus or groupthink. Not necessarily that the idea was coerced upon them, but rather that "more is better." That multitude=correctness.
Are institutions really the polar opposite of a group forming a consensus? Are they always formed top down political entities?
The definition of an institution is:
A custom, practice, relationship, or behavioral pattern of importance in the life of a community or society.
Sometimes it can be top down from political entities. But what are those political entities made up of? And how do these political entities come into existence? Are these bereft soul -less organizations that spontaneously generate out of nothing? Or do they consist of like minded people?
Are all of these institutions listed from the "top down?" And what do they consist of? Is the "top down" even a real notion or one of artifice? Are the elites really "above" us?
Sorry but I disagree, at times institutions are formed by individuals forming them. A club, for example, is an institution. They don't necessarily have a quasi military heirarchy. It depends on the type of institution.
I was a member of a meetup group of writers, which could very well be an institution. Because this meetup was brought together using a tech platform, does that make the institution designed from the "top down?" Could it simply not be a platform wherein like minded people got together and critiques one an-others writing?
Not all institutions convince populations via narratives. There is a danger to it, and maybe an inevitability of it. But initially the institution is not necessarily created top down at all, but rather done with the best of intentions. It could very well be a grassroots consensus formed into an institution. The problem then comes with thinking that the institution itself has a degree of expertise and infallibility that far exceeds its original reason for being. The CDC was never meant to become an entity of legislation, but reference, was it not?
Originally it was formed as a means to prevent the spread of malaria.
We are splitting hairs here, would it be any different if it were 5 people from the top down using narratives to coerce the public that sending 300000 troops into battle was a good idea versus 100,000,000 of us voting in favor of it? Well heck, if everyone agreed on the referendum, let's do it!
To believe in popular consensus as infallible is a dangerous idea. Also in regards to being for a foreign war, it is wrong
In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, 68% of Americans favored war against the Axis powers if that was the only way to defeat them.
Now maybe your argument will be that this is because of the top down narrative you speak up tainting the consensus cauldron. I would agree, and then would point back to my original post which is that institutions are a front for consensus, however that consensus is arrived at which you assert can never be from coercion or fraud.
We think you are both right. Therefore building systems to work in groups need to take into account both the glory and perils of group problem solving. The good far outweighs the bad, if we can harness it right. Just like nuclear power, flying planes, or driving cars.
Maybe it wasn't, but then the point wasn't to exactly describe what the institution was (is it consensus or groupthink?) but rather to warn against groups being the solution. My point is they could either alleviate or exacerbate the problem.
Yes, individuals with similar thoughts agree with one another (consensus) but could not that consensus also be the result of groupthink? Take any trend or "common/trendy" idea over the past decade and is it the result of consensus or groupthink? I think we have seen incursions of groupthink masquerading as consensus over the past decades. It's no accident that a lot of those that succumbed to the Covid narrative were proponents of "orange man bad" narratives as well as "the imminent danger of Climate Change."
Indeed, institutions are not individuals. That's my point. Whether it is consensus or groupthink isn't for me to decide, my point is that the group got together and for whatever reason, agreed or where coerced on the narrative that emerges, and whatever happened was not good.
Is consensus necessarily good? What if they all agree on something that is a bad idea?
Is groupthink a top-down process? Not necessarily. It could in fact be a old/young process. Or an outside/in process. The beauty of the narrative, regardless of its origins, is it turned a dubious practice at best into a social obligation (your mask protects me, your vaccine protects me.)
The problem with your final paragraph is that often "consensus" is an illusion. How many people really like the movie Twilight? How many would prefer to eat at McDonalds if that local steakhouse had a similar pricing structure (although wait a few months and maybe we will make it there).
Who says that consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud?
Just saw this from you: "Who says that consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud? "
Well, I say consensus can't be achieved by coercion or fraud. Why? Because that's what consensus means. It is CONSENT, not coercion. It actually means consent, which is voluntary. Coercion is clearly involuntary (see Don Corleone's offers which can't be refused). Fraud is also involuntary.
Words have meanings and you don't get to make your own up.
Consensus is literally from "consent," from Latin, "agreement, concord," from Latin consentīre "to join in feeling, be in agreement, concur in opinion".
I agree that words have meanings, that's why I looked it up. Maybe what I need, what we all need are hard cover books where they can't go in and change the definitions of words whenever the whim takes them there.
According to a number of sources this is what it says the definition is, and maybe it has been changed.
According to Merriam-Webster, consensus is “general agreement : unanimity” or “group solidarity in sentiment and belief”
According to Cambridge Dictionary, consensus is “a generally accepted opinion or decision among a group of people”
According to Dictionary.com, consensus is “majority of opinion” or “general agreement or concord; harmony”
While your read on the word and its origins might indeed be the correct read of it, in the definitions provided, there is no footnotes or conditions that say that an agreed upon position can't be influenced by nefarious means.
If I receive a happy meal with my vaccine was it given to me involuntarily?
While I can see your understanding of the word "consensus" what I ask is, how can you know the motivations behind those that came to the agreement? Also, failing fraud and coercion, can people also come to a agreed upon conclusion and still be incorrect in their opinion?
One of the podcasts I listen to is "the illusion of consensus" and my thoughts on it as well as all the bs from the beginning of the pandemic is questioning things like "all the scientists of various institutions agree vaccines are safe."
That was my point throughout here, that while a bandwagon could very well be an indicator of something being a correct strategy, it may also very well be quite horribly incorrect.
Coercion is involuntary. But may not necessarily appear so. If I give you the carrot, you may not need the stick. It may change your mind and heart in such a way that changes predisposition towards an idea you previously thought was unpleasant.
Or you may not have thought about such a notion at all.
So if pro is the opposite of con, does that mean consent is the opposite of prosent?
It's okay to play word games which is what you are doing. However, nowhere in the discussion of consent/coercion/fraud is there some overriding Platonic concept of "nefarious" or "correct" or "incorrect." That's simply a red herring taking us away from the actual question (as I recall, must consent be consensual and arise bottom up from individuals, or can consent somehow drift down from the elite . . . did I recall that correctly?)
We are not discussing whether a position or idea is "correct" or not, but simply whether it is voluntarily agreed to by the general population (a "consensus") or it has been force-fed to the hoi polloi by the elites (top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud).
The truth is no one actually gets to pronounce whether a certain something is "correct" or "nefarious"--those are opinions. However, each individual should retain the right not to be coerced into dangerous injections. If the public had known that the jab would be 1) unnecessary and 2) carry a 10% severe adverse reaction ratio, then they would not have taken it.
If the public knows that entering WWII carries with it a possible 4-5% casualty rate (death and injury) it can certainly reach a consensus and go to war. Or not. If the government lies to them and says military casualties will be "rare and mild" then we have a fraudulent deception, even if the public, misinformed, volunteers to fight.
The Chinese concept of the Rectification of Names is extremely valuable in this regard. If we do not carefully define our words and use them only correctly (that is, with their correct meanings) then, basically, we're all screwed. Because we won't be able to communicate, and we won't understand each other, therefore we won't be able to cooperate efffectively and build things (including societies and cultures) of quality.
I am not playing word games. Before I begin, what do you think my intention is here? I have offered you the definition of consensus citing three sources. If I were to play games, would not the thing to do would be to rationalize and play off these definitions as I see fit?
Your interpretation of the question being asked is:
(as I recall, must consent be consensual and arise bottom up from individuals, or can consent somehow drift down from the elite . . . did I recall that correctly?)
When rather the question addresses the following original idea presented:
"We fix relationships by swarming.
Our main problem is corruption of our systems. In medicine, food, government, and everywhere. We don't trust these systems anymore.
The solution to the corruption is new decentralized and transparent systems, called Human Swarm Intelligence systems.
Humans solve problems better in groups. Like a think tank, you can be part of the solution."
My assertion was that groups can solve problems and can also make them worse. That determination of a correct course of action should not be dependent on group agreement necessarily.
Millions of doses of vaccination can't be wrong, right?
You also stated:
"We are not discussing whether a position or idea is "correct" or not, but simply whether it is voluntarily agreed to by the general population (a "consensus") or it has been force-fed to the hoi polloi by the elites (top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud)."
We are talking about a lot of things. One of them being exactly that. The assertion inferred by the original post was that "groups solve problems" my contention is that "groups can also cause problems."
Also in regards to your question, how much of our perceived consensus is actually predicated on "top down narrative driven via gaslighting, disinformation, misinformation, social and economic coercion, deception and outright fraud."
You said in one of your recent responses the following:
"Individuals have thoughts, and individuals with similar thoughts agree with each other (consensus); it is a grass roots, bottom-up process. When enough of them agree with each other, that is group consensus."
Thoughts don't exist in a vacuum. How did those individual thoughts come to be? Are they internally driven thoughts? Could not these thoughts come from something read, something heard, maybe received on a news report or in the mainstream media? I would hope most people think in terms of not only what is being broadcasted to them, but also what they think about what is broadcasted to them which then leads to having original thoughts of their own.
They may very well by internal thoughts. But what if what we perceive as a grass roots, bottom down process, isn't that at all, but rather the result of similar thoughts coming from an external source?
An example from the 1970's. We didn't have computers back then until the late seventies, only a couple of television channels, radio programs, and yet a lot of us know weird trivia about Mikey from the life commercial and Pop Rocks. Spider eggs in Bubble Yum, Many of us thought our society was going to be ended by nuclear war or killer bees. Are these grass roots thoughts?
"The Chinese concept of the Rectification of Names is extremely valuable in this regard. If we do not carefully define our words and use them only correctly (that is, with their correct meanings) then, basically, we're all screwed. Because we won't be able to communicate, and we won't understand each other, therefore we won't be able to cooperate effectively and build things (including societies and cultures) of quality."
We're already seeing that. Herd immunity was one of the definitions recently changed. And there are many other health related terms that have been "amended." When I endeavor to look things up, I get very dismayed when I see so much has been "Coviditorialized™."
Concepts , and traditionally held truths are also being amended. Imagine having constant discussions about the standard process of getting a vaccine approved to market. There are all sorts of mental gymnastics at play in regards to this. Saying that trials were run in parallel.
Well this has ballooned out of control, hasn't it?
Your original comment, which I thought--and still think--is flawed, was this:
<< What are institutions but really the fronts for group consensus.>>
To me it's still a meaningless statement. Why? Because as noted, ad nauseum, group consensus means a group has been formed by individuals (that's how we get groups) and they have voluntarily agreed on something or other: an issue, a cultural question, a human value, a political decsion.
The end, finis.
Institutions are the polar opposite of a group forming a consensus. FDA, CDC, HHR, DOJ, WHO, UN, Harvard University, the Papal Enclave, NATO, etc.
Institutions are not formed by individuals coagulating and forming them, they are formed from the top down by political entities. They have, often, a quasi military hierarchy where policies are determined and policies, edicts, are formed.
Institutions try to convince the population via "narratives" which are like legal briefs: only selected facts are offered on selected narrated timelines with selected ticking clocks.
If you don't send 300,000 troops to South Vietnam to "fight for freedom" then the Yellow Peril will engulf the world and it will be too late for us.
Well, gosh, now that you put it that way, let's send the boys over.
No popular consensus ever promoted a foreign war. Never, not once. It was all institutional.
That is why Institutions have zero overlap with group consensus. They are antithetical, opposites.
Yes, it has ballooned out of control. And you're wrong in that institutions do have overlap with group consensus.
I know what you think it means. That isn't necessarily what it is. I didn't say, for instance in my original comment...that was within the overall comment that "all institutions are fronts for group consensus."
And my argument is regardless, it isn't the point. Regardless of how decisions are made, whether it is groupthink or consensus, that is not reason alone to think it is good or bad.
And my opinion is, its meaningless to split hairs here on whether the group agreeing on something is either from the top down, or grassroots up, or laterally, or diagonally from an alternate dimension, they can either be right or wrong. Regardless of one person or one thousand people have an idea, the amount of people having that idea either coerced upon them or that they got on their own on a deserted island, doesn't necessarily mean it's a good idea.
That's my problem with either consensus or groupthink. Not necessarily that the idea was coerced upon them, but rather that "more is better." That multitude=correctness.
Are institutions really the polar opposite of a group forming a consensus? Are they always formed top down political entities?
The definition of an institution is:
A custom, practice, relationship, or behavioral pattern of importance in the life of a community or society.
Sometimes it can be top down from political entities. But what are those political entities made up of? And how do these political entities come into existence? Are these bereft soul -less organizations that spontaneously generate out of nothing? Or do they consist of like minded people?
https://simplicable.com/society/institutions
Are all of these institutions listed from the "top down?" And what do they consist of? Is the "top down" even a real notion or one of artifice? Are the elites really "above" us?
Sorry but I disagree, at times institutions are formed by individuals forming them. A club, for example, is an institution. They don't necessarily have a quasi military heirarchy. It depends on the type of institution.
I was a member of a meetup group of writers, which could very well be an institution. Because this meetup was brought together using a tech platform, does that make the institution designed from the "top down?" Could it simply not be a platform wherein like minded people got together and critiques one an-others writing?
Not all institutions convince populations via narratives. There is a danger to it, and maybe an inevitability of it. But initially the institution is not necessarily created top down at all, but rather done with the best of intentions. It could very well be a grassroots consensus formed into an institution. The problem then comes with thinking that the institution itself has a degree of expertise and infallibility that far exceeds its original reason for being. The CDC was never meant to become an entity of legislation, but reference, was it not?
Originally it was formed as a means to prevent the spread of malaria.
We are splitting hairs here, would it be any different if it were 5 people from the top down using narratives to coerce the public that sending 300000 troops into battle was a good idea versus 100,000,000 of us voting in favor of it? Well heck, if everyone agreed on the referendum, let's do it!
To believe in popular consensus as infallible is a dangerous idea. Also in regards to being for a foreign war, it is wrong
In 1941, before the attack on Pearl Harbor, 68% of Americans favored war against the Axis powers if that was the only way to defeat them.
Now maybe your argument will be that this is because of the top down narrative you speak up tainting the consensus cauldron. I would agree, and then would point back to my original post which is that institutions are a front for consensus, however that consensus is arrived at which you assert can never be from coercion or fraud.
We think you are both right. Therefore building systems to work in groups need to take into account both the glory and perils of group problem solving. The good far outweighs the bad, if we can harness it right. Just like nuclear power, flying planes, or driving cars.