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A thought experiment: Imagine that four degrees of prediction lie on a spectrum. Starting with absolute certainty, and progressing to complete uncertainty, that spectrum cycles back on itself to become a feedback loop: prediction breaks the rules of logic, paradoxically contradicting its “self.” Zann Gill counterposes Lewis Mumford’s question about linear projections, typical of future forecasting, with Ray Kurzweil’s prediction in The Singularity is Near that accelerating feedback loops are converging toward the Singularity. To download pdf (20 pages), click here. |
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Zann Gill's SURF presentation emphasized that sustainable remediation taps all four quadrants of the prediction compass: First, accurate measurement and statistical prediction characterizes the hard sciences. Second, calculation of probabilities and risks within tolerance ranges characterizes the life sciences. Third, cost-benefit analysis of tradeoffs, subjective assessments and forecasts recognizes that how experts and the community perceive the problem, and respond to proposed remediation plans, plays an active role in determining outcomes. And finally, innovation, harnessing new discoveries and technologies, may require new procedures and methods to analyze problems and implement solutions. The top two quadrants on the prediction compass are passive, assuming that the prediction does not influence what it predicts. In contrast, the lower two quadrants are active, since how we perceive and represent the problem affects what action plan we design and how a solution is implemented. When many stakeholders with different expertise, priorities, and agendas must be engaged in formulating a sustainable remediation strategy, the challenge lies in creatively harnessing the inevitable uncertainty of this process. Zann represents how the process starts from uncertainty as a spiral, starting blurry and gradually spiraling in toward increasing focus and specification. Zann describes how the C-IQ method guides a problem-solving process systematically to converge on a solution that diverse stakeholders jointly develop, own, and agree to implement. Psychologist Irving Janis (Yale University, later UC Berkeley) studied “groupthink,” characterizing how, when participants in a problem-solving process feel pressure for consensus, they often disengage, lose their sense of ownership and follow the herd, not enlisting their own intelligence and better judgment. By failing to ask questions, a team sinks to lowest common denominator results, allowing the drive for unanimity and (actually highly inefficient) “efficiency” to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action. In contrast, “collaborative autonomy” recognizes individual uniqueness, leadership, and ownership of the problem solution components, enabling cross-disciplinary teams to “break the groupthink consensus barrier,” integrating their diverse expertise into a framework for knowledge-sharing throughout the problem-solving process.
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© Zann Gill 2008 – 2012 |
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