Aleks Jakulin points us to this NYC meeting on Sun 26 Oct on the topic of “Collective Sensemaking,” which is described as follows:
Collective sensemaking is how we figure out the truth together, and how we make decisions together.
We think there’s abundant low-hanging fruit in applying AI to social data.
Come meet your peers!
With talks from:
Xiq from the Community Archive (community-archive.org) and Epistemic Garden (epistemic.garden), on community-driven sensemaking
Brandon Dunderstadt, founder of Nomic AI and Calcifer Computing (calcifercomputing.com), on quantitative memetics
Ivan Vendrov, collective intelligence at Midjourney
…
you!
I don’t know anything about this but it could be interesting.
I know, this is uncalled for. But I’m in that sort of mood. I wondered what sensemaking means, so I went to the reference listed on the conference website (https://andymatuschak.org/files/papers/Pirolli,%20Card%20-%202005%20-%20The%20sensemaking%20process%20and%20leverage%20points%20for%20analyst%20technology%20as.pdf). It seemed ironic that a paper describing sensemaking made so little sense to me. Actually it was intelligible, but seemed like a list of things that are considered any time someone does an empirical investigation. It isn’t clear to me that the paper added anything useful. But I apologize if I just didn’t take enough time to understand it. As I said, I’m in that sort of mood.
I know a bit about this… sensemaking has been influential in some pockets of information science and human computer interaction. I believe it arose in organizational psych. I think of it as being like EDA or theories of discovery in science but more generic and not necessarily focused on data analysis or science per se, but more on information work writ broadly. The Pirolli and Card and Russell version out of PARC gets invoked in cases like designing tools for people do collaborative analysis (e.g., of a bunch of documents). The key point to me has always seemed that it gives a way to talk about the process of searching for and trying out different representations of a problem as you solve some open-ended task. It is kind of funny how it’s loose enough to seem kind of obvious and make you wonder what it’s good for. But every so often I’ll come across something where it does see like the right level of explanation.
I guess Talking Heads won;t make an appearance at this conference, even though I suspect there will be a lot of talking heads.
Quote from the blog post: “Collective sensemaking is how we figure out the truth together, and how we make decisions together.”
No, just no.
Go away, you annoying computer collaborating collective decision making people(-people).
I am a man that walks alone in search of the possible truth and possible beauty and possible importance and possible purpose of things. I think perhaps this can be found by following small paths, taking individual routes, looking around, observing, talking to people once in a while, listening to people and things once in a while, and reading, and thinking, and pondering. I’ll be there, and i’ll be looking and searching and thinking in that way. That’s the only way for me I think.
Wait, isn’t there some parable about blind men and an elephant
Perhaps that’s a story here that’s relevant
I mean in light of my comment above about the “collective computer sense-making”-people
Or should I say, wanting-to-be directors, and their collaborators, of sheeple
If one blind person touches, and then thinks it’s A
If another feels, and subsequently calls it’s B
If yet another, experiences and goes ahead and names it C
And together they “collectively” and “collaboratively” decide it’s D
I want to try and see, experience, and understand A through Z
I want to be away from the collective, up in a tree
Spotting, and noticing, what they all together can’t see
“Solipsists need not apply” is presumably implicit in their advert.
Is “Tuttipsists” a thing?
If not, perhaps it can be decided “collectively” and “collaboratively” that it now is a thing. At least for those in the “collective” that may possibly tell others that it is merely because they “collaboratively” and “collectively” decided and possibly even actually think it is.
It’s all good by the way, no worries
I’m just pondering, and trying to see
I just took a path somewhere, and now I’m thinking, and observing from the tree
Up here, I have this view that makes me wonder if “solipsists” apparently is,
whether “tuttipsists” can also be…
In a biotech startup for which I was the head of all things computer we used the Delphi Method to take anonymous input from all the scientists, have a secretary summarize and reissue for more anonymous input, rinse, repeat. This worked very well and the group converged on a plan for moving forward, unhampered by rank or privilege. But the plan eliminated the pet program of the CEO’s pet vice president and was scrapped. Catch-22
“But the plan eliminated the pet program of the CEO’s pet vice president and was scrapped.”
I don’t understand this part.
I mean, if the CEO is already the CEO, and the vice president is already the vice president wouldn’t they both possibly benefit from all the “collective” and “collaborative” Delphi Method-stuff from lower ranked, and probably way less well-payed folks?
If they play their cards right (and are so inclined of course), the CEO and vise president could perhaps make lots more money by simply talking about how they are all for no ranks or privilege (of course concerning others below them and not concerning themselves) and make use of (or abuse) the “collaborative” and “collective” activities and the ideas and profits they all might produce.
Perhaps it takes an Oracle to predict how this all might truly work out of course if this is done more and more…
Quote from above: “If they play their cards right (and are so inclined of course), the CEO and vise president could perhaps make lots more money by simply talking about how they are all for no ranks or privilege (of course concerning others below them and not concerning themselves) and make use of (or abuse) the “collaborative” and “collective” activities and the ideas and profits they all might produce.”
Man, come to think of it you could even do this with science. You might even get some really nice big grants perhaps, especially when you propose large-scale projects which (indirectly) might pay for your free lunches and CEO-salary and nice office building.
You could then just lean back, receive free attention when your large-scale replication efforts “fail” and subsequently get reported on, while you sit in your office chair directing everything whilst shouting “we need to be more collaborative in science” every once in a while.
You could use good ideas by “the collective” from which you benefit mostly when they might appear, but perhaps more importantly you could sort of try to nudge and steer lots of people towards certain topics and perhaps even conclusions by attempting to make people use your data (because that’s so good for science!) or set up some “competitive” format where different labs try something (but in the end are then all working on a certain topic that you “incentivize” them to be part of in some way).
But that perhaps might also be something only some Oracle might mention…
The method was my idea, not that of the CEO or VP. Not really sure why you’re surprised by the capricious nature of their actions. Look at RFK, Jr. and Trump for examples of same.
I don’t follow politics or watch the news or things like that so I don’t know what I am supposed to look for in the examples of people you provide. I don’t think it matters though, as I understand that you are talking about the “capricious nature of their actions”.
I had to look up the word “capricious” and I read that it has to do with impulsivity or sudden changes or something like that. If that’s how you meant it, I don’t understand what’s “capricious” about the CEO scrapping your collective plan. That is, unless this CEO was aware of the collective plan (that you may have initiated if I am understanding things correctly) and gave you all the green light at first but then stopped it and switched to the vice president’s pet project or something along those lines. I don’t think I can read (enough) information about this all that makes clear to me whether that was the case or not, and in turn whether the word “capricious” is even appropriate and/or optimal to use in this all.
Anyway, what I got from your initial comment is that you seemed to (implicitly?) convey that the collective Delphi method was working well, and may even have led to a great plan (but how to know if the plan is great or not?). If that is indeed the case, I don’t understand why the CEO and VP would not use your collective great plan because they might benefit from it themselves.
I mean, are you implying or saying or do you think they did not want to use your collective great plan merely because they want to use something the VP thought of? If that’s what you were implying with your intitial comment, that’s what’s strange to me.
Anyway, perhaps the CEO and VP talk about your Delphi method collective plan in the same way you are talking about the VP’s plan. They just might state that the “pet project” of the head of all things computer luckily got stopped before it could do great harm to the company.
Here’s a report from the event, with links to presentations:
https://xiqo.substack.com/p/the-unconference-on-ai-for-collective