Hive mind: Difference between revisions

[[Thought leader]]s may declare that there are cases where ''[[heterogeneity]]'' — contrarianism to you, dear reader — is a bad thing. “homogeneity is important to bind your people to a common purpose and vision,” these people will say. [[Heterogeneity]] can weaken and undermine that sacred, fragile flame.

We happy heterogeneticists would beg to differ. The problem in our darkened times, is quite the opposite: a hive mind stampeding after shiny but quixotic ideas: crypto-currencies, non-fungible tokens, [[AI]], [[ESG]] and [[critical theory]], some of which (particularly [[critical theory]]) are engineered — ironically enough — to ''quash'' contrary voices. There is very little “wacky contrarian” risk. Minority contrarians can’t hurt you. Fashionable [[yogababble]] can.

Now: heterogeneity fails only when it produces ''incontrovertibly'' stupid or pernicious ideas — that cannot be quickly assessed and, if need be, rejected on their merits. In a [[wicked]] environment there are very few of these, and in a “tame” — closed, bounded, fully understood — environment they are easy to dismiss: in a game of football, the undoubtedly heterogeneous idea to pick up the ball is stupid and no-one will do it. ''But'' even there … well, just ask William Webb Ellis whether it was a stupid idea to pick up the ball and run with it.

Situations where the consensus view is so unarguably right that there’s no scope to challenge it are pretty much non-existent in commerce. Many of the our great crises of the past have come out of apparently sensible homogeneous consensus, and in the face of a small, vocal, but ignored heteregenous dissent. [[LIBOR]]. The [[global financial crisis]]. [[Madoff]]. [[Enron]].