Sustainable social transformation will occur when people and groups with different perspectives learn to listen to each other and dialogue.

Dialogue is not about compromise that leads to the mediocre middle.

It is about constructively engaging with the “other” to come up with truly better solutions.  That is not mediocrity.  It is radical and creative.

Arriving at better solutions includes a creative process of agreeing on reasonable solutions, giving those solutions a legitimate chance, and evaluating the effects based on evidence that can be accepted by a majority of both sides.

A solution with a reasonable chance of success that will be supported by a significant majority of the population is always going to be better than a solution bitterly opposed by significant factions.  And a widely accepted solution will always be better than a situation of stalemate where no meaningful solutions can ever be given enough of a chance to succeed.

If we’re all heading for the precipice together, then we need to take action together; and that means that we have to figure out a way to agree very, very soon.

In my case, I believe especially strongly in progressive ideas and solutions.   On the other hand, there are conservative thinkers whom I respect; and I believe that conservative ideas and solutions have value and need to be seriously considered in coming up with any solution.

The Whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

However, I only accept ideas and solutions that I feel have been formulated to help all of us, and not just to benefit 50%, 10%, or 1%.

I am committed to do all I can to rid our society of anti-democratic rhetoric and unrestricted funding of media manipulations and outright lies.   So I look for progressives, conservatives, and any others who are equally committed to that goal.  It is definitely a goal that can be supported by all who love our whole community.

Changing the way elections and media influence are funded is critical.  Yet, even when that happens, we will still need to learn how to constructively think and make decisions together.   Making progress on one front will support progress on the other.

There is no such thing as “all by yourself” intelligence.

“Collected intelligence” is when one person or group collects intelligence primarily for its own use and benefit.   It doesn’t require other people’s permission or even awareness that their data is being collected, or how it is being used.

“Collective intelligence” is intelligence collected from or contributed by many people who are aware (or have the ability to be aware) of what is being collected and how it is being used – and where those people have rights and abilities to use the intelligence for their own purposes,subject to agreed on constraints, privacy rights, etc.

Collective intelligence, according to this description, is absolutely required for reducing social fragmentation and for increasing social coherence, innovation, and prosperity for all.  Collective intelligence is also required for producing anything that could be called “collective consciousness.”

Collective intelligence can also be described as “connected intelligence” which might be a good idea, since many people still use the term “collective intelligence” when they really mean “collected intelligence.”

(For more thoughts, see  also 2008 post “When is Collective Intelligence also Collective Consciousness?“)

Networks are nature’s best embodiments of collective intelligence.

Networks are intelligent and adaptive, which means that they grow in intelligence as they adapt to events to fulfill needs.

The networks that are most important to us are:

• Networks of living organisms, plants and animals that feed and protect us;
• Networks of cells that make up our immune systems;
• Networks of neurons that make up our brains;
• Personal and social networks that make up our friendship and support networks, and health, transportation, economic, learning, and communication networks.

Our technology is now more than ever creating, using, and maintaining networks.

All networks are basically made of nodes and connections.   The intelligence of the nodes is important, but the real intelligence of networks is in the connections.

There are two super-attributes of connections that are especially important in all types of networks:  Connection Strength and Context.  

In order for a social network application to be most intelligent and useful it has to recognize, ‘understand’ and make use of these two attributes of connections – strength and context.

Current generations of social networks, like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and now Google+, are just now, and barely, beginning to recognize and make use of the strength and context of connections.   “Just beginning” means that there is much more valuable evolution that has yet to take place.

All people of course pay close attention to the subtle nuances of their network connections.   But it is definitely a challenge to design a computer-augmented social network application that can more fully ‘understand’ and make use of these nuances, which include the strength and context of connections.

To be successful, social network applications have to miraculously turn complexities and fine distinctions into features that are easy and intuitive to use, useful, and, most of all, that don’t get in the way.

Strength and Context of Connections

Here are some of the distinctions that exist in our ‘real-world’ understanding of social network connections and behaviors.

Context of connection is about what is shared.

Networks form within and around what people share:

• Friendship, love, family ties (and hostility, aversions, common enemies)
• Group and organization membership – based on commonalities such as shared interest, perspectives, goals, employer, profession or industry.
• Exchange-driven contexts – e.g., buyer-seller, client-consultant, teacher-student.

More abstractly what we share are:

-   Interests
-   Values
-    Goals
-    Exchanges and collaborations

Strength:  How strong is the connection?

People easily understand that their connections vary in strength.   We intuitively measure strength in terms of how much the connection is:

-   Close
-   Trusted
-   Valuable
-   High in priority (for response or action)

Reciprocity

There is another important attribute of connections that is important to understand and make use of:  Reciprocity – also known as mutuality.

In social network theory reciprocity is understood in terms of the “direction” of the connections between two nodes:  A connection can extend from A to B, or from B to A, or it can be bi-directional, i.e., reciprocal.

If two people share the same interest (or goal or set of values or group membership) but don’t know each other, then they are each connected by the same context, e.g. interest (or goal or set of values or group membership), but they are not personally connected.

Yet even if not connected personally, they have a mutual connection to the same context; and that mutual connection can be an important incentive for reciprocity:  sharing information and ideas, responding to news & requests, providing help when needed, etc.

It is also possible that even if two people share the same context and don’t know each other personally, one person can “follow” the content that the other person makes available, in a tweet, blog post, article, book, video, etc.

This type of non-reciprocal relationship is Twitter’s sweet spot.  In Twitter if you follow someone’s posts they don’t have to follow you for the system to work.  And yet, following someone is often a way that a reciprocal relationship can start – by following someone back, or even by actually reading and commenting on what the other person posts, or by starting a direct conversation.

Trusted Sharing’s Approach

Trusted Sharing’s first public release will focus on developing a core layer for automatically determining and using both strength and context of connections to sort and filter incoming feeds and to target outgoing messages and feeds.  We already have much of that core functionality completed for use of strength of connections — enough to begin testing and refining with a limited number of test users.  The public release, when complete, will also include simple but useful methods for filtering and tagging content by topic (context).   However, automatically tagging and matching user-generated content by topic isn’t our focus for this first version.   Our preference is to partner with other developers who are already well down the road with automated topic recognition in socially-shared content.

If you would like to be notified when the Trusted Sharing beta is ready, leave a comment here, or contact me at dwork-trsh@spamarrest.com.

A recent study of how behavioral decisions are made in the brain makes it clear how important strengths of connections are to the intelligence of networks.

“Scientists at the University of Rochester, Washington University in St. Louis, and Baylor College of Medicine have unraveled how the brain manages to process the complex, rapidly changing, and often conflicting sensory signals to make sense of our world.

“The answer lies in a simple computation performed by single nerve cells: a weighted average. Neurons have to apply the correct weights to each sensory cue, and the authors reveal how this is done.” …

“The study demonstrates that the low-level computations performed by single neurons in the brain, when repeated by millions of neurons performing similar computations, accounts for the brain’s complex ability to know which sensory signals to weight as more important. ‘Thus, the brain essentially can break down a seemingly high-level behavioral task into a set of much simpler operations performed simultaneously by many neurons.’”

(The fact that neurons in the brain make a weighted average of thousands of inputs has long been understood in theory.  This particular study has surfaced much clearer evidence for exactly how the whole process works.)

Obviously individual humans are enormously more complex than individual neurons.

However, the way individual and collective decisions are made – i.e., decisions about what information is reliable and what actions to take – seems very similar in populations of neurons and populations of humans:

Each individual (whether neuron or human) makes a particular decision by making a weighted average of all of the inputs the individual receives that are relevant to the decision.   And likewise, the population makes its own particular decision by making a weighted average (e.g., taking a vote) of the decisions made by all the individuals in the population whose decisions matter.

In the case of individual humans, inputs relevant to particular decisions consist of opinions gathered from all types of media, including the publications and media channels they trust most, and the opinions of their trusted friends and other contacts gathered from direct interaction and social media.

However, individuals obviously don’t give equal weight to all of their sources.  Instead they give stronger or weaker weights to their different sources, including both positive and negative weights.

These weights also vary depending on context – that is, different sources are especially important for forming, reinforcing, or changing opinions, decisions, and behaviors related to politics, health, education, career and work, economic and financial choices, etc.

The implications that are most important are these:

1.  Understanding and using strength and context of connections is extremely important for enhancing the effectiveness of social network applications and other applications that are intended to improve individual and collective decision-making.

2.  If a population (community, nation, etc.) needs to make a critical decision, then it is essential to have all relevant perspectives fairly represented and fairly taken into account.  (Shooting your opponent, or censoring their ideas, or flooding the media with intentional misinformation and ridicule are not fair methods.)

3.  The perspectives and decisions of individuals are in fact extremely necessary to insure that the population as a whole makes the best possible decisions.

4.  Finding ways to reduce social fragmentation is essential for making both individuals and whole populations more intelligent.   Contributors to social fragmentation include:  Filter-bubbles, echo chambers, knee-jerk bias, narrow interests that take precedence over the good of all, and intentional manipulation by a powerful few of lower-level emotional reflexes (“knee-jerk biases”) among the many.  All of these kinds of influences tend to make both individuals and whole populations much less intelligent than they need to be for the whole group to thrive.

Social network applications that fully make use of the connection strength and context can help address each of these issues.  But of course, they also have to be easy to use, relevant, and compelling.

In this famous quote Jefferson was speaking in favor of “the blessings and security of self-government.”   Yet he and all founders of this country would readily agree that election campaigns funded 99% by the wealthiest 1% (individuals & corporations, booted and spurred) are now sadly deteriorating the blessings and security of self-government.

True, the people vote.  But “who tells the stories of a culture governs human behavior”
(George Gerbner, media theorist, quoted by Eli Pariser in the Filter Bubble).

What to do?  Consider the ideas and proposals RootStrikers.org and the following quotes by Lawrence Lessig:

—————————————————————————————————-

“…this government is not dependent upon ‘the People alone.’ This government is dependent upon the Funders of campaigns. 1% of America funds almost 99% of the cost of political campaigns in America. Is it therefore any surprise that the government is responsive first to the needs of that 1%, and not to the 99%? …

“This government, we must chant, is corrupt. We can say that clearly and loudly from the Left. They can say that clearly and loudly from the Right. And we then must teach America that this corruption is the core problem — it is the root problem — that we as Americans must be fighting.”  …

“There is no liberal, or libertarian, or conservative who should defend this corruption. The single problem we all should be able to agree about is a political system that has lost its moral foundation: For no American went to war to defend a democracy ‘dependent upon the Funders alone.’”
(Letter to the Occupiers:  The Principal of Non-Contradiction 10/12/2011)

“We are different in a million ways, we Americans, but we are all equally Americans. And if you’re leading a movement that won’t acknowledge that difference (or more frighteningly, that believes that mere rhetoric is going to erase that difference), then you’re not looking for fundamental reform. You’re looking for a putsch.

“This Nation needs fundamental reform. For that, our constitution requires 75% of states to agree. Thus, if we want real change, we must find those ideas upon which 75% of states can actually agree.”
Something More than Polarization, 10/25/2011

The piece opened with these points:

“On Monday, defending his plan to raise taxes on the rich to pay for job creation, President Obama said: ‘This is not class warfare, it’s math.’”

“No, Mr. President, this is class warfare — and it’s a war you’d better win. Corporate interests and the rich started it. Right now, they’re winning. Progressives and the middle class must fight back, and the president should be clear whose side he’s on.”

The article went on to make its case with some history and some very interesting data about increasing income inequality in the U.S.  The statement that I found to be most provocative was this:

“After all, according to the CIA, income inequality in the United States is greater than in Yemen.”

The link above took me to the CIA Factbook which publishes an index that measures income equality or inequality among all families in each country.  A country with perfect equality would have a score of 0 and a country with perfect inequality would have a score of 100.   (Note – perfect equality according to this measure does not mean that everyone earns the same amount, but rather that all discrete income levels, from richest to poorest, contain about the same number of families.)

It’s good to be able to see so graphically how the U.S compares to other countries.  The U.S. is indeed much closer in terms of inequality to some of the most unstable countries in the world.

Here are some of the CIA Factbook Entries comparing the U.S. to other countries:

US:     45 (2007)   (40.8 in 1997)

Sweden:  23

Norway: 25

Germany:  27 (with one of the most robust economies in the world)

Spain:  32

Switzerland:  33.7

United Kingdom:  34

India:  36.8

Indonesia:  37

Yemen: 37.7

Israel:  39

China:  41.5

Russia:  42

Rawanda:  46.8

Mexico:  48.2

Zimbabwe 50.1

Zambia:  50.8

Columbia:  58.5

Bolivia:  58.2

Haiti:  59.2

Sierra Leone:  62.9

To illustrate the inequality in the U.S. Kohn’s article also gave these facts among others:

“Between 1979 and 2007, the income gap between the richest 1 percent of Americans and the poorest 40 percent more than tripled. Today, the richest 10 percent of Americans control two-thirds of the nation’s wealth, while, according to recently released census data, average Americans saw their real incomes decline by 2.3 percent in 2010. Though our economy grew in 2009 and 2010, 88 percent of the increase in real national income went to corporate profits, one study found. Only 1 percent went to wages and salaries for working people.”

All meaning comes from a web of relationships.

Relationships exist in nature: expressed in the “laws of nature” and in and between all non-living substances and objects, and in and between all living beings, including relationships in and between our bodies, our ideas and minds, our societies and cultures and sub-cultures.

The combination of all webs, known and unknown, is called the World, the Universe.

An identity is defined by a particular combination of webs of relationship, which gives rise to a particular perspective.  “I” am one such perspective.  “You” are another.   The intersection  of my perspective and yours is our perspective.  Everything else is theirs, or unknown.

Words with essentially the same meaning as these have been expressed over and over, beginning no later than three thousand years ago.  More recently, similar ideas have been expressed by at least a few million people.

The ideas have been expressed in abstractions like these, and in rich, moving detail in myth, stories and reflections, in philosophies, religious texts, poems, novels, blog posts.  To some, abstractions are dry; to others they are juicy.   Having many expressions is vital.

What are the implications of this understanding?  What can we do and achieve with it?

An answer:  The more we understand this, individually and collectively, the more likely we will be to honor other perspectives, and to want to work together to come up with better perspectives, giving rise to better solutions.  Our future depends on this happening.

Is this true?

If so, what actions and transformations are necessary to bring this about?

If I want to be, I am even
my money
my prestige
my title
my reputation
my tribe, and my position in it
my power over others
others’ power over me
the grandness or puniness of my house
and possessions
my ‘brand’
my blog

I am my boundaries
which I either choose or don’t choose
And when I experience no boundaries
I am unbounded

The Sanskrit word for ego means ‘I amness’

There is an understanding that:

When we transcend the limitations of the ego
The ego doesn’t disappear.  It expands to unboundedness
while also maintaining useful boundaries
and shedding useless limitations.

There is a discussion in today’s WashingtonPost.com titled, “Arizona Shootings:  Why did God allow it?”

The post is interesting; but the comments are especially interesting – and there are at least a couple of hundred.  Some people take it as an opportunity to debate whether God exists.   That debate is not so interesting.  And that debate could have been prevented by asking the question in a belief-neutral way:

“Why is life so full of suffering for so many?”

Whether you believe in God or not, the two questions are really the same.

And people’s answers to this question are what interested me the most.  There were so many different ways to answer it – and so many similar ways to answer it.  Each answer represented a personal, spiritual, or logical, or thoughtful, mystical, or philosophical, or social activist … perspective, on a question everyone has thought about, and that some keep thinking about, each time reminded of suffering — especially suffering that affects us all as a national or on a global scale.

We think about it, because even for those who don’t believe in God, the idea of so much suffering can raise doubts and despair – or anger or bewilderment at the seemingly wanton nature of being alive in a violent universe. Even people who don’t believe in God are looking for meaning in life – and since life includes suffering: Why? What is the purpose?

And yet, if intense suffering is caused by ‘accidents’ many are able to understand, or at least to accept. Whether religious or non-religious, we can accept suffering as part of life, because we are smart enough, and well developed enough to deal with suffering when it occurs, and otherwise, to enjoy what life has to offer – including most of all, being with other people.   But sometimes, even the “strongest” of us get too much of suffering, and then we are really in need of the help of others, or a long period before taking up our lives again near where we left off .

But when wanton suffering is caused by people, with apparent intention, it seems to be particularly wrenching even for those only  reading about it.

This tragedy was caused by a mentally ill person. But what about other tragedies such as terrorist killings and criminal acts? We somehow don’t think of those perpetrators as “mentally ill” – instead, we think of them as criminals, people who are immoral, or full of hatred and deeply misguided. And yet those terrorists and criminals are in fact created by mentally ill – or at least what you could call extremely stressed – cultures in which they are raised, or groups to whose messages they are vulnerable.

Our “mainstream” society in America does not intentionally nurture terrorism. We also of course oppose crime. And yet, our society does have the potential to prevent much of the mental illness that now occurs, and the potential to prevent immense rage, and depraved, stupid thinking, and all manner of suffering in our cities and neighborhoods.  It is a matter of taking better care of each other, by better funding for our care-giver institutions and professionals, and by our own efforts in our communities.  We can’t get rid of all suffering, but we can definitely do better than turn people away from needed care and sustenance.

Why aren’t we doing a lot better? Because it’s too expensive??   How much does it cost to let suffering grow?

Maybe, after all, that’s a better question to be asking than “Why is there suffering?”   (And you may have noticed, I didn’t really give an answer to that question.)

Here’s their list:

1.  The Economy, and Economic Growth
2.  Global Warming and the Environment
3.  Technology as what can save and fulfill us.
4.  Poverty eradication, and the Millennium Development Goals
5.  Disaster Relief
6.  Security and Defense – against destructive abilities of terrorists, criminals and enemies.
7.  Peace:  creating a global civilization based on shared values
8.  Global governance – creating effective global responses to global problems.
9.  Science – understanding ourselves and the Universe.

So, back to poverty eradication as an example of one of these tribes:

Extreme poverty is a very obvious and heartbreaking obstacle to living a fulfilling life.   So eradicating poverty is a very tangible, and addressable, goal to get behind.

But the real goal behind poverty eradication is to give all humans the opportunity to fulfill their human potential.

This is really the ultimate goal of any social improvement type goal, including all 9 of these listed above.  But the trick is in getting widespread agreement on what is human potential.

And yet, there seems to be broad agreement that human potential has three dimensions:  Physical, mental, and spiritual.

Physical potential means the potential to be healthy and strong.

Mental potential means the potential to be intelligent, creative, and adaptive.

Spiritual potential means the potential to be happy, loving, and to have a sense of purpose.

In addition, nearly all spiritual traditions and philosophies have some idea the full spiritual development includes the ability to transcend – go beyond – the limitations of individual and tribal egos.

Another common idea of spiritual fulfillment is to enhance our sense of connection to all of life.  Most humans feel more fulfilled when surrounded by the beauty of nature in balance – just as we feel a crucial sense of loss or danger when nature, and our connection to it, is not in balance.

To some people, “spiritual” is the most important dimension of fulfillment, because the spiritual dimension has the potential to transcend the other two.  However, to others, “mental” or “physical” is most important.  And yet, most people agree that the ideal is to have all three of these types of fulfillment.

OK.  If there really is broad agreement that the ultimate goal is to give all humans the opportunity to be fulfilled physically, mentally, and spiritually; then what do we do with that agreement?

Obviously:  We all focus on becoming saints!

Otherwise, admitting that this is the ultimate goal can easily threaten the narrow desires and expectations of many of us (and of our egos).    For example, if these are the ultimate goals, why would anyone want to be, or to remain, a billionaire?   Having a billion dollars at our personal disposal (or even many millions) is simply not a requirement for any single individual’s, or family’s, fulfillment.   And yet, a billion dollars can go a long way to help entire communities, and even many small and troubled countries, insure a higher level of fulfillment for its members.

There are also lots of other fascinating implications of recognizing fulfillment of human potential as the ultimate goal – for whole societies and for each of us as individuals.