How to build a community. Translation of the book "Social Architecture": The Myth of Individual Intelligence

Probably, you already understood that I am not a supporter of a lonely genius. By and large, this is due to the fact that, despite the membership in the organization Mensa (the largest, oldest and most famous organization for people with high IQ) , I remember how I made surprisingly brilliant mistakes. Over time, I began to think that any mention of individual intelligence is a dangerously simplistic myth.



In it, always brilliant personalities think over important problems, and as a result of hard work they generate solutions and polish them to perfection. Sometimes they experience “eureka moments” when they open up ingeniously simple answers to complex problems. The inventor, his invention process, is an exceptional, precious phenomenon, and the rest is better not to interfere. The story is full of lonely heroes. We owe them our modern world.



However, if you take a closer look, it becomes clear that this tale does not correspond to the facts. History does not show single inventors. She tells us about the luck of people who stole or arrogated to themselves the ownership of the ideas that many have worked on. It is full of examples about brilliant people who, after a successful hit, spend decades on useless and fruitless searches. The most famous major inventors like Thomas Edison were good at systematic search, which was carried out by large teams. It's like stating that Steve Jobs invented every lotion made by the Apple team. This pleasant myth is good for marketing, but it is far from the truth.

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The history of the last decades, which is better fixed and more difficult to manipulate, clearly demonstrates this. The Internet is definitely one of the most innovative and rapidly developing technologies, the formation of which has a large amount of reliable information. This technology has no inventor. Instead, there is a huge mass of people who carefully and successfully solved a long series of current problems, recorded their answers and made them available to all.



The innovative nature of the Internet is provided not by a small select group of Einsteins. It is provided with RFC documents, which can be used by anyone and improved, by hundreds and thousands of smart, though not uniquely smart, people, open source software that anyone can use and improve. It comes from sharing, mixing and scaling a community. It comes from the constant increase in the number of good decisions and getting rid of bad ones.



Although, here is an alternative theory of innovation:

1. There is an infinite area of ​​problems / solutions. Like an area of ​​plains and hills that we are trying to overcome. Solutions to interesting problems are found on hilltops.
2. The area changes over time depending on external circumstances. Mountains can turn into plains, and new mountains can arise where they were not, with time.
3. We can accurately perceive only those problems that are closer to us. We have no opportunity to cover everything and we can only rely on our guesses. Our metaphorical landscape is very foggy.
4. We can estimate what the task will give us and how much the task will cost when evaluating the solutions. Those. we can understand how high we are.
5. There is an optimal solution for any problem to be solved. So, any slope has a peak.
6. We can achieve this optimal solution mechanically, stepping in about the right direction and looking at whether we were higher or lower.
7. Our intellect can speed up this process, but not replace it. If we are smarter - maybe we will walk faster or see a little further through the fog, that's all.

There are several consequences of this:

• Individual creativity means less than the process itself. Smarter people can work faster, but they can go in the wrong direction. Our collective vision of reality helps us to be honest and objective.
• We do not need road maps if we have a well-established process. Over time, as the value of solutions grows, so will functionality.
• We do not invent solutions as much as we open them. Condolences to creative people: this is just a golem processing information, polishing its own ego and preoccupied with raising karma.
• Intellect is a social effect, although it feels like something personal. A person cut off from others stops thinking. We can neither identify problems nor evaluate their solutions without other people.
• Community size and diversity is key. Larger and more diverse communities cover more relevant tasks, solve them more accurately and do it faster than a small group of experts.

So when we trust the lone experts, they make classic mistakes. They focus on ideas, not problems. They focus on the wrong problems. They make wrong conclusions about the value of the problems to be solved. And they do not use what they are working on.



Translation of the book "Social Architecture":

• Preface. Crowd wisdom
• Chapter 1. Toolkit
• Chapter 2
  
  - Emotional burnout of volunteers
  
  - How to capture / protect an open-source project
  
  - The myth of individual intelligence
• Chapter 6. Living Systems

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