Why do we have a phrase “common wisdom”? Isn’t it either “wisdom” or “not wisdom”??? Isn’t it “truth” or “not truth”? So who would care if it were “common” or not???
I suspect that when “common wisdom” is uttered it is a signal that reeeaally means “hey, just to warn you, there is a common belief in culture today and it may or may not vanish in a few years…”
One of the “common wisdoms” of Don Tapscott’s book and VERY popular today is that “collaboration is good”. I don’t think this is true. I will do my best to explain.
There is a gummed up phrase to support collaboration as in open source business models: “there are more smart people outside your organization than inside.” Is this the justification for collaboration????????? Huh???????
It IS true that there is more of almost everything outside your organization including dumb people and misfits and greedy slimy untrustworthy sorts. AND maybe it isn’t a good idea to think that effective results are merely a process of collecting the smartest peopl 
So collaboration to me isn’t inherently good at all but it CAN be and needs nurtured.
We LOVE to find great people to collaborate with and this week and for the next several we will be doing so in Amsterdam with our friends at FreedomLab in a hope of more deeply examining some of the common wisdoms to gain a better grounding than pat sayings allow. With this work we hope to more crisply identify patterns in the world – particularly as affects monumental change in tech, telecom, media, internet. Much work ahead!
hmmm… Pip, I’m tempted… I have many thoughts on this and will comment more in depth later… but let’ start somewher.
I do like the notion of multiple truths and multiple wisdoms… that has to do with the fact that culture has originally grown locally. And now… with so many, so called communities out there it really is the question wether that is fragmenting or concentrating cultures. This week I had the feeling that the Coburn ‘wisdom’ and FreedomLab ‘Wisdom’ (both grown by doing autonomous and intrinsic research) converged partially into a common wisdom by exchanging toughts, visions, models and reasoning.
On the other hand I totally agree that ‘being smart’ has absolutely nothing to do with creating wisdom. It is one trick in generating data and information, a whole other game in merging that into knowledge and than into wisdom… but sharing wisdom, contributing to a bigger total has not probably nothing to do with just IQ, or just EQ… and I don’t know is C(ommunity)Q exists… That is an interesting area to explore… what are the ingredients to generate Group Intelligence.
Such groups can like the technology supporting it, be either good or bad… there is nothing deterministic about it. In recent media we act as if communities and there values are the holy grail… I do hope that Edwin will comment later on Guppy-Love and the mull… excellent examples on how communities… even those full of smart people… can totally fool them selves… so what is wisdom than?
My feeling is that we should take a closer look at people like Amitai Entzioni and HG Graves, for example.. Great sociologists who have analyzed community building in the physical world for ages… maybe start there and than cross-over to online-environments… in stead of looking at technologies to forecast social behaviour =) People are rather fixed and tech is flex… not the other way around =)
I’m not sure if the convergence of wisdom should be called ‘common’ wisdom though? It’s rather ’shared’ knowledge or ‘collaborative’ knowledge, ‘collective’ knowledge or maybe even just ‘joint’ research. I also believe there’s a hierarchy in attaining wisdom. That might be the ultimate goal, but is it really wisdom we have or is it knowledge?
James Surowiecki talks in his book ‘Wisdom of the crowds’, about collective intelligence as well. He states that it’s about a collection of individuals whose independent knowledge is aggregated. I find this an interesting definition, because it is based on the ‘diversity’ of a group of people. Based upon that diversity a synergy can emerge that creates ‘bigger’ wisdom. Thinking of a ‘collection of individuals’ I would say that there is some active act in it, or as Pip calls it: some nurturing to be done. So in reply to your question: what are the ingredients to generate group intelligence, I think ‘diversity’ is at least one of them.
Knowledge for me is understanding something… wisdom is being abel to apply it in such a way taht the intended results are creates. Like a tradiational photo and the DOKA. Understanding the process is knowhow… making THE picture with a second nature in how to develop ity in the ay you intended the picture to become is wisdom. So intruiging question if we shared knowhow or wisdom… I think what was wisdom for Pip was knowhow for us and vice versa… that is exactly the reason why discussing cases was a good way to make the wisdom it more explicit and able to share. Making intangible knowledge explicit is a key element in obtaining wisdom. Pip feels the pain/ gain models like we feel our models… that feeling where knowhow meets intuition is close to creating wisdoms.
Diversity is indeed key, like we discussed in previous posts… but diversity in combination with a common objective? So the tention between the ME and the WE?
I’m not sure if it’s a question, but yes I believe diversity is key to achieve a common objective. I see your example of our collaboration as exactly that. And especially our discussions about ‘community’ (more about that tomorrow) are very much a discussion between a group of individuals whose independent knowledge is aggregated. And we do have a common objective for those discussions: to gain a better understanding of that concept. However, I don’t think those discussions have an ‘intended’ outcome in the way of your photograph example. I think the outcome for most of us is still very unknown…but the objective is not
I don’t know how that relates to the tension between the ME and the WE….have to think about that one…
Let’s clearify two things:
1. I meant that we now have two ingredients identified: Common Objective (WE?) and Diversity (ME?). And that sounds like a paradox. Having a very diverse group with a strong connection towards a common objective. I do indeed think that our recent meetings felt like that =)
2. I agree, the outcome of the meeting was not intended… but I didn’t mean we have wisdom in having meetings or brainstorms… our wisdom would be eg in the stuff we do workshops on, and for Pip ths stuff he writes and talks about… So we have created some fields-of-wisdom… like when you do a Features-Functions-Benefits session… that goes beyond just knowhow… far more like the DOKA-example than the meetings itself indeed =)
I am intrigued by the nurturing of communities, because who is going to do that. When trying to distill truth from individual views and opinions, who is the one to steer and give direction? Who is to say that you truth is THE truth.
In search of an answer you might come across visions en hunches that don’t immediately make sense. In the process of finding a solution you probably have your own hunch. And with that you might filter information, not necessarily leading to THE truth.
I always tend to call it the constant movement of insight in science. For example I remember the big posters at the dentist when I was a little younger, saying something like “eat a healthy sweet, eat an apple”, Eating an apple tuns out to be one of the worst things you can do to your teeth (sour). So what where these posters about? They communicated the consensus that sweets are bad for your teeth, not knowing that sour is even worse. It communicated a partial truth.
Also it is known in science that new insights are adopted only when old models no longer work. So, to be a bit cynical, I don’t think there is a truth, I think there is only common wisdom that works for the problem at hand and of that time.
All helpful thoughts.
Stefan’s apple example IS a great one for how I was using “common wisdom”
I think there are distinctions between knowledge/intelligence v wisdom/truth
I do think there is plenty of truth. It helps us predict many moments in our day fairly successfully. “If I jump, I will probably land in a second or two” is a prediction. Truth is all around us. Some of it scales to “big” wide ranging commentary and some doesn’t but IT is true.
“Common wisdom” - might be true or might not but reflects a BELIEF. SIr walter raleigh probably didn’t “know” that tobacco would kill so many.
I do believe in multiple truths: the world is perfect and the world is imperfect simultaneously.
I have the thought that we are working collaboratively to see what we might see… Maybe a better way to think will evolve from it…
P
A great and famous example of the distinctions between knowledge and wisdom is a taxonomy created by Benjamin Bloom. He divides the human cognitive skills as well as the affective skills into six different categories of complexity. Which give a clear overview of the complexity of learning.
http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/bloom.html
When you say “common wisdom” is based on beliefs, the ‘knowledge’ suddenly isn’t just in the cognitive domain it integrates with the affective domain. Belief is a characteristic of an affective reaction and is often bound to a person or a culture.
This only shows why their can be many truths because no person only learns within cognitive domain. When you learn, the three domains integrate (3rth = pschymotor) and develop their own meanings and there by their own truths.
My temporally truth for what its worth..
I think there are different types of “truth”
#1A truth can be “I feel that the earth is flat” — that is truth that many have believed. Different cultures can have different “truths” in THAT sense… They are speaking responsibly in reflecting their beliefs — it is “truth” as reflects accurately their belief ___ these exist, are powerful as representations of culture, but can shunt awareness… “Common wisdom” falls in here — “it was common wisdom that the earth was flat”
#2The “truth” though is the world is not flat — THAT doesn’t seem to have multiple truths… Those exist and are very very powerful, can raise awareness, lead to decision making that individuals experience as better toward their best interest
#3 Than there is temporal truth…
#4 finally there are multiple “truths” that seem to be contradictions where to seemingly opposing truths must co-exist
Categories 2 and 4 are most interesting to me to study
P