Re: Making your mind up

On 17/04/2024 12:14, Martin Harran wrote:
snip

 Another aspect that strikes me is how individual minds can operate
collectively, almost as if a new mind is generated as in mob hysteria
but also in other useful ways; as a management consultant delivering
management development programmes, one of my favourite topics was
showing how collective decisions are generally better than individual
decisions. Although that has long been recognised in management and
business,  I am not aware of any attempt to study it from a science
perspective.
 

I read this a few days ago and thought "shhh keep your responses relevant and focused, don't bring your latest hobbyhorse into every conversation it's even vaguely reminiscent of" [I ask that you imagine here Taylor Tomlinson miming the effects of antidepressants:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47WXVTpnOyU&t=228s ]
But that laudable instinct wore off apparently. You know what book has some interesting things to say about collective decision-making? "The Evolution of Agency" by Michael Tomasello ! \o/
Actually one could argue it has a lot to say about decision-making in general, it just gets at the problem from a very different angle than the "how it works in the brain" that you seem to be talking about. That's why I hesitated on the relevance front. But if a more high-level discussion of how decision-making might work in its most general form, that comes up with a very interesting perspective on the relationship of individual humans to the collective, seems like it might interest you it's a pretty short and (IMO) accessible book.