Modus Cooperandi

Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery After Blogging

Good night nurse....

Canada's Canoe reports on Flu Bloggers who are smartmobbing the potential upcoming flu outbreak.  This is an ad hoc community gathered rapidly and naturally from a concern looming on the horizon.   There are several elements of this that interest me.

Natural ad-hoc cohesion - Most of these bloggers came to be associated with each other due to a common interest that they, themselves, started in isolation.  After the start of their blogs, they were able to join together as a network.  So they started as radical, isolated nodes and achieved cohesion due to the instantaneous selective searching capabilities of the internet.  They could not have formed as a group without starting as inspired individuals.

Internal Discord and External Accord - Like most groups, these participants see the benefits of the entire group but also its warts. Conscientious researchers are paired with wacky conspiracy theorists due to the open structure of the internet.  In the aggregate, however, these bloggers learn from each other and refine their posts to build on information learned and analyzed.

Hard Science meets Human Interest - These situations leave the door open for many possibilities.  Researchers, finding a community of interested people, could tap this resource for article research, case studies and distributed computing.  Imagine if you were studying a particular strain of influenza and needed to model its growth.  There are many ways to model a contagion, but you only have the computing power or time to do a subset.

Politics meets an Informed Populace - The flu is more than something that sells Nyquil.  It's an issue.  Flu vaccine distribution, community health preparation, school system policy, worker compensation, quarantine rules, and many other factors are intrinsically linked to the flu.  As situational blogging like this grows (and it likely will), the "special interests" that currently are credited with influencing public opinion will both draw from and be challenged by these communities.  Lawmakers will find themselves being educated by these bloggers and find these bloggers formidable and sophisticated foes should they find themselves on the wrong side of an issue.

Take a look at a few of the flu blogs and see how you feel....

Culture and the Feeding Tube

I was very moved by this NPR story this morning regarding Terri Schiavo.  Overall, my own feelings about the case were so strong and clear that I was not going to write about them.

It didn't seem like it really fit with this particular blog or its goals of exploring elements of cooperation.

However, given yesterday's blog entry, this is an amazingly powerful piece.  In it Barbara Bradley Hagerty explores the situation by expressly asking religious scholars from many faiths what their interpretation of the case is and why.

My friend Trevor once told me "Never condemn someone for trying to do good."  It is clear that people here (Terri's parents and husband) are trying to do good, although we are witnessing it in a very public and ugly way.

Cooperation and mutual understanding are very difficult in a situation so emotionally charged and with such immediate consequences.

Can't Buy My Brain Love

I am in a group that is studying cooperation ... or at least we're talking about it a lot.  This Businessweek Article recently came up for conversation.

In essence it is saying, or confirming, that strict behavioral models of economics or anything else having to do with people need to be tempered by the understanding that we're still flesh and blood.   By golly, research indicates that we are human!

The article states:

A key tenet of standard economics is that making people happy is a simple matter of giving them more of what they like. But neuroscience shows that's not true. The brain's striatum quickly gets used to new stimuli and expects them to continue. People are on a treadmill in which only unexpected pleasures can make them happier. That explains why happiness of people in rich countries hasn't increased despite higher living standards.

Yes, that explains it.

Deeper than that, however, is the assumption that human beings respond only the the stimulii of goods and services and this stimulii was somehow easily measurable.

T = Big Screen Television Width
P = Delivered Pizza Diameter
B = Barcolounger Max Recline Angle
H = Happiness Valuation

T+(P*B)=H

How can you possibly be unhappy with a happiness valuation of 1672?  Do you need a bigger pizza?

There are many obvious and observable phenomena that human beings engage in daily that are not proven by science.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that they came up with a way to measure people's reactions to being insulted while getting an MRI done.  And this likely will be useful scientific-anecdotal information to toss into a conversation somewhere.  I'm glad someone did it.