Quantifying collective intelligence in human groups

Christoph Riedl, Young Ji Kim, Pranav Gupta, Thomas W. Malone, and Anita Williams Woolley

PNAS May 25, 2021 118 (21) e2005737118

Collective intelligence (CI) is critical to solving many scientific, business, and other problems. We find strong support for a general factor of CI using meta-analytic methods in a dataset comprising 22 studies, including 5,279 individuals in 1,356 groups. CI can predict performance in a range of out-of-sample criterion tasks. CI, in turn, is most strongly predicted by group collaboration process, followed by individual skill and group composition. The proportion of women in a group is a significant predictor of group performance, mediated by social perceptiveness.

Modern theories of human evolution foreshadowed by Darwin’s Descent of Man

Peter J. Richerson, Sergey Gavrilets, Frans B. M. de Waal
Science 21 May 2021:
Vol. 372, Issue 6544, eaba3776
Charles Darwin’s The Descent of Man, published 150 years ago, laid the grounds for scientific studies into human origins and evolution. Three of his insights have been reinforced by modern science. The first is that we share many characteristics (genetic, developmental, physiological, morphological, cognitive, and psychological) with our closest relatives, the anthropoid apes. The second is that humans have a talent for high-level cooperation reinforced by morality and social norms. The third is that we have greatly expanded the social learning capacity that we see already in other primates. Darwin’s emphasis on the role of culture deserves special attention because during an increasingly unstable Pleistocene environment, cultural accumulation allowed changes in life history; increased cognition; and the appearance of language, social norms, and institutions.

Read the full article at: science.sciencemag.org

Modes of Thinking (in) Complexity. Key Challenges for Theory, Research, and Practice. Satellite Meeting at CCS2021

October 22nd, 2021, ONLINE

This Satellite Meeting takes the form of a workshop aiming to stimulate the discussion and the collaborative co-construction of new ideas about the nature and state of development of the modes of thinking in and for Complexity Studies.

It aims at identifying key challenges and questions that call to be addressed, including those regarding the development of more complex modes of thinking. It will focus the discussion on the identification of key theoretical, empirical, methodological, technical and practical challenges and/or ways of addressing them.

The workshop will aim to identify and explore how these key questions and challenges relate to the development or adaptation of tools and strategies to support the practice of particular modes of thinking in research and practice and to guide real-world interventions and educational activities (formal and informal).

Through a transdisciplinary approach, this meeting aims at constructing and stimulating productive and generative dialogues for the development of more complex modes of thinking (in) Complexity.

More details at: www.complexthinking.org

Complexity Science – From philosophical foundations to applications in climate and social science. Karoline Wiesner

Many people might not bother to define complexity, thinking that we know it when we see it. Scientists should not afford such luxury. I will provide a compact but comprehensive overview of the different ways that systems can be complex, offering an aggregate definition. I will discuss the role of complexity measures, and why complexity cannot be captured by a single number. This work was done in collaboration with James Ladyman, published with Yale University Press in 2020. At the other end of the spectrum of complexity science is the application to real-world problems. I will present two examples from recent work. The project ‘Aiding the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change using the tools of complexity science’ was done in collaboration with the Green Climate Fund, founded by the UN members in 2014. Equally, political systems are more and more focus of computational and mathematical investigations. I will present conceptual work on the stability of democracy, a collaboration with an international and interdisciplinary group of scientists.

Watch at: www.youtube.com

Mind, Brain and Body: An evolutionary perspective on the human condition

Francis Heylighen

The present course intends to answer the question of what it means to be human. This question has traditionally been the subject of a domain known as “philosophical anthropology”. Anthropology is the science that studies humans—just as entomology studies insects, and herpetology studies reptiles. It does this by carefully observing the physical, social and cultural properties that characterize human beings. This includes the evolution of humans out of their ape-like ancestors. It also includes the behaviors that different groups of humans exhibit in their more “natural state”, for example as hunter-gatherers living in the rainforest as yet unaffected by our highly technological civilization. Philosophical anthropology complements these concrete observations and the resulting theories by studying what has been called the “human condition”. This concerns more existential questions about the meaning of human life:
Ø Who are we?
Ø What are we living for?
Ø What is our fundamental human nature?
Ø What are human values?
Ø What sets humans apart from other beings?

Read the full book at: researchportal.vub.be