Communications’ Role in Hierarchy
Edwin Hutchins, Cognition_in_the_Wild
A common solution to the problem of reaching a decision is to grant to a particular individual the authority to declare the nature of reality . This is especially easy to see in settings where the relevant reality is socially defined - such as the law , where an important state of affairs ( guilt or innocence ) exists only because some authority (a judge) says it exists.
But this
solution is also adopted with respect to physical realities where time
pressures or other factors require a commitment to a particular interpretation
. This second case comes in two versions : one in which the other members of
the community may present evidence to the authority , and one in which the authority
acts autonomously .
Hierarchy without Communication
Suppose all
members of a group attempt to form an interpretation , but one network has the
authority to decide the nature of reality for all the members.
The
cognitive labor of interpreting the situation may be socially distributed in a
way that permits an exploration of more alternatives in the interpretation
space than would be explored by -a single individual with confirmation bias;
however , if the alternative interpretations never encounter one another , the wider
search might as well have never happened . The decision reached by the group is
simply the decision of an individual .
One might imagine this as a sort of
"king" or " dictator " model , but lack of communication
can also bring it about in situations that are not supposed to have this
property . The ship collision discussed earlier is an example of a case in
which the correct interpretation of a situation arose within a group but
somehow never reached the individual who had the authority to decide which
model of reality the group must organize its behavior around .
Hierarchy with Communication
This
situation is modeled in the simulation by changing the communication pattern so
that one of the networks (the one in the position of authority ) receives input
from all the others, but the others do not receive external inputs from one
another .
In the
simulation under these conditions , the network that is the authority will
follow the weight of the evidence presented to it by the other networks (figure
5.5). As the other networks move in interpretation space, the center of gravity
of the weight of evidence presented by the other networks also moves.
Depending on
the persuasiveness with which the other networks communicate with the authority
, it may be pulled to one interpretation or another , or even change its mind
about which is the better interpretation (figure 5.5c).
The
authority thus becomes a special kind of cognitive apparatus ; one that tracks
the center of gravity of the entire community in conceptual space at each point
in time .
