Collective Intelligence, A New Reality - New Hope

May 16th, 2005

Humans, collectively, are an intelligent lot. Having said that, we are not all created equal nor do we all share a common interest.

Strong suits insofar as intellect, physical health, physical design, mental health, personality, stamina, as well as life's obstacles, and economics all drive one's direction in life and create one's path. The map on which you may find your path is filled with missed options, untraveled roads, wrong turns, and choices subconsciously or consciously overlooked.

You may have embarked on a career in plumbing but had life's path been layed out differently you would now be a marine biologist, doctor, or physicist. Your aptitude and intellect may have allowed you to travel in a different direction but for whatever reason you are on the road you are on.

Because you as a plumber had the intellect and aptitude to have become a doctor/researcher, your contribution to mankind was not necessarily being used in the best possible way in terms of contribution to the global databank of knowledge.

What is now taking place is a remarkable combining of human intellect…a form of mind merging allowing the strength's of each person to work collectively with others toward problem solving like never before. Person's who for whatever reasons were unable to contribute to the global knowledge process now have the vehicle with which to do so.

The medium for this new mind melding is the Internet. While on the Internet we are privy to information garnered from many professions. That we may not hail from a particular profession does not mean we are incapable of comprehending the information within that professional database if given the opportunity.

Most people can successfully negate misinformation and disinformation quite quickly. Online however, it is a collective process aided by discussion groups, research sites, etc. where the moderate thinking majority rein in and frequently expose those who are corrupt. Extreme unfounded claims and statements are made, and proclaimed as truth, but the majority of moderate thinkers aid in toning this down.

This form of mass critiquing and screening gives the global population the opportunity to have well reviewed data at their fingertips as never before. The laborer, who could have been a physicist can now contribute to the review process of the global databank of knowledge.

A Fear of Embracing Change

This newly formed collective intellect and learning is frightening to some of those who previously held domain of knowledge over us.

A medical doctor was once the only one privy to the details of disease, the intricacies of  research, and modes of treatment. The good doctors understood their limited understanding of the complexities of illness so they listened and learned from their patient. Other doctors took offense at patient input. Until now the patient had to have blind faith.

These days patients arrive armed with information and, more importantly, relevant questions pertaining to their situation at hand.

Most of us know this does not sit well with some doctors. Some doctors deride all information the patient has garnered from the Internet, forgetting that websites like PubMed and others can arm the patient with more current research data than they have available.

Complex diseases such as Lyme disease are rife with vague and multi-system symptoms that are hard to explain. Many patients cannot communicate their specific and sometimes varied symptoms until they hear how it was explained by others experiencing the same symptoms. This online communication is critical in aiding the patient to put their thoughts in perspective enough to effectively relate them to the doctor.

Wise doctors embrace this and look at it as a furthering of their profession toward a better diagnostic picture.  They realize that patients are using data from the Internet to explain something they could not previously relate.

  Many times the health issues of the patient are subjective in nature.  Subjectivity now seems to be a dirty word in medicine yet is the foundation of all medicine. These subjective complaints can be the hardest symptoms to have taken seriously. With tools like the Internet patients can discuss these problems with others in the same boat perhaps finding an objective measurement of their subjective symptom.    

Teachers and professors, not just of medicine, once could lord over the student because they had not yet imparted their knowledge to the student. The wise teachers encouraged debate and understood their own limitations within the subject matter while others smothered thought and questions thereby never revealing their own lack of expertise in the subject at hand. Now the students, like the patients, are armed with knowledge and informed questions enabling them to extract details from what once may have been a reluctant educator.

Internet Data, Good or Bad?

Frequently, whether in colleges or in the doctors offices of the world we are warned against the evils and usefulness of the information available on the Internet. One has to question the root of the logic of those who speak against this newfound flow of data. In the past if data were peer reviewed, published in ink, and placed in a library these data were taken as fact and put into curriculum regardless of how flawed or biased the process was in facilitating that bit of information.

Now if this information is flawed it's much more likely to be critiqued by hundreds or thousands in chat rooms, newsgroups, forums, blogs and websites around the world. Those who buy into nonsense were going to buy into it anyway somewhere, but now the majority of people will ask good questions and seek data from very good sources bypassing the nonsense. Those who believe anything they read are still going to be out there and, they are comprised of our educators, doctors, politicians, clergy, laborers, bellhops, maids and business leaders.

When the data given online reek of propaganda the wise people alert others, much to the dismay of the corporate world of mis-information and dis-information. All too often people who had control of information were dangerously skewing the information they released to the lowly public. One good example of this is data being withheld about the prevalence of disease.

In one situation close to this author's heart, a particular government health body told anyone who asked that there was no Lyme disease in their area and furthermore there were no ticks known to carry and transmit the disease there. As a result, the public were not taking the precautions necessary to protect themselves. Many needlessly contracted the illness. The Internet revealed the true results of the governments' own research showing they knew of the seriousness at hand for some years   The general practitioners, our frontline defence, had relied of the government to provide the data but they had been kept in the dark, yet again.

 

Trust in those in control of our health who are paid to protect the public is as low as it has been in memory, and for good reason.  Examples are everywhere from medical guideline writers having conflicts of interest to pharmaceutical product licensing to firings of whistle-blowers who dared to reveal truths.

 

Most people, when given enough information are able to garner the seed from the chaff and when given the opportunity will seek the seed, not the chaff.  When they find the seed they take whatever action is required to sew that seed.

Things Must Change

Using the medical and scientific research community as a prime examples of why things must change we firstly have to understand that those in charge will resist change.

Typically a researcher has to seek funding to embark on the study of an idea or theory he/she may have. The sources of funding are finite, fought after, and often come with the price tag of giving up intellectual and economic rights to the final product to a private or corporate entity. 

Only those persons or corporations with enough money to fund or co-fund research are privy to the ownership benefits of research. They then are able to gain more control of data, increase their wealth and, in too many cases then can dictate to the scientists what is to be achieved from their benevolence.  

Once a researcher has funding in place and research is complete, papers are produced. When reviewed by a potentially biased or conflicted group of peers, the final paper is then published in journals related to the specific area of medicine or science the research was deemed within.

Too often those who fund the research have considerable influence in the publishing of that information (ie. well placed peers in the peer review/publishing process). Only those data the funding source wants released goes to print. When that data, which suited the needs of that funding source were printed it greatly limited and guided the worlds' databank of knowledge. When driven by money...sanity, sustainability, moral responsibility, medical responsibility, ethical responsibility and wisdom are lost.

Cover-up of undesirable findings and failure to disclose are all too common.

The Internet can expose information that is tainted because the data is critiqued by the masses. Many of those critiquing may be within the realm of that field of information or may simply be those who have the aptitude to understand the data. There is a lot of  free data published online (still not enough) allowing this critiquing to take place.

There are those who would like to severely restrict this free flow of information. This would be a disaster and would take away the biggest opportunity mankind has had to make better choices for its survival.

Taxpayers May Benefit

Information control can be powerful so clever ways have been devised over the years for corporations and not so well intended persons to access public money without calling it public money. Research grants, tax breaks, wide ranging corporate deductions for 'research and development', public/private partnerships are all methods by which corporations can access public funds.

As taxpayers we see tax freedom day move further and further into the calendar year yet we have less and less control over our destiny as corporate control wraps itself ever tighter around our lives, choking any freedom we think we have in determining our own destiny.

Even though we are repeatedly told how well things are in life and how life has improved, the world is at greater risk of catastrophic failure than ever before, mishandled by the heartless, faceless world of economics. No one can state with any level of credibility that we are not heading down a perilous road of single-minded, consumption driven, self-destructiveness.

The marrying of corporate money with public money to fund research projects (co-funding) is done under the guise of a wise use of public funds, and stretching a dollar. In reality the public gives up control of the information it funded putting it in the hands of boardrooms.

These boardrooms in turn can cleverly control and fund the election of politicians hand-picked to ensure the continual flow of public monies into their coffers. They fund these political ties from the profits earned from the use of public monies…a perpetual bottomless pit.

No reasonable person would allow their destiny to be controlled by profit yet when the benefactors of profit hold all the data we are left with nothing to question. We can only surmise and assume then live with the consequences.

The Internet if managed correctly can change this and we can own the data we paid for.

The controlled, directed, and filtered global databank of knowledge presently makes up the content of science, history, and medical textbooks from which our young minds learn.

We put our futures in these young hands yet we give them unwittingly only part of the puzzle to work with.

Monetary interests have severely infiltrated, restricted and directed our databank of knowledge. As corporations merge more frequently, those in control of this knowledge are fewer and fewer. Information is power and we are being led by many not so well intended participants.

Universities are now covertly corporations for profit, heavily laden with conflicts of interest. All research emanating from these bodies is unfortunately suspect and trust in our most prestigious institutions has gone out the window.

A well-funded researcher was once held in high esteem. Now one questions the source and purpose of his/her funding and the possibly tainted results.

Our professors teach to young minds these conflicted data with full confidence, however naïve and mis-guided, that what they are teaching is good solid information.

We need these educators, our 'conduits of information between generations', to be more vigilant in checking the source of the data they teach and to also encourage open debate and sourcing of data.

If those involved in the creation of information at our institutions, and those empowered to impart that information all step up to the plate and wrest control back from the cold corporate world then perhaps the public can once again get good value for their dollar.

The Internet can be an important tool in this regaining of control.

Keeping and Improving Open Access of Data Online

In order to arm the educators with methods to check sources and possible conflicts we must demand an open process. There is this mis-guided notion that the collective intellect of the human race is incapable of discerning fact from fiction when it comes to data outside the day-to-day realm of an individual's experience. The truth is, that by applying this collective online intelligence we can have that plumber with the aptitude of a physicist now able to contribute to the accuracy and cleansing of the global databank of knowledge. 

Because he has been a plumber he has a view or perspective that is less cluttered or biased while reviewing this scientific data.

In many cases we are now exposing the flawed, intentionally designed research from which important decisions are being made for what it is...corrupt, globally destructive, species threatening, restrictive in genetic diversity and perilously consumption driven. Some groups have begun to demand to know the source, design and intent of research.

A proclamation that data be allowed to flow freely into the public domain is our moral and ethical right. In fact it is now beyond a right…it is a must. True whistle blowers must be encouraged and protected with all of our might and will. They will be the cornerstones of abating the restriction and ownership of data which could affect the future of the world.

By putting all data in the public realm for this giant screening process it may just allow humans to avoid self destruction.

The Internet could be the bright light in the path toward this process and we must not allow it to be constrained by neither limiting access nor withholding information.

Jim M. Wilson A.I.I.C.
jimwilson@telus.net