Friday Afternoon Links

Assorted content to end your week.

- Dan Gardner rightly points out how too much concentrated power and a refusal to take advice can lead to bad decisions. And sadly, our federal government serves as a classic case in point:

“Most of the time, taking advice benefits your accuracy,” notes Kelly See, associate professor of organization at New York University. “That’s because a lot of times there’s some error in your estimate. You may not know what that error is. You may be a little high, you may be a little low.” The same is true of other people’s judgments, but their errors are likely to be different, so if you pool the judgments the errors will tend to cancel each other out. “When you combine opinions, you usually get a more accurate decision, something that’s closer to the truth.”

This simple but important phenomenon is why the average guess of 20 people about the number of jelly beans in a jar is likely to be more accurate than any one guess. It’s why the average of many polls is likely to be more accurate than any one poll. And it’s why prediction markets usually do better at foreseeing outcomes than any one person, no matter how well informed that person is.

But it takes a certain humility to listen to others and seriously take their views into consideration. And power does not promote humility. Quite the opposite.

“We found that the more power the managers had, the more confident they were in their judgment, and the less their co-workers reported that they took advice,” See notes.
...
I must admit the prime minister hasn’t invited me over to 24 Sussex to chat about decision-making and organizational theory. I am a distant observer. But I think some facts are clear.

He inherited a government that centralizes authority to a far greater extent than any other in the western world. And he made it more centralized. There is also no evidence — at least not any I am aware of — that the prime minister recognizes the danger confronting him and has taken steps to avoid it. He doesn’t disperse authority. Doesn’t consult widely and seek out contrary views. Shows not a glimmer of the self-doubt that is the best and final defence against hubris.

Now, you tell me. Should any leader be that powerful?

- Tim Harper and the Ottawa Citizen both deliver scathing indictments of the federal government's inaction on Attawapiskat in particular and First Nations living conditions in general.

- The provinces can apparently all agree on the need for federal action to curb sodium levels. But we can count on the Cons to once again side with childhood obesity if the alternative is any meaningful regulation.

- Finally, if it's worth criticizing any waste of money on a firearm-related program, the Cons' $214 million to euthanize a single moose would seem like a far more obvious target than the gun registry data the Cons are determined to destroy.

[Edit: fixed typo.]