Knowledge Bridges
Discussion
Heather Marsh discusses 'Concentric User Groups, a methodology to include elite knowledge without reverting to 'elitism'. See also: Epistemic Communities, part one of the article.
Heather Marsh:
"In a concentric user group, people or ideas promoted to the center by their peer group receive greatest amplification and their findings will be audited, amplified and explained to the general public by outer circles. While transparency will ensure that conversations at the centre are heard by all, it is unlikely that they will be understood by those with no knowledge of the system. It is not reasonable to expect those in the epistemic community to explain their reasoning to every member of the user group and attempt to educate every member to an elite level of understanding, but those of the user group with an interest have a right to education and understanding of that which effects them.
Communication should not be the full responsibility of the experts in the centre, but should be carried over expertise bridges by full transparency and user participation; it is the responsibility of each user in an open system to educate themselves to their own level of comfort using the data and user population at each level to inform themselves. Their input and decision making impact would then be commensurate with the expertise they acquire. The epistemic community in the centre should not need to protect themselves from attacks from completely uninformed users, the circles of expertise which promoted them to the centre should also verify and explain their findings to the outer circles.
Ideas can never be furthered if discussion is always at the level of the novice and the ideas of an expert can only be tested by other experts with equal understanding of the topic; in a concentric user group, the receptive field is stronger near the centre, so informed opinions will be heard more clearly by experts in the centre, but full transparency will allow anyone from any part of the system to be as informed as they wish to be by any other part.
Knowledge bridges allow discussion to be held at every level of expertise and corrected by those with greater knowledge. Knowledge bridges also allow input from casual users to be instantly promoted to be heard by the epistemic community if the user group finds the points valid. Knowledge bridges need to ensure that the best ideas are promoted and disseminated, regardless of the attractiveness or popularity of the person with the expertise.
Acceptance must be controlled by the entire user group, and the user group must always have the power to shun, thereby removing power from, any peer promoted expert. This is necessary to avoid a closed oligarchy; but it must be approached warily so that the amplified voices in the center are the true experts, not the most populist and attractive choices. It is incumbent on the user group to protect the center from celebrity grabbing manipulation if they are not to recreate the populist systems of representative democracy. This can only be done by promoting actions and ideas divorced from their source, and ensuring that idea credit stealing is a shameful action. This is essential to ensure innovation and radically different, not easily understood ideas are properly heard and tested. It is also essential to ensure that new ideas from unpopular sources are promoted.
In representative democracy we have learned that people in general prefer to place their faith in leaders who are like them instead of leaders who are so expert they do not understand them. In order to avail ourselves of the greatest expertise on each topic, we must place our most knowledgeable experts in a position of transparent authority while also providing a knowledge bridge leading from their ideas to the casually interested observer. According to Leta Hollingworth’s research, to be a leader of their contemporaries a child must be more intelligent but not too much more intelligent than them. A discrepancy of more than about 30 points of IQ does not allow for leadership, or even respect or effective communication. The same principle appears to hold for levels of knowledge on a given topic.
Hollingworth notes: A lesson which many gifted persons never learn as long as they live is that human beings in general are inherently very different from themselves in thought, in action, in general intention, and in interests. Many a reformer has died at the hands of a mob which he was trying to improve in the belief that other human beings can and should enjoy what he enjoys. This is one of the most painful and difficult lessons that each gifted child must learn, if personal development is to proceed successfully. It is more necessary that this be learned than that any school subject be mastered. Failure to learn how to tolerate in a reasonable fashion the foolishness of others leads to bitterness, disillusionment, and misanthropy (Hollingworth, 1942, p. 259).
This loss of expertise is a tragedy for both the experts and society. There needs to be a method of organization that will use all expertise at the level it will be most effective and avoid communication barriers. Those with elite knowledge need to be able to have relatively quiet conversations with those that can expand and audit the knowledge base while still providing complete transparency, permeability and control for the rest of the user group." (http://georgiebc.wordpress.com/2013/01/23/concentric-groups-knowledge-bridges-and-epistemic-communities-2/)