ii Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

'Everything we know is knowledge from the past, which may not apply in the future - the problem repeatedly stumbled on by models, algorithms, economic theories, and geopolitical dispositions, which made sense in one era, but then become dysfunctional in another. As social science has repeatedly discovered, the more you use a model, the less likely you are to question it. What starts as a pragmatic tool to answer a question becomes a truth in itself.

And so the models we use to think can also become traps. A model is held on to because it provides meaning and reassurance. Police forces notoriously cling to evidence they collect early in a case in the face of powerful contrary evidence that emerges later, and thus extraordinary miscarriages of justice result. The middle-aged cling to the theories they learned as undergraduates. Organizations become attached to models that become comfortable through use. I remember once meeting the planning team of a government that admitted that their forecasts had been no better than random guesses, but argued that the detailed forecasts were still needed to help with planning. The model became a comfort, even though it had no real use. 

Familiarity also breeds blindness. ...

Expertise can equally entrap. ...

 

The implication, as the Buddha pointed out, is that intelligence has to be at war with and suspicious of itself to be truly intelligent.' pp.120-121.

FIVE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES FOR EFFECTIVE COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE

'The first is the extent of what I call (1) autonomous commons of the intelligence in the system. By this I mean how much the elements of intelligence are allowed free rein, and not subordinated too easily to ego, hierachy, assumption, or ownership.' p.66. Chap. 5. Organizing Principles.

2. Balanced use of the capabilities of intelligence

3. Focus and the right granularity

4. Reflexivity and learning

5. Integration for action

 

'So a group is a we, but it is not just a scaling up of an I. How, then, should we think about the character of this we?' p.102. Chap. 9. The Collective.

 

Individual

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      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

EGO	HIERARCHY
ASSUMPTION	OWNERSHIP

  

n.b. With my emphasis.

 

Geoff Mulgan (2017) Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World, Princeton University Press.

Image: Princeton University Press.

See also: 'AI' : 'group' : 'axes' : 'individual'

 Previously:
Big Mind: How Collective Intelligence Can Change Our World

The INDIVIDUAL ↔ GROUP axis

Looking at the axes of Hodges' model, specifically the INDIVIDUAL ↔ GROUP axis, I realise (as ever) there's more than meets the eye. 

The labels for the axes are placeholders. To a certain degree they are open, flexible. In the template (link and figure in the sidebar), the what should now be familiar labels are provided for guidance, and convenience.

The care, knowledge domains can be viewed as giant - compound placeholders, even as an opportunity to abstract away a lot of detail. In care delivery, as we concentrate on patient care, , clinical interactions, procedures ... we tend to do this in political terms. Until that is, we are jolted to the wider situation and the true realities of policy, law, and practice.

While the HUMANISTIC ↔ MECHANISTIC labels are fixed, I've often shown how the I ↔ G is itself situated, so you could variously have (titles & names to follow...):

person, self, I, individual, client, patient,
carer, student, nurse x, dr y, allied health z ..

|

nurse .., husband, wife, partner, kin, couple, guardian, friend, family, team, group, community, region, nation, populations, Planet

Usually, what we have is a ONE-TO-MANY relationship, that is 1:N.

In Hodges' model can we also say that the team is the 'individual' and the organisation the group?

Another thought regarding self-care. ... Some times this state might be concurrent with being a patient.

Part of the journey in a patient's recovery. But at some point the person does not need a professional and is indepedently self-caring. Care episodes are not what they used to be. Although when 'true' self-care is achieved, it might appear One-to-None, but this is not correct. Not correct, that is, if we can credit society acting as a safety net. Usually, it would be One-to-Family; if there is no family, then the One-to-Community should (must) be the placeholder of choice.

On self-care, and the vertical axis of Hodges' model, is this also a way to define sustainable health and social care?

See also: https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/2025/10/l-shaped-model.html

'Common Knowledge' c/o Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker's latest book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: 

is subtitled: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life.

It is 'common knowledge' that caught my attention. In health care we seek common knowledge on several levels:

person (patient, client) 🠜🠞 healthcare practitioner (whatever their training)
carer - guardian  🠜🠞  healthcare practitioner
person / carer  🠜🠞 team

If we think about the referral processes, interfaces, gateways that people have to negotiate on their way to the above, you see how hard-won common knowledge is.

Critically, the knowledge may be 'common' but how accurate is it?

For the team common knowledge is essential to ensure safety, understanding and continually assessing risk.

In healthcare (and education) for person-centredness we take note of what data is available, but simultaneously begin with a blank sheet. ...

Individual

|

      INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC =========================  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

|

Group

When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows:

'Sometimes, though, private knowledge can no longer be contained even if it is desirable; sometimes something is so evident that it does not even need words to express it. The presidential debate brings to mind a joke Pinker tells about a man in the Soviet Union arrested by the KGB for handing out leaflets, which turn out to be blank sheets of paper. "What is the meaning of this?" they demand. The man replies, "What is there to write? It's so obvious!"' Kelly, p.9.

Pinker, S. (2025). When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows...: Common Knowledge and the Mysteries of Money, Power, and Everyday Life. New York, NY: Scribner.

My source: Jemima Kelly, Life&Arts, FTWeekend, 20/21 September 2025. p.9; and BBC Radio 4 Start the Week - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002k37y

Image source: https://stevenpinker.com/

Previously: 'blank' : '2+2=?' : 'Book: Love's Labour by Stephen Grosz'

Empathy - Relating, Knowing, Objects, Patterns ...

INDIVIDUAL

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

"Logos is our capacity to separate ourselves from the surrounding world, making it into objects in order to recognize it objectively, reflect about it. Any fully developed human relationship needs both principles, the relating and the knowing. Knowing in this sense means the possibility of discriminating between the common ground and the difference of I and Thou. Without knowing, there is fusion or identity but not relationship between a separate I and a separate Thou." p.64.

"Recently a woman training to be an analyst came for supervision and brought with her for the first time a tape of an analytic session she had had with a woman patient of hers. To our amazement, in listening to this tape, we both had at certain times quite some difficulty in distinguishing her own voice from the voice of the patient. This happened mostly when the patient was talking very softly and obviously fighting to overcome feelings of shame. The candidate felt rather shocked at first and asked me whether she might have identified with the patient in an unhealthy way. I heard her interventions on the tape as being genuinely in tune to the atmosphere and situation of the patient at those moments, so I told her that to my mind she was responding in an empathetic way to her patient. It was apparent that the patient needed this kind of response, for later in the tape one could hear that the patient became more confident in exploring her feelings. I think the candidate reacted to the needs of her patient with a concordant countertransference reaction." p.38.

Jacoby, M. (1984) The Analytic Encounter: Transference and Human Relationship. Toronto: INNER CITY BOOKS.

In this text and other reading I can see a possible means as to how the concept of identity can be used between the Individual - Group (other).

To follow soon:

Book review iii. General Psychotherapy: Principles and Common Theoretical Aspects - Rediscovering Humanity

Hodges' model: How the I-G axis is idealised

As a conceptual model, Hodges' model is idealised.

As an example, take the concept individual in the vertical axis. Whether a patient, client, carer, student or teacher, the individual is where the self also resides.

'I' - INDIVIDUAL 'Self'

|

     INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

spiritual - emotional self (my mind) Identity?	material / physical self (my body) identity?
social self (realised, or not; loneliness, excluded, isolated, ostracized, or loner by choice/character. Socio-Politically we arrive at 'civil society', if indeed it is civil.)	political self (whether or not politically motivated / engaged. Self as a citizen arises here, with the law in whether in States voting is mandatory.)

 James, W. (1892). The conscious self. In W. James The principles of psychology (Volume 1), Chapter 10. Harvard university Press: MA.

"From the very beginning of the chapter, James established that he was going to take a fresh approach to his subject. "In its widest possible sense," he wrote,

'a man's Self is the sum total of all that he CAN call his, not only his body and his psychic powers, but his clothes and his house, his wife and children, his ancestors and friends, his reputation and works, his lands and horses, and yacht and bank-account.' (p. 279) 

The explication James offered for this claim is telling: All these various things and persons are part of an individual's self insofar as they give that individual the same emotions (pp. 279-280). In pointing thus toward the emotional foundations of the self, James indicated right at the start that he was going to follow Bain (1859, chap. 7) and others in reaching beyond the old rationalist approach to "the soul" in order to ground his treatment of the human self on the experience and makeup of the whole person, emotional as well as intellectual." (p.107)

 
Leary, David E. "William James on the Self and Personality: Clearing the Ground for Subsequent Theorists, Researchers, and Practitioners."Reflections on The Principles of Psychology: William James after a Century. Ed. William James, Michael G. Johnson, and Tracy B. Henley. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1990. 101-37. Print.

NHS 75 Years - Happy Birthday!

"Here's looking at you kid."

INDIVIDUAL

|

INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

Peter Jones 20 June, 2023, Warrington, UK	ELLIOT MCGUCKEN/ANIMAL NEWS AGENCY
SOCIETY PUBLIC SERVICES

- and in another 75 years!

My source: 'Night Vision A full moon is framed perfectly, creating the impression of a watchful presence behind the North Window desert rock formation in Arches National Park, Utah. ELLIOT MCGUCKEN/ANIMAL NEWS AGENCY. The Times, 22nd June 2023, p.32.

(Photo source: https://petapixel.com/2023/06/23/photographer-captures-full-moon-that-looks-like-a-giant-eye/)

NHS75 image - https://twitter.com/NCFCareForum/status/1676478578693664770?s=20

Thanks for the memories . . .

. . . may they last your life time and then some . . .

INDIVIDUAL

|

INTERPERSONAL    :     SCIENCES               

HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

|

GROUP

Peter Jones 20 June, 2023, Warrington, UK	self-storage (physical)

Photo: Peter Jones 20th June, 2023, Warrington, UK.