SECTION II appendix B:

The dire consequences of

faulty collective decision making

Honesty is the best policy 

FoolQuest.com strives at recruitment of prospective collaborators with integrity to accept responsibility for ones actions, enjoying pride in accomplishment, self-motivated, risk tolerant, curious, creative, problem solving, honest and capable of exchanging the most frank and brutal criticism while maintaining undiminished respect for one another, seeking the challenge and stimulation of worthwhile and demanding goals put forth and yearning to take command and control of our lives.

For such is the positive power of negative thinking!

And far short of paralytic anxiety, simple avoidance and cognitive narrowing or tunnel vision as to constrain ones repertoire of alternative solutions, introverted defensive pessimism only seeks never to raise expectations unduly, in order thereby to consistently reduce disappointment and anticipatory stress thereof. Whereas the Contrarian realistically cautious optimism of extroverted defensive pessimism is the active caution channeling even the most perpetual anxiety constructively into advance troubleshooting by anticipating even the worst-case scenario of any situation in order thereby to carry out planning so as to minimize losses and damage.

For example, any serious and successful investor, however necessarily risk tolerant, never simply relies upon luck, but demands the most rigorously critical extroverted defensive pessimism in formal business plans.

Experimentally, in good or bad circumstances alike, depressive pessimists demonstrate more realistic judgment and more accurate prediction than optimists, both perform equally well and better the median norm, but neither tend to perform well in attempting to exchange respective coping strategies. Just as the saying goes, it's how you play the game: To the rational disposition, even the good faith attempt at gathering supporting evidence for arguing rationally, and the greater the challenge, nevertheless piques sympathetic curiosity whereas howsoever even seeming evasion only raises the specter of malignant and dishonest ulterior motive to dishonesty.

And clearly, overconfident optimism also risks dangerous illusion with painfully debilitating pressures of suppression and denial.

For just as the saying goes, it's how you play the game: To the rational disposition, even the good faith attempt at gathering supporting evidence for arguing rationally, and the greater the challenge, nevertheless piques sympathetic curiosity whereas howsoever even seeming evasion only raises the specter of malignant and dishonest ulterior motive to dishonesty.

The Fairy Tale so-called Power of Positive Thinking only really amounts to lying to oneself. Those damn motivational speakers can and do cause harm.

And the periodic scheduled exchange of empty bogus motivational speaking is called the support group. Such support groups are depressing and a waste of time. Such support groups are non-encounter groups, group therapy without the therapy, bland, safe and typically structured to rule out and invalidate everything except small talk with robotically bogus sympathy and encouragement on cue, in brief, marshmallow-throwing (blithe dispensation of patronizingly insincere positive strokes or sweet nothings in order to pacify hesitation and discontent) and the institutionalization of docile heteronymous denial, committee politics for the rest of us, dishonest Anti-Critical lip service to false emotion.

Cognitive dissonance is the inner conflict of dishonest hypocrisy, manifest in dialogue as Antiprocess.

For, even however seemingly stubborn or stupid in persistently missing the point, Antiprocess is a cycle of the psychological defense mechanism or filter for avoidance of cognitive dissonance in preprocessing threatening or unsettling information subconsciously, but not consciously, indeed, actively evading conscious processing.

Antiprocess commonly manifests in selective self reinforcement, illogic, vigilantly dense half aware lame rebuttals and evasive non sequitur stock responses including poorly analyzed counter examples in flawed support all thereof.

No question is too stupid to be asked and no answer is too wise to be given. True brainstorming depends on encouraging openness without picayune anxiety over conflict or controversy.

IN THE END, technique can't substitute for courage, assertiveness even to simply refuse to take a silent hint instead of just reflexive knee-jerk backing down to even the very slightest and most subtle intimidation of bullying and Anti-Critical Bias.

Especially under relative conditions of captivity, the phenomenon of manipulation is best defined as undue advantage from trickery via the exploitation of affective innate and conditioned triggers or "push buttons" to undermine and overwhelm, even barrage, resistance, better judgment and autonomy of the target, via subtext of emotional incentive and disincentive. –As distinct from open coercion alone or substantive disinformation, lies. Typically, the manipulator obfuscates the nature of their coercion exercised, along with whatever self-serving advantage thereof.

For example, such insult as condescension that after all comes of love can be less painful than insult that comes without it, or more so, or equally so, as the case may be: but be that as it may, it is, in any case significantly more harmful. This is because insult provokes anger and hostility, but hostility towards people who even sincerely profess to love you and act on your own best interest is curbed and turned inwards, internalized, and experienced as self-hostility, namely guilt. Such deceptive appeals undermining the target’s credulity and defenses even whilst actually exercising coercion constitute often likewise internalized flagrantly manipulative behavior, conscious or unconscious.

Self censorship may occur because of intimidation, deference to authority or experience, sheer insecurity, or simply in the face of more vocal and confident participants. And just such group domination can contribute to the problem of social loafing and even dangerous bystander apathy when participants disengage from the process, transferring responsibility and counting upon others to pick up the slack.

Social loafing is less likely the better motivated, especially given any stimulation, interest or meaning to the task either intrinsically, value for it's own sake, or socially, or given whatever stake in the outcome. Individual accountability, particularly by exposure to ongoing evaluation by teammates, is most often cited as the antidote to social loafing. Or, just the opposite, encouragement and the elimination or reduction of pressure and intimidation may be key.

Alas, all the more corrosive, the disingenuous, hypocritical and manipulative strategy ostensibly against intimidation and oversensitivity is often the codling insecurity by actively punishing assertiveness and excellence.

Beware of Skilled Incompetence, the consequent adaptation by gutless executives marshalling information Inductively, and thus avoiding any relevant productive outcome of conflict on any level from controversy and never changing the course of action, fixed malagenda under predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree)!

 

Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."

 

flow chart • table • Quick Quiz

some social headgames

[PowerPoints] Reference the Abilene Paradox (among other witness-inhibiting factors of bystander apathy also Revisiting the Abilene Paradox, dealing with how people can together agree to go along on any ill advised course of action that few of them actually prefer, out of miscommunication and indecisive behavior, when the need to act together, to perceive themselves and to be seen as cohesive, and the deadly common misconceptions regarding criticism override rather than encourage the need for investigation and expression to explicitly question and clarify group assumptions, desires, opinions, sympathies and even obvious knowledge, and what it takes to begin to break such a dysfunctional cycle.

Of course, in the alternative, anyone must be free to express whatever persistent interest. And, contra wise, even boredom ought to be genuine and vocal. Non response as passive aggression or denial or as a deliberate and underhanded ploy to steer the agenda, is not very sporting, and certainly no less dangerous than complicity from sheer lack of initiative.

In all things, the dynamic and flexible social engineering principles, personal autonomy, good sportsmanship and responsible values of rational democratic progress are systematic doubt, hope in the honest embrace of fallibility and tolerance for uncertainty, substantive discourse, debate of disputes, criticism without punishment and no insult taken, free inquiry into problems openly and publicly without fear of punishment, indeed, imagination, open unfounded speculation about different case scenarios pursuant to any number of varied and different proposed measures, without need of conforming or in any way limiting said speculations to any accepted quasi-official position.

The very values and aptitudes ever fostered in brainstorming and also fiction writing!

In Reactionary societies and groups, especially the more Progressive the guise, and actually the less so at least where whatever the Reactionary agenda may at least be out in the open, good sportsmanship, controversy without acrimony, is all dismissed as impossible, Utopian, too perfect for real people. And yet, controversy even however heated and close to the bone and yet without acrimony, does occur, as may be confirmed Empirically, by observation.

But is just such success ever entirely consistent, even among people of the utmost good faith? Probably not. After all, no one is perfect. And yet there will be greater ratio of success in striving openly than by actually enforcing the lowest standard, an accommodation made to seem realistic under the pretext of touchy-feely sensitivity to vulnerable emotion, which then becomes dishonest repressive extortion by a bunch of conniving whiners and bullies for all others to conform.

Indeed, beyond simple Empathic Failure, underestimation of situational factors often engenders Fundamental Attribution Error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect), motivating, in turn, such blanket rationalizations as the Hostile Attribution Bias typical of the reactive victim type bully, and, in specific, Anti-Critical Bias, Ad Hominem Abusive and dishonest peer pressuring emotional extortion against controversy expressed in the perceived right never to be challenged in any views or statements whatsoever, as a quite frankly loony hyper-fragile imperative of personal comfort.

In the case of the inverted narcissist, who was suppressed and abused by overbearing caregivers, there is the strong urge not to offend. Intimacy and inter-dependence are great. Parental or peer pressures are irresistible and result in conformity and self-deprecation. Aggressive tendencies, strongly repressed in the social pressure cooker, teem under the veneer of forced civility and violent politeness. Constructive ambiguity, a non-committal "everyone is good and right", an atavistic variant of moral relativism and tolerance bred of fear and of contempt - are all at the service of this eternal vigilance against aggressive drives, at the disposal of a never ending peacekeeping mission.

 

-  The Weapon of Language by Dr. Sam Vaknin

 

 

Indeed, such seems precisely the slippery antidemocratic approach outlined in 'A Handbook on Formal Consensus Decisionmaking:' 'A Guide to Formal Consensus' by C. T. Butler and Amy Rothstein, striving for inclusive process of painstaking conflict resolution, cooperation, consideration and non coercion such that all so often ends, all lip service in vain, only by actually worsening the inevitable tyranny of the collective over the individual resultant from simply getting out voted.

Alarmingly, rather than open conflict or controversy, dissidence is to be simply ruled out of order! Recent past decision are not to be revisited, because consensus takes priority over selfishness irrelevant to the established consensus. No one is supposed too step out of line by ever changing their minds. Thus is controversy concealed and repressed by a reciprocally brainwashed majority. Exactly the sort of dominance and manipulation sought to avoid. -Dare I say, insensitive? Not to mention, disturbingly Reactionary, signed in blood. Can it be?

Indeed, in the immortal words of Aba Eban, "consensus is what many people say in chorus but do not believe as individuals."

Plans will simply never be subject to reevaluation or revision, as call for reevaluation and revision is distinctly and deliberately ruled out under the ongoing verification process of the formal consensus decision procedure.

Indeed, let us all serenely cherish together, the following seemingly Orwellian nugget: 

Although every individual must consent to a decision before it is adopted, if there are any objections, it is not the choice of the individual alone to determine if an objection prevents the proposal from being adopted. Every objection or concern must first be presented before the group and either resolved or validated. A valid objection is one in keeping with all previous decisions of the group and based upon the commonly-held principles or foundation adopted by the group. The objection must not only address the concerns of the individual, but it must also be in the best interest of the group as a whole. If the objection is not based upon the foundation, or is in contradiction with a prior decision, it is not valid for the group, and therefore, out of order.

Oh, doubleplusgood!    War is peace   Freedom is slavery   Ignorance is strength

Indeed, similar slippery and reasonable sounding language, lip service for individuality and controversy as a celebrated democratic value, is all too often similarly qualified into the menacing oblivion of predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree).

Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."

Indeed, included is a slippery expanded definition of violence into bullying whatsoever, but of such cunning manipulative ambiguity as to appeal to the love of freedom while actually guilt-tripping all and sundry into agreeable passive helplessness.

But wait: Rather, as a better alternative instead, to preserve integrity, quite surprisingly after the initial tone of their rhetoric, Butler and Rothstein actually strive that inclusion and cooperation, along with creativity and efficiency techniques, psychological group dynamics and all manner of other fine ideas, most advantageously be integrated as adjunct to the hopefully meaningful, valuable and ultimately productive conflict and controversy of democratic adversarial systems rather whole sale replacement or needlessly repressive sublimation thereof, which is always only insipid and dangerous.

What is important and all to often illusive is simply fair play. After all, the guarantee of the legitimacy of any cooperation is still the freedom of the opposition to actively and vocally dissent.

Indeed, ever if consensus be truly so prized, Butler and Rothstein propose to force consensus via rigid committee procedures whereby any dissenter whosever, is actually empowered to quite completely obstruct progress and force declaration of a block until substantive resolution or compromise is achieved! 

As it turns out, all actually polar opposite from Phil Bartle's highly disrespectful Inductivist hypocrisy of dropping ideas quietly ostensibly full of the very milk of human kindness and in order to spare people's feelings, but, truth to tell, allowing dissenters to save face and unpleasantness by being silenced of their voices, in exchange for the craven concealment of controversy.  

All such slippery stone walling non cooperation peer pressure as Phil Bartle's highly disrespectful Inductivist hypocrisy of dropping ideas quietly ostensibly in order to spare people's feelings is nothing but a sly manipulative exercise in bullying and a perversion of the intent of true brainstorming. The sly sanctimonious repressiveness folly of non confrontationalism sabotages the free clash of creativity and investigation, castigating dissidence even in principle, and crushing all democratic values.

Indeed, often not only interim criticism but cross-talk at all! 'Cross-talk,' of course, is a term derived from radio communications wherein simultaneous usage of the same frequency causes interference for others, slippery propagandistically redeployed here into likewise somewhat pejoratively usage denoting whatever ongoing private discussion and planning amongst the participants during whatever proceedings. And when so-called cross-talk, really meaning possible dissidence, is thus actively discouraged as wasteful digression rather than a logistical imperative of real input and participation, then this policy probably will not apply to or likewise equally prohibit private consultation amongst the leaders and facilitators to keep things running smoothly and on target.

Dialectically, even leading questions ought to be honestly and rhetorically transparent. The ugly secret is that a "facilitator" may already have "the answer", and via however covertly leading questions, invites a roomful of people to express their ideas only then to try to manipulate the responses to fit an existing covert agenda. Indeed, agreement through facilitated group discussion, seeking mutual understanding on a given subject, is often actually achieved via arrival at a predetermined outcome through mediated or facilitated dialogue, often by ignoring, obstructing, ruling out, labeling, impugning, intimidating, ridiculing, or simply ignoring any form of dissent. In short, by sly bullying tactics.

Randall B. Dunham, Ph.D has even coined an appealing name that has come into use in denoting just such sinister Consensus and Facilitation chicanery, The Delphi Technique [diagram].

However, we remain no less indebted to her for the opportunity learn how CliqueBusters TM  can best prepare to diffuse and disrupt devious consensus manipulation!  

	Decision Making

In Delphi decision groups, a series of questionnaires may be sent to selected respondents (Delphi group) who might never meet face-to-face, inputting only by email or snail mail. Members of the groups may be selected because the are experts or possess relevant information.

Though in n the meantime, the technique has also been adapted to public meetings, according to Lynn M. Stuter.

Steps include:

• Members are asked to share their assessment and explanation of a problem or predict a future state of affairs
• Replies are gathered, summarized, and then fed back to all the group members, or to the public meeting. And this is where the leading fix can be put in by the unscrupulous "facilitators!"
• Because participants are then called upon to make another decision based upon the new information, however straight forward and objective or else deviously slanted!
• The process may be repeated until the the responses converge satisfactory. Whatever that really means!

The success of this process is thought to depend upon the member's expertise and communication skill. Also, each response may require adequate time for reflection and analysis, that asynchronous communication allows. The major merits touted for the Delphi process include:

• Elimination of interpersonal problems. But at what cost?!
• Efficient use of expert's time.
• Diversity of ideals.
• Even accuracy of solutions and predictions. 

The Delphi Technique is a prioritization process devised for obtaining the consensus opinion of a group of experts involving a series of surveys, typically conducted anonymously, providing repeated measurement and controlled feedback among participants. The Delphi Technique is intended for use should ever there be insufficient objective information for decision making. Indeed, some studies, however disputable, have claimed that Delphi, applicable in a relatively inexpensive and timely method, can be substantially more accurate than individual experts and meeting face to face in traditional groups, because of how the Delphi Technique takes advantage of multiple "expert" views and mitigates obstacles and pitfalls the likes of predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome (to whatever degree), undue influence and individual bias. Indeed, the Delphi Technique has even been described as cyclic process employing disagreement, yes the failure or refusal of consensus, as a trigger for deeper analysis.

But as with any other technique, some applications will be better than others and the Delphi Technique can be gravely misused, especially as manipulatively exploiting the very predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome, all such undue influence that the Delphi Technique was originally conceived to mitigate but now instead manipulatively redeployed in service of exactly whatever the very bias of unscrupulous facilitators.

Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."

Typically, feedback from the Delphi Technique is presented as a simple statistical summary of the group response, usually comprising a mean or median value, such as the average ‘group’ estimate of the date by when an event is forecast to occur. But a more questionable utilization of the Delphi Technique is as to actually making not only recommendations instead of estimates or predictions, but the imposition of binding policy, application rather than evaluation.

Occasionally, additional information may also be provided, such as arguments from individuals whose judgments fall outside certain pre-specified limits or to explain extreme positions. And even the most extreme positions may begin to moderate with reciprocal feedback. Indeed, convergence, reduced variance is typical. The question remains, however, whether from actual consensus of from the very pressure to conformity the Delphi Technique strives to avoid? After all, enduring minority opinions and disagreement with group aggregates can even remain noted as part of the results, the opinions solicited, no harm and no foul. And true enduring consensus and reduction of disagreement are even measurable by polling post group responses and then compared to result with other procedures that may even turn out to achieve higher enduring consensus than the Delphi Technique, after all. The Delphi technique, then, gathers and cultivates longitudinal data on the distinction and transition between initial impressions and considered opinion.

But exactly what relation, if any, has the endurance or legitimacy of consensus with improved accuracy of judgments, the enhanced reliability, if any, of predictions or estimates obtained convergence or mean results ever obtained by the Delphi Technique? Indeed, any such success as might arise may be attributed even unexplained, to the phenomena of error covariance.

Moreover, the implicit problem is in the unspoken yearning for consensus, being the absence of disagreement and thereby freedom from nagging doubt, as certitude surrogate. And for pernicious misapplication of the Delphi Technique towards unperturbed consensus as a substitute for simple majority rule in decision making or policy, there can be no alternative but sly ostracism, Relational Bullying, no matter how the truth be denied, evaded or glossed over, manipulatively exploiting the very predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome, all undue influence that Delphi was originally conceived to mitigate, but now manipulatively redeployed in service of whatever the very bias of unscrupulous facilitators.

Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."

Delphi Technique feedback as intended comprises the opinions and judgments of all group members and not just the most vocal. But the worst abuse is in consensus decision making at the expense of vocal dissidence, the suppression and concealment of controversy. At the end of the polling of participants (i.e., after several rounds of questionnaire iteration), a statistical average (mean/median) of the panelists’ estimates on the final round is generated and recorded as representational of group judgment. The evaluative or predictive conclusion may thus be seen as an equal weighting of the members of a staticized group, but not a recommendation much less application to collective action or policy, except as abused for oppressive and devious consensus manipulation.

The Delphi Technique was created as a tool of decision making in arriving at assessments and forecasts from among all conceivable possibilities, somewhat as if resolving the outcome of quantum indeterminacy, rather than truth seeking and coming to conclusions even remotely at all about reality. -Leaving wide open the sinister distortion from ordinary vernacular denotation of the very term 'decision making' as signifying the decision of subsequent course of action, indeed, as opposed to indecision, paralysis and inaction, returning yet again, to the question of whether doubt and dissent are worthy of embrace as beneficial not only to seeking truth just to satisfy curiosity, but also as crucial to sound and informed action, or merely to be scorned as an unfortunate inconvenience of imperfection to be transcended by the force of conviction and properly indoctrinated unity, in ever agreeing to decisions at all. 

• The Delphi technique as a forecasting tool: issues and analysis

Controversy

Logical Conflict (contradiction): The Logic of Disagreement

Just as argumentative controversy remains the analytic mode of exchange in case of disagreement, likewise, Miscommunication Competence is the analytic Meta-Conversational framework of exchange in case of incomprehension, often reciprocal. Disagreement and incomprehension being the normal circumstance, even relationship howsoever, trust and tolerance at all, all as opposed to heteronymous expectations of identity or oneness, are entirely contingent upon just such difference or perspective.

Often in polemics (which may be perceived as the more rational, open and honest component of counter-propaganda), which is to say, with the aim of influence or persuasion, argument is any course of reasoning in statement or assertion put forth aimed at demonstrating truth (correspondence to reality in assertions), or falsehood, particularly as engaged in controversy, dispute, especially a public one, a disagreement in logically or Ontologically conflicting or contradictory opinions over which parties are actively arguing against each other.

The hypothesis of Evolutionary Epistemology is the ready observation how, just as scientific breakthrough actually consists in the pointed refutation of previously accepted hypotheses, democratic open societies, by nurturing doubt as crucial to the value of controversy, and thereby engaging investigative and experimental scrutiny to challenge assumptions, the adversarial process of healthy cognitive conflict and meaningful controversy, from substantive, important, meaningful issue-related difference of opinion, may lead to the fruitful resolution thereof, by corroboration, refutation, and synthesis, achieving and improving learning, discovery, creativity, problem solving, strategic decision making and hence, genuine productivity and real progress, even growth with less needless drama. However, just as observably, especially among those burdened with difficulty distinguishing cognitive disagreements from personal assaults, particularly the reactive victim type bully, cognitive conflict, even the most purely issue-related differences of opinion or controversy, often spark the real life drama of affective conflict focused and directed personally, fostering suspicion and hostility, hence cynicism, distrust, and avoidance or obstruction, thereby preventing open communication and cognitive reintegration.

Controversy is no less than the crux of scientific quest for truth and the very soul of democracy, and I, for one, can not live without it!

The visibility and transparency of controversy is always extremely important because controversies often express the richness and depth of a topic, drawing out insight and ingenuity beyond the deadly bland and superficial and forestalling premature consensus, the superficial convergence of beliefs and values before the underlying differences can emerge. For such is the blind straightjacket of homogeneity, the loss of perspective under which superior alternatives become inconceivable and hence are to be ignored. Indeed, that is exactly why an able chairperson or facilitator, or in fiction some manner of appropriate supporting character, actually works to help keep minority views alive. -Exactly in order to forestall premature consensus. Controversies dramatize change meaningfully, often making a critical difference even in life–altering decisions, in reality no less than in drama. 

     In short, what may be most fastidiously omitted, first and foremost,

                                                                                                 is Visioning to sharpen the focus. 

Thus, by dwelling upon the small mindedly trivial and picayune rather than drama or controversy, only petty bickering  arises because the crucial impetus to however grow and progress has effectively been hobbled. And so, in real life, the tension  rises all the more, but in fiction only if the reader or audience can be brought to care. 

In dramatizing controversy, POV facilitating inner motivated conflict and dramatic dialogue makes it hard to tell who is right and who is wrong. "In a good play, everyone is right."  But how far would they go? Or will they change and grow?

Indeed, scientists, journalists, detectives, intelligence analysts and even dramatists or novelists, are all professionally required to address a range of information, multiple perspectives, authorities, and opinions on any number of topics or subject matter. And however inadvertently, even search engines may significantly decrease their productivity or even conceal incompetence if controversies are overly difficult to investigate or dig deeper, as will be crucial for insight into difficult struggle, because aggregation algorithms tend to emphasize popularity of opinion, effective consensus, and hence, simple mediocrity rather than genuine objectivity.

Hence, the more damnable, as, for example, with Inductivism blandly and copiously marshalling so called "facts" in the pretense of objectivity, for human agents to promote the suppression or concealment of controversy, quite deliberately! And, as will be seen, how vulgar and malignantly manipulative to do so in the name of love!

Exactly thus, often with the aid of negative stereotypes of outsiders, are dissenters and opposing views never properly argued with, but merely ignored under tacit rationalization of group invulnerability, evidence to the contrary minimized and trivialized, that decisions made by the group cannot be "made-wrong."

The naming of questions (of this or that noun) without actually framing any salient question thereby evades, smoothes, sooths, and charms away, any troubling suggestion of the very possibility of ignorance and uncertainty. And, likewise, the mere enumeration and exposition of different POV ("competing approaches", "conflicting, [e.g., contradictory] narratives," "diversity of discourses," "different emphasis's") but never as simple points of departure in any  fruitful process of elimination, is a common and dishonest tactic in the bland evasion and obfuscation of the very existence of controversy and of real life drama, the inherency of conflict on many level to situation. -Indeed ever such hurly-burly and vital Evolutionary Epistemology scorned as far too dull and cruel. And all without truth of any singular physical reality, but all merely as a matter of relative perspective, even damnable moral neutrality, so that simple error, let alone any deeper wrong, need never be detected. All devious diversion by the sowing of authoritative confusion!

And all such comes part and parcel of the bogus false promise of surreptitious decision making. Indeed, the concealment of controversy is to rob the dissentient of their voice, a devious means of oppression.

The prevention outright rather than any rational and productive intermediation of all struggle and contest of will, even on such benign grounds of equality and kindness, nevertheless remains a principle actually hostile to life and free thought by the glorification of mediocrity, ultimately only strengthening the herd as a tool of tyranny.

All such chicanery remains the manipulative abuse of our precious creativity undermining the rational quest for truth, rather than in service thereof, that may pass as a subtle slight of hand unless, instead of being caught by surprise and then intimidated, anyone will ever risk being so rude and abrasive as to call the marshmallow touchy-feely cheat for what it truly is: Hostility towards the very fallible Epistemological human condition inspiring, in turn, manipulation under the guise of love with the false promise and bribe of acceptance universally yearned for and by the pretense of tender and lofty selfless motivation so as to conceal the truth of lust for power and dominance over others by professing love, thereby wielding temptation to overwhelm better judgment while also raising self-loathing and guilt in order to confuse the target's warning instincts.

At least Wonder Woman (the fanciful authorial spokesperson for Charles Moulton, nom de plum of Dr. William Moulton Marston) is refreshingly candid, in her benevolent authoritarianism and exhortations to loving submission! But then, sex sells just about anything, and even heightens drama.

By far the more dreary, metaphorical haberdashery and general balderdash not withstanding, the eminent Dr. Edward de Bono goes so far as to actually assert the contention, to argue, the inadequacy of argument, to whit, that argument simply lacks constructive creativity! Thus does Dr. Edward de Bono camouflage a dismissal of all learning and progress via controversy that is cornerstone open rational democracy, by which errors are ever detected and corrected. But Dr. Edward de Bono is in not actually in such sheer historical denial, or, so it might seem, forgotten his vauntedYellow Hat of optimism in the search for value, benefit and opportunity, nor entirely discarded his trustyWhite Hat of pertinent information research, as to ever genuinely be so blithely unaware of the long record of creative effort and constructive output from the practice of argument. Of course skilled argumentative attack certainly challenges creativity, while supporting arguments are by definition constructed. Indeed, only crippling inhibition and crushing social pressure prevent what otherwise flows easily enough with but a modicum of training and encouragement. Indeed, On page 7 of 'I Am Right - You Are Wrong,' Dr. Edward de Bono writes: "The most powerful case for the value of argument as a thinking method is that it encourages the motivated exploration of a subject. Without the personal gratification or argument (win/lose, aggression, cleverness, point-scoring) there might be little motivation to explore the subject." But if not for it's own joy at all, not to shake things up, and certainly never as crucible of truth, because that entire adversarial Epistemological Methodology, according to Dr. Edward de Bono, is nothing more an ancient scam! Then to what end does Dr. Edward de Bono make even as small a concession as he offers? Only so that the rams amid the sheeple may likewise be shepherded to the bliss of consensus via predisposition to Cohesion-Norms of Groupthink team traps of Stockholm Syndrome! For only such can be  the sole redeeming virtue of argument and discourse, according to Dr. Edward de Bono.

All such is classic manipulation by the pretense of tender and lofty selfless motivation so as to conceal the truth of lust for power and dominance over others by professing love and raising guilt in order to confuse the target's warning instincts.

Indeed, to subvert the practice of Brainstorming into similar consensus manipulation as with the abuse of the Delphi Technique, Alex F. Osborn's Non Justificationist recommendation of a'posteriori deferred  judgment/evaluation is often distorted, effectively extended indefinitely, in order to serve touchy-feely Anti-Critical Bias.

Indeed, the famous Six Thinking Hats Technique of Parallel Thinking in which the participants examine issues and problems together from different standpoints rather than contesting them one against the other, was invented by Dr. Edward de Bono in service of his own flagrant and virulent Anti-Critical Bias, actually deploring adversarial argument/debate/polemic as Status Quo intellectual thuggery! 

• AWAY WITH THE GANG OF THREE

The first thing Prof. de Bono challenges is what he calls "the gang of three," comprised of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Socrates mocked the world by making it believe that arguments were the best way of thinking; Plato mocked it further by making it believe there was a truth to be discovered; and Aristotle entrapped us in the cage of categorical logic.

 

 -Karl Schembri for The Malta Independent 

 

 

All hinging upon the evasion of Ontology, the domain of objective reality to which truth (correspondence to reality in assertions), by definition, must correspond. Otherwise, we'd have little to argue, and nothing categorical or logically bounded at all. 

In a nut shell, Dr. Edward de Bono is just PostModern, Nihilistic and heteronymous, for all the touchy-feely hearts and flowers. And, despite his innovations in massaging the exchange of perspective, Dr. Edward de Bono has still got the proverbial baby out with the metaphorical bath water! Indeed, donning ourBlack Hat of fault finding and problem definition, ever alert to danger, the bottom line remains that to completely rule out the practice of argument is also to effectively rule out dissidence, which is never at all the kindly gentle tolerant geniality that Dr. Edward de Bono pretends, but inevitably the most antirational intolerance and and crafty Medieval oppression.

Or else, just how, exactly, do we, so lightly treading and traipsing along with pied piper Dr. Edward de Bono, merrily donning together ourGreen Hat of creative alternatives and solutions, escape the ugly vicious trap, and oh so convivially answer just this above monumental begged question in order to properly address so thorny a problem?

Alas, donning ourBlue Hat of organization and summary, indeed as we have sadly seen is typical of consensus "facilitation" (manipulation), what Dr. Edward de Bono omits to spell out, is just how decisions are reached without confronting disagreement directly, because raising questions but only as far and as much is possible while avoiding argumentative conflict, that is to say, controversy, is the most urgent top priority and monumental hubris of Dr. Edward de Bono. And so, rather than by despised categorical logic coming to any conclusion in the now astonishingly discredited quest for truth, defined as the location and identification of correspondence to reality in assertions, instead the hamartia of Dr. Edward de Bono aims at consensus of all concurrent private deliberation, consideration and contemplation, unvoiced individual thinking including any degree of however unresolved reservations, all coming to converge with and within organizational process and whatever collectively "owned" Groupthink, the individual finessed of individual dissent, exactly as Lynn M. Stuter indicts of all such typical facilitated consensus manipulation chicanery and manufacture. The subject is cunningly maneuvered into cognitive dissonance, the inner conflict of dishonest hypocrisy, even as manifest in dialogue as Antiprocess, and thence down the path of least resistance, namely to rationalize after caving in. Thus, though, mind you and perish forbid, no one is actually wrong, nevertheless we (must) all agree!

However,  and exactly as Dr. Edward de Bono contends, the tool of synthesis is but a means of creative thinking, not a categorical determinant of truth, optimums or even esthetic taste. Hence, any synthesis is only one more competing and perhaps viable hypothesis, strategic option or work of art, as the case may be. Once again, the most disastrous misuse is only in the direct application to decision making!

So what must be done when synthesis is not completely successful in consensus generation, and therefore complete consensus does not arise voluntarily and will not be manipulated or however lightly extorted?  In truth, the actual procedural options in practice in any such an event are logically predictable and extensively corroborated by repeatable observation in virtually any and every context. Either, but beyond as much as Dr. Edward de Bono somewhat shiftily concede, there is truly a place for argument, and, indeed, adversarial systems of open controversy must be allowed, indeed, cultivated, in order to test stubbornly irresolvable mutually exclusive competing hypotheses for fitness against one another, at least as a last resort, or else other less voluntary and less honest means to consensus must be employed, manipulation, coercion, shunning, and so forth. In a word, bullying, a worrisome proposition, plainly enough even without all that touchy-feely and vaunted sensitivity training.

The escape from responsibility and evasion of difficult decisions without any clear moral imperative by the invocation of loaded words, phrases and slogans, is characteristic of that which Dr. Walter Kaufmann dubbed "decidophobia," a paralytic fear of responsibility in making firm decisions or even forming cogent opinions regarding at all whatsoever complex or uncertain questions by honestly and analytically considering and comparing alternatives.

 

Indeed, beyond simple cognitive dissonance even as manifest in dialogue as Antiprocess, how perverse the destructive and dishonest lengths that some people will go simply out of decidophobic conflict aversion, ultimately the devious nastiness and harm they will do, just to avoid ever confronting error or flaw of their own, and all starting from the putative motivating goal so blithely put forth or only implied, of never hurting anyone else's feelings. A position scarcely any better balanced than the seemingly opposite extreme, the puerile and Sophomorically maladjusted Fascist ideation of truth and honesty only attainable by the utter abandonment of civility and decency, all to be despised as bourgeois and effete. 

 

"Or I'll eat my hat!"

Either way, without the filters of explicit criticality and self awareness, perhaps most unwisely omitted in the fabrication of Dr. Edward de Bono's Black Hat of fault finding, problem definition, and danger alert, likewise, I've just got a hunch that care may have been omitted that the dapper brim on the Red Hat of emotion and intuition never squeeze too tight as to seal in the insidious rising toxic mercury vapors of impulsive acrimony.

 

In other words, at some point adult hard reason and good sportsmanship must govern, temper, moderate and reign in tender emotion, especially however unduly hurt feelings rather than dangerously validating immature reactive hostility, codling and exacerbating needless anxiety that even children grow out of unless, as all too often, otherwise socialized and undermined.

 

Because without conflict there can be no resolution.

                     (Yes, it's more than just the make-up sex!)

 

Moreover, barring oppressive mandatory consensus, advisability and inclusion become nigh inextricable in any at all sportsmanlike adversarial system, as, for example, even in a sports league, where inclusion and participation expressly and intrinsically include openness to competition. Although, there are those who would ban all sports save footbag/hackysack, the traditional footbag/hackysack circle being uniquely collaborative social effort at play, concentrated upon keeping the beanbag in the air without using one's hands, sans any aspect of competition. And wouldn't that be riveting on ESPN! And, while we are at it, no sex, save that it be tantric, free from all of that nasty aggressive thrusting spiritual violence!

But given that puppies and kittens at play, dearly love to pretend mortal combat, their darling adorable trusting natures nevertheless at all undimmed, how little reality sense and functional sense of proportion, then, dare we expect from ourselves, lords of creation?

For as few as there are actually committed to the extermination of our own species, there are so many more feverishly work upon one radical strategy or another of veritable mass castration, lobotomy too, and all in the name of social harmony by the unsporting cowardly accommodation of whatever undue unwholesome fragility and capitulation to whatever the calculating emotional blackmail of the moment. Indeed, as the renowned Prussian military thinker Carl von Clausewitz admonished, the real enemy and his ubiquitous fifth column are always peace loving, generally preferring the ease and convenience of steamrolling over us all, unopposed. 

 

For, whereas the vicissitudes of unnecessary and irresolvable conflict generated simply by tone, manner, style of communication and behavior, tend only to melodrama, by contrast drama<