[OSList] A Call for "More Humility Among Experts" in Psychology Today

[Gray Miller]

Hi, I'm Gray, longtime lurker, first time poster.

While reading an article in Psychology Today online I was struck by several
comments that I felt would be relevant to anyone trying to explain why OST
is more efficacious at times than "traditional" (cuz we've only got a few
decades of this, right?) methods of facilitation. The whole article is
fascinating, an interview with Duncan Watts, author of "Everything is
Obvious", but this section in particular perked my interest:

DW: "...Instead of deciding and implementing the solution in a top-down
manner, you reverse the process. You go out to the periphery and you try to
learn about what's already working and then you figure out how to generalize
these home grown solutions.

*CF: It sounds like you're advocating for more humility among experts.*

DW: In a sense. What bootstrapping and other bottom-up techniques require
that experts need to stop thinking of themselves as experts at coming up
with solutions, and instead become experts at finding and leveraging
solutions that already exist, or could exist if only circumstances were
slightly different. They have to say, "*I don't actually know how to solve
this problem, because I can't possibly understand all the specific
circumstances. But I can become very good at helping people help themselves.
*" (*emphasis added*)

Full article at
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brainstorm/201104/why-were-terrible-predictors?page=3.
Just wanted to share,

Gray
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