> ... because how do you scale self-awarness? It seems almost an oxymoron.
Well, in very small doses numbers help. It is easier for a small group to watch the blind spots of each member. As the numbers scale up to serious group sizes things seem to fall apart again as a hive-mind forms.
Which means that the sensible thing to do is to form a committee of intelligent people with good incentives, then go trustingly with what they suggest. Which is, coincidentally, a successful model that governments use. All the politics is generally a distraction from the real work being done by committees.
> It is easier for a small group to watch the blind spots of each member. As the numbers scale up to serious group sizes things seem to fall apart again as a hive-mind forms.
I agree, but that's not self-awareness—that's seeing other people's blind spots, which is much easier, in fact it happens automatically.
You're right that it falls apart at scale. Somehow mass blind spots take over. Can that be mitigated? That is the question.
Group dynamics seem to change qualitatively at each order of magnitude. Maybe the problem of "social media", i.e. internet group dynamics, is that we're dealing with orders of magnitude we've never seen before. That doesn't get worked out in just 10 or 20 years.
>As the numbers scale up to serious group sizes things seem to fall apart again as a hive-mind forms.
At the same time the hive mind is quite often a protective defense against insurgency in forms.
This seems to be a problem with the comments in this entire post. We're taking community as individuals doing individual things, and in small forums this is commonly true. But, when the group grows larger and money is on the line that assumption should be discarded. In astro-turfing for example, a seemingly large group of 'users' will direct communication on your forms via somewhat 'rational' communication, but possibly disliked by a lot of members. Then you'll notice a group that seemingly counters the astroturf to the level of absurdity that turns more 'hearts and minds' towards the astroturfers (guess what, the counter turfers were also the astroturfers).
You typically end up with one of two situations. The forum either takes on the ideas of the astroturf group and it becomes encoded in their ideals, or the fend it off, but in doing so embrace some of the extremism implanted by the astroturfing group in the first place.
Also, what happens to any group when 4chan decides to raid you for the lulz?
Well, in very small doses numbers help. It is easier for a small group to watch the blind spots of each member. As the numbers scale up to serious group sizes things seem to fall apart again as a hive-mind forms.
Which means that the sensible thing to do is to form a committee of intelligent people with good incentives, then go trustingly with what they suggest. Which is, coincidentally, a successful model that governments use. All the politics is generally a distraction from the real work being done by committees.