Lonlooker.com

There is a clear agency issue in the case of online communities who claim to be official ones. Whether they are ordained by the respective authoities ( of entities that these online versions claim to represent) or not, they would be acting as abassadors of the real entities. Thus the character of these online versions would be used to judge and understand the real entities ( a school, college, religion, organisation, business group etc). These online communities would be continuously emitting signals to the outerworld, which inadvertently would be part of the communication to the environment. Here is a case for active management of such signals, for it can affect with force and possibly with detrimental effect. Who would do this? The agency issue would mean the community owners or moderators may not be objective enough, as they themselves may be having private interests. These interests could be more members on board, more discussions on a particular topic etc and they would have instruments for manipulation of content and form, including power to delete what they dont want to be on the community.
What is the business opportunity here? What would be the third party ( or fourth party?, considering three already exist as in organization, owner of online community and the host of the community) value addition.
The lonlooker( Lets call it thus) would add tremendous value. It would be doing the role akin to that of a security head in a mall with multiple screens in front of him, watching closely with constant alert for possible mishaps. It would flag the organization for possible miscommunications, misdemeanours etc in the online communities. It could also flag the parent organization of new opportunities by gauging the new directions clubmembes ( the present ardent supporters of the parent entity) are taking.
Why the parent entity take up this role for itself? Why should it be outsourced? Well, here are the possible answers. Cost, Quality, mechanisation possibilities and hence early warning systems, possible solution generation and learning from others.
When it be more relevant . When online usage increases more, say another 5 years.

Biases at Play

I would like comment in some detail of the gross biases that have crept into this article by Sashikumar (http://www.ibnlive.com/blogs/vkshashikumar/191/2647/report-no-evil.html). Let me list them one by one
1. Illusory correlation Bias
Look at Unsexy story No. 1 to see this . " Gujarat's success in agriculture is largely because of a splendid genetically modified Bt cotton output" . The story rests on the quoted premise about success of Gujarat's agriculture. Here I accuse of the same error that Sashi accuse on others... inability to look into details. How on earth can he conclude so simplistically. How on earth and heaven can he abstract agriculture in Gujarat to just cotton. Where is the statistics to support that. I accuse Sashi of not just being biased but of being consciously biased and motivated for the multitude of biases in play, the others i list down here.

2. Confirmation bias or Cognitive Dissonance

This bias is the most glaring of all . Let me quote two sentences from the blog to substantiate it
" if somebody cares to look at the statistics it will be clear that Gujarat's agriculture success is because of a lop-sided growth in cotton cultivation"
" Right to Information documents (these are official documents of the Gujarat government) clearly admit that 498 farmers committed suicide in Gujarat. And another 6,695 apparently died in "accidents".

These sentences uses ' statistics , to create two climaxes for the same story, the story of farmers in Gujarat. One says farmers were successful ( the comedy climax, but with wrong means of course) and the second says they were unsuccessful ( the trajedy one). Then Sashi plays the dubious act. He attributes success to wrong meand by Modi and then accuses Modi of Lying. Heads I win, Tails you lose.

3. fundamental attribution Bias

Look at the way Sashi attributes the floods to Sujalam Sufalam scheme and then implicitly to Modi. How naive and foolish one can be to cook up such a cause and effect story based only on what ' a farmer said in a film'. It does not stop there. He goes on to implicitly accuse faulty planning on Modi. This accusation would be no better that what villionous Mom-in-laws do when they accuse new brides for lower stock market returns for her brocker husband. Ignorance at best and not knowling about it at worst.

I have posted this response in Ibnlive.com site..and waiting for thier response

The identified domains

Here I try to list some of the domains, that are in the top of my mind, which qualify for sources where decision and action biases have wide ramifications in society, found in plenty and can be explained without much cost of research. The low cost of researching is attributed for the fact that typically in these domains the cause effect cycle is small and can be easily found and explained. The list follows

1. Financial markets
2. Market Regulatory bodies
3. Media editorials
4. Movie Reviews

I promise to add to this list as soon as I discover them .

The idea

I have made an attempt to capture the essence of the fothcoming articles in this blog in the title of the blog ' Informed Idiots'. Well, the first question to be answered at this point is who are these informed idiots. From my observtion of life and life forms, especially humans, I have reached a reasonable conclusion that all humans could be categorized under this title. Yes I mean it and I mean to include even the Nobel Laurates, the Professors, Philosophers, the successful businessman, the shepard, the painter, the carpenter, the hoooligan in the corner, the lyricist, the average man, the all prevading politician and not the least yours truly. A description of the concept would make it clear and hopefully help me escape any blame for being a foot in the mouth stupid. The concept is rooted in the Herbert Simon's ' Bounded rationality', where he explained the complexity and uncertainty dimensions and observed that it is impossible to have perfect and complete information at any given time to make a decision. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978 "for his pioneering research into the decision-making process within economic organizations". Now my own observations of human behaviour ( within or without organization structure) seem to go along with Simons observations. Thus this blog tries to capture all human actions and thoughts in terms of revealing the bias that went into such actions and thoughts despite the rational explanations for them.
A refining of this objective would follow soon