Stacking Knowledge - the RESULTS
An experiment was launched in 2017 to see if “stacking* knowledge” can support decision making in the oil & gas sector. The experiment featured a mock dataroom for a single hybrid frontier opportunity, which closed on the 31st October 2019**. Repeated simulations captured a broad range of opinion using a questionnaire in both live plenary sessions as well as individually online. Each participant provided one of five multiple choice responses to twenty value metrics derived from the information provided, which were combined to assemble heuristics on relative value for the opportunity. These were then compared with various demographic groups to test if there were any detectable voting trends between levels of experience, discipline, perspective and outlook.
The results confirm the existing theories on "the wisdom of the crowd", for the first time, amongst geoscientists. The results also isolated quite specific bias; what is new is that both are measurable and can be clearly visualised live in a one-hour plenary session through the graphics presented above.
It is fair to say that the experiment started out with certain expectations (harvesting knowledge in support of decision making), which have changed over the course of the last two years, with some very humbling lessons along the way. What has emerged is the identification of a "perceptual gap", which was quite unexpected; finding out if such a perceptual gap has any meaning is still continuing but it has already been used by some companies to map the range of outlooks in their organisations.
SUMMARY
For a more complete explanation on the results and what the tables and figures mean, please refer to the slightly extended article HERE.
Highlights:
- Crowd-sourced opinion for an opportunity does converge on an average value of relative attractiveness for the opportunity
- Greater experience does not alter the spread of opinion but it does accelerate convergence to a stable mean
- There is arguably more to be gained from identifying individuals who think outside the cluster of common opinion than those who conform and contribute to it
- Those outside the cluster who know something that others do not know about the opportunity can be distinguished from those who are just mistaken with a simple conversation
- There is a measurable perceptual gap between participants’ gut-feeling for the opportunity (mood) and what the evidence is actually telling them (stacked)
- Two thirds of participants moods disagree with what the evidence is telling them
- Review geoscientists are well positioned to support decision making (figure 3), as are Executive Decision Makers
- Geo-technical experts tend to demonstrate availability bias, where generalists tend to exercise judgment
- The experiment has delivered a calibrated tool capable of harvesting collective opinion to measure both relative attractiveness for opportunities and mitigating potential distortions arising from bias using an inverse "Cold Eye Review" approach designed specifically for the oil & gas sector
*The process of deconstructing then reconstructing opinion created by K2V is called stacking, a term borrowed from seismic processing where offset viewpoints acquired at the surface are stacked to a common depth point as a single representation of the full collective range of offset views.
**Plenary simulations will continue by request, from enriching conversations about risk-taking at universities to detecting bias within selected groups
REFERENCES:
[1] Guy Loftus and Marc Bond, 2019 - On the experiment to COLLAPSE COGNITIVE BIAS (in support of decision making) [LinkedIn article, March 2019 - https://lnkd.in/eThTY8G]
[2] Sweepstake Knowledge: the tyranny of orphaned deterministic numbers [K2V article, 2018 - www.k2vltd.com/article-8]
[3] Knowledge Stacking: a crowd in search of the truth[www.k2vltd.com/article-6]
[4] On the experiment to COLLAPSE COGNITIVE BIAS (in support of decision making in the oil & gas sector)[www.k2vltd.com/article-22]
Director at K2V Ltd.
5 年POST SCRIPT In 2017 I posed the question: "When does the WISDOM OF THE CROWD become the CLAMOUR OF THE MOB?" The answer can be expressed in a single word: INDEPENDENCE. The moment the crowd becomes influenced by the loudest voice in the room (groupthink), the independence of the individual becomes subordinated by the emotional clamour of the mob. Simply, we change and our opinion becomes distorted. To quote a friend who has been thinking about this for much longer than I have: “...The only way back to independence is through independent critical thinking combined with an awareness that the (sub) cultures of which we are part, can be completely immersed in falsehoods, which are so easily transmitted though our social environment. Or to loosely quote Siddhartha Gautama, (563 - 483 BC): “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense””
Global Coordinator at The Dubai Dataroom by GeomodL International / Powering the Future through Superior Visualization / Fast Track Workflows / Accurate Earth Prediction
5 年Great experiment Guy Loftus! the very first striking aspect of the ternary diagram are the location of the VPs and Decision makers as risk averse! How to read that? is it because of their extensive experience and exposure that VPs can see the bias and counter the "kill the dog" mindset of explorers? "Kill the dog" refers to the optimism nature of prediction due to a "sentimental" attachment of a prospect (ie. we have spent so much time working it up that we don't want it to be dropped even though the risk of failure is blinking everywhere. ) or is it a pure corporate progression scheme when sanctioning the wrong prospect can be a career stopper so maybe it is better to turn down anything that looks a tad complex and focus on low hanging fruits.