Bayesian Brain and Bayesian Teams
An interesting article "Is This a Unified Theory of the Brain?" appeared in the New Scientist (full text) on May 28th. This is basically a discussion of the work and theories of neuroscientist Karl Friston of the University College in London. His work is based on an earlier theories that the brain makes decisions by trying to make sense out of the uncertainties in the outside world. Basically, you make hypotheses about reality and compare sensory inputs to them, updating the hypotheses and the belief in them as you gather more information. In essence you are constantly updating the probabilities that the hypotheses are true. In fact the wiring in the brain is continuously changing to is suppress prediction errors.
What makes this really fascinating is that 1) this is Bayesian updating and 2) this applies to team decision making also. The first observation has spawned the Bayesian Brain camp of neuroscientists. They believe we are all Bayesian thinkers, updating the probabilities that your hypotheses are correct as you solve small problems (e.g. if I turn the knob, the door will open) and large ones (e.g. If I choose to study the Bayesian brain, I will better understand team decision-making).
This brings us to applying what the neuroscientists are doing on the individual, to what happens in a team making business or technical decisions. These decisions are generally about what courses of action to take to address a current situation (obscured by its immediacy) or the future (clouded by uncertainty). A team that is functioning well will develop alternative courses of action or hypotheses and then gather an communicate information to increase its belief that one is better than the other, or to update the options based on the new information. No different than a single brain, just much more complicated.
What makes it harder is not only the communication of information amongst the team members (a clear focus of Information Management, Business Intelligence and the Webex's of the world), but developing a shared vision of the information. This is not to imply that everyone needs to understand all the information, but that there is some common understanding of the important bits. This is a topic I beat on in Chapter 4 of Making Robust Decisions "Team Don't Make Decisions, But...."
When we were first developing Accord software, an effort to support the team decision making process, we assumed that we could help teams by making what occurs inside one person's head transparent for the entire team. Maybe we should become neuro-scioscientists and study "Bayesian Team Dynamics".
What makes this really fascinating is that 1) this is Bayesian updating and 2) this applies to team decision making also. The first observation has spawned the Bayesian Brain camp of neuroscientists. They believe we are all Bayesian thinkers, updating the probabilities that your hypotheses are correct as you solve small problems (e.g. if I turn the knob, the door will open) and large ones (e.g. If I choose to study the Bayesian brain, I will better understand team decision-making).
This brings us to applying what the neuroscientists are doing on the individual, to what happens in a team making business or technical decisions. These decisions are generally about what courses of action to take to address a current situation (obscured by its immediacy) or the future (clouded by uncertainty). A team that is functioning well will develop alternative courses of action or hypotheses and then gather an communicate information to increase its belief that one is better than the other, or to update the options based on the new information. No different than a single brain, just much more complicated.
What makes it harder is not only the communication of information amongst the team members (a clear focus of Information Management, Business Intelligence and the Webex's of the world), but developing a shared vision of the information. This is not to imply that everyone needs to understand all the information, but that there is some common understanding of the important bits. This is a topic I beat on in Chapter 4 of Making Robust Decisions "Team Don't Make Decisions, But...."
When we were first developing Accord software, an effort to support the team decision making process, we assumed that we could help teams by making what occurs inside one person's head transparent for the entire team. Maybe we should become neuro-scioscientists and study "Bayesian Team Dynamics".
Labels: decision making process, neuroscience decision making, team decision making, uncertainty
Posted by David G. Ullman at 5:40 AM
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