<story><title>Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)</title><url>https://cs.au.dk/~danvy/lafb.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>Even if participants have same level of domain understanding, it takes more to be willing to work towards a solution &lt;i&gt;without their egos, their achievements, their alpha-ness&lt;/i&gt; getting in the way. I’ve seen the opposite more often than not. Where I do see this level of camaraderie is amongst close friends who know better about each other.</text></item><item><author>W0lf</author><text>In my experience (and coming just out of a meeting alike) these types of respectful and forward-moving meetings are typically in a case where each attendant has roughly the same level expertise in a given domain and knows the basics of scientific principles. Hence, everybody in the meeting brings in his or her unique view of the topic at hand and knows intrinsically when it makes sense to contribute something to the discussion. Usually things get out of hands, if somebody is talking just for the noise or, and this is worse, a clearly bad idea wins the discussion because politics or the messenger has shouted the loudest.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>GuB-42</author><text>I think experts naturally tend to befriend each other, for the simple reason that they are the only one who can understand each other. And that even when there is rivalry in the ideas.&lt;p&gt;Maybe being alone at the top is good for the ego, and some people like that, but it is also boring. If you are at the top in some field, is is probably your passion, something you want to talk about all day, but no one understands you, you feel like you are talking to babies, repeating &amp;quot;obvious&amp;quot; things over and over. On the opposite, you can&amp;#x27;t find anyone to teach anything new to you, being a pioneer is nice, but if you get stuck, you can&amp;#x27;t count on anyone but yourself, and it can become tedious.&lt;p&gt;So, when you finally meet someone on your level, it is someone you want to keep. At last, you can talk with someone who understand you, who can provide a meaningful input, and even teach you a thing or two. And even if there is some rivalry, you have a worthy opponent, not an annoyance.</text></comment>
<story><title>Feynman on group decision-making at Los Alamos (1985)</title><url>https://cs.au.dk/~danvy/lafb.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>systemvoltage</author><text>Even if participants have same level of domain understanding, it takes more to be willing to work towards a solution &lt;i&gt;without their egos, their achievements, their alpha-ness&lt;/i&gt; getting in the way. I’ve seen the opposite more often than not. Where I do see this level of camaraderie is amongst close friends who know better about each other.</text></item><item><author>W0lf</author><text>In my experience (and coming just out of a meeting alike) these types of respectful and forward-moving meetings are typically in a case where each attendant has roughly the same level expertise in a given domain and knows the basics of scientific principles. Hence, everybody in the meeting brings in his or her unique view of the topic at hand and knows intrinsically when it makes sense to contribute something to the discussion. Usually things get out of hands, if somebody is talking just for the noise or, and this is worse, a clearly bad idea wins the discussion because politics or the messenger has shouted the loudest.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>317070</author><text>Overheard on such a meeting yesterday: &amp;quot;Well, an alternative would be to use the coordinate system named after me.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I feel these meetings work best when there is no career pressure, but when people have aligned goals and just want to make progress. It&amp;#x27;s easier to leave good points unsaid if everyone prefers having any conclusion to having no conclusion.</text></comment>