---
description: Skin-in-the-game aligns incentives toward truth but self-selection into a shared worldview may correlate errors faster than the market mechanism can correct them
type: tension
domain: collective-intelligence
created: 2026-02-17
confidence: likely
source: "Grand strategy analysis, Feb 2026"
---

# collective intelligence within a purpose-driven community faces a structural tension because shared worldview correlates errors while shared purpose enables coordination

The collective intelligence thesis depends on diversity and independence producing better-than-individual outcomes. Prediction markets work because traders bring diverse perspectives and skin-in-the-game aligns incentives toward accuracy. But a community organized around TeleoHumanity's worldview self-selects for people who share its framing. If participants are diverse in domain expertise but correlated in worldview, the market mechanism corrects for factual errors (through skin-in-the-game penalties) but may not correct for systematic framing biases.

The tension is structural: the shared narrative that coordinates the community is the same force that may correlate its errors. You need the narrative to attract participants and coordinate action. You need independence to produce genuine collective intelligence. These pull in opposite directions.

Possible resolution paths that need further development:
- Structural diversity mechanisms that actively recruit disagreement (adversarial roles, red teams, incentivized dissent)
- Domain diversity as partial substitute for worldview diversity -- a materials scientist and an economist who both accept TeleoHumanity still bring genuinely independent expertise to any specific question
- The market mechanism itself: if correlated worldview produces systematically wrong bets, outside traders profit by taking the other side, pulling the market back toward accuracy
- Separating the purpose layer (what we're trying to accomplish) from the analytical layer (what's actually true about any given question) -- you can share goals without sharing priors

The key question is whether domain diversity within a shared-purpose community is sufficient for collective intelligence, or whether worldview diversity is structurally necessary. This requires research into the empirical collective intelligence literature on what kinds of diversity matter most.

---

Relevant Notes:
- [[collective intelligence requires diversity as a structural precondition not a moral preference]] -- the foundational claim this tension challenges at the implementation level
- [[speculative markets aggregate information through incentive and selection effects not wisdom of crowds]] -- skin-in-the-game is the partial corrective, but may not be sufficient against correlated worldview bias
- [[paradigms constitute perception not just interpretation so scientists in different paradigms literally see different things]] -- Kuhn's insight applied to communities: shared paradigm may create shared blind spots
- [[blind meritocratic voting forces independent thinking by hiding interim results while showing engagement]] -- one possible mechanism for maintaining independence within a shared-purpose community

- [[good strategy requires independent judgment that resists social consensus because when everyone calibrates off each other nobody anchors to fundamentals]] -- Rumelt's closed-circle problem applied to purpose-driven communities: shared worldview can create the same self-referential calibration that undermines Wall Street analysis
- [[inability to choose produces bad strategy because strategy requires saying no to some constituencies and group preferences cycle without an agenda-setter]] -- the structural tension echoes Arrow's cycling: a community with shared purpose but correlated worldview may cycle on analytical questions without an independent anchor
- [[information cascades produce rational bubbles where every individual acts reasonably but the group outcome is catastrophic]] -- shared worldview risks producing information cascades where participants rationally follow each other's framing rather than relying on independent private signals, creating correlated errors invisible from within

Topics:
- [[livingip overview]]
- [[coordination mechanisms]]
- [[LivingIP architecture]]