Diversity

This article by Dr Piotr Wozniak is part of SuperMemo Guru series on memory, learning, creativity, and problem solving.

Importance of diversity

Understanding diversity is essential for the future of mankind. In building a well-functioning society, diversity of roles is exemplified by the need for doctors, plumbers and a pizza delivery guy. However, diversity has a wider abstract meaning that spans many essential branches of science, sociology, political life, and more. It is also central for understanding efficient learning and intelligence.

Definition of diversity

Diversity is a property of a set in which one of the attributes of the included elements is distributed in a relatively wide range of values (e.g. as measured by the statistical variance, diversity index, entropy, etc.). The opposite of diversity is homogeneity in which attribute values are uniform or narrowly distributed.

Diversity in intelligence

Diversity is discussed often at this site, esp. in the following contexts:

diversity of individual knowledge that underlies knowledge darwinism at lower levels of knowledge processing and retention
diversity of individual knowledge that underlies intelligence in problem solving
diversity of collective knowledge that underlies the wisdom of the crowds
neurodiversity that underlies collective intelligence of humanity, and its collective executive power

Understanding diversity

Understanding diversity is essential in many areas of human activity. Poor understanding of diversity results in a series of dangerous myths that may affect the future of mankind. For example:

false: school systems should be based on universal curriculum to make sure all citizens are equipped with basic understanding of the world
false: individuals affected by mild non-maladaptive variants of ADHD, schizophrenia, depression, or bipolar disorder should be medicated to restore normative brain function
false: racial diversity leads to intellectual homogenization that lowers global IQ measures (see: Radicalization myth)
false: some cultures are superior to other cultures (e.g. Christian culture is superior to Islamic culture, or vice versa)
false: some nations are superior to other nations (e.g. US is superior to China, or vice versa)
false: social diversity leads to intolerance
false: political diversity leads to ferocious political battles
false: centralized school system is superior to school choice (or more radically: command economy is superior to market economy)
false: school socialization is superior to playground socialization
false: homogeneous society is superior to diverse society (e.g. in racial, cultural, political or philosophical terms)
false: classroom diversity slows the progress education and should be eliminated (see: Inherent problems of classroom schooling)
false: diversity of opinion implies that someone is wrong, which leads to conflicts
false: diversity of opinion leads to democratic deadlocks (e.g. Brexit)
false: biological evolution is computationally not feasible

Diversity is an essential component of biological evolution. Only recently, more than half of the US population declared "belief" in the validity of the darwinian process. Those who question the validity of evolution can be roughly split into the following camps:

individuals affected by falsity vectors, in where the concept of the evolution quarrels with important beliefs (e.g. religious beliefs)
individuals who do not understand the evolutionary process, of which diversity is an important component
individuals who underestimate the computation power of the evolutionary process that, allegedly, is insufficient to explain biological evolution

Powers of diversity

Neuroevolution is a great new area of hope in the field of artificial intelligence. In neuroevolution, diversity of neural net topologies underlies an evolutionary process of reinforcement learning. This process, inefficiently and non-deterministically, mimics similar processes that occur in the development of human intelligence in a child's brain, and then, differently, in the adult brain.

Schooling and spaced repetition can be harmful if they do not capitalize on knowledge darwinism. In the process of learning via imitation (compare supervised learning), school curricula tend to provide pre-processed knowledge that is supposed to be mastered and memorized. Without successive review, knowledge of pre-set formulation will easily be forgotten and harmless (except for the monumental time wasted in a classroom). However, spaced repetition without knowledge diversity will quickly lead to partial forgetting that may strip knowledge of its semantic context. This is may turn out equivalent to asemantic learning, which in turn can lead to toxic memory (see: Hating SuperMemo). Incremental reading naturally employs knowledge darwinism and largely protects the user from asemantic learning (given a rudimentary understanding of the incremental learning process).

In Mystery of Donald Trump's brain, I hypothesize that socialization that underappreciates diversity of social settings might have been the key reason while Donald Trump mowed through unprepared Republican field composed of great brains with a weakness of "proper" segregated closed-system socialization typical of modern schooling. In metaphoric terms, Trump dragged his opponents onto a street, and beat them in a street fight.

In Daycare infections, I insist that the exposure to a diversity of pathogens and allergens in optimum dosage and setting can enhance health in children and adults alike. See: Formula for common cold prevention.

Constraints on diversity

The value of diversity always depends on the optimization criteria. For example, government regulation affects the efficiency of free markets, however, the health of the population may trump the need for market efficiency. This may justify regulations that reduce environmental pollution at the cost of market diversity.

In the context of diversity, I should also explain my drive for One language for the world. Diversity of languages is precious for understanding the concept of the language as an efficient tool of communication. At the same time, harmonious progress of mankind requires an efficient global communication tool that requires standardization. In my view, the value of the global lingua franca, and its dissemination is astronomical. It is a single simple step towards dramatic savings that could, for example, largely eliminate poverty and famine. Even if I was to be wrong, the evolutionary processes in language wars seem to clearly and rapidly drive towards a solid international language communication standard that could only be changed by a collective international administrative decision.

Importance of homogeneity

Diversity is not uniformly welcome. When extracting gold from printed circuit board scrap, we look for homogeneity. We want only gold atoms in the sample. Similarly, in the system of measurement, we look for standardization to minimize costs, confusion, and casualties. American adherence to the USC is massively wasteful. Diversity and homogeneity may have values that need to be balanced (e.g. as in the case of One language for the world). A rule of thumb is that diversity comes handy when we are not sure about the optimum value of the diversified attribute, or when the optimum value depends on the context. Atoms of gold in a wedding ring are uniformly valued and uniformly better than atoms of copper. The universe of opinion derives a great deal of its value from diversity in all cases were different settings of the knowledge valuation network produce different outcomes. Even 2+2=5 must sparingly and non-deterministically be injected into the discourse.

Boring homogeneity

If we all believed in the myths listed in this text, and managed to execute our plans to perfection, we might reach homogeneity that would result in armies of perfect workers drinking the same perfect brand of beer, armies of robots driving the same perfect car, armies of same uninterestingly similar individuals, perfect communist enthostates, perfect communist command economies, the one and only valid culture and religion, kids all dressed alike in uniforms, and a school system that would become a factory of perfect standard brains. Most regretably, in a perfect world of uniform opinion, we would have stagnant perfect science that might stop at the Ptolemaic understanding of the Solar System. That would be some dystopian variant of 1984 or the perfect vision of North Korea.

More on diversity

Diversity is a recurring theme in many of my articles that primarily criticize our approach to modern education. Here is a relevant sample:

For more texts on memory, learning, sleep, creativity, and problem solving, see Super Memory Guru