complexitystudies

Janet has a wonderful entry on self-reinforcing hierarchies both in the blogosphere and in the world of science. The gist of the post is that success is not necessarily a function of excellence, but involves other factors such as luck and having the right support at the right time - once structures are entrenched, they often remain so. Adventures in Ethics and Science: Hierarchy, meritocracy, the blogosphere, and the real world.

As to the question as to what to do to avoid succumbing to the hierarchy effect - I would like to offer this tip, which also applies to many real life situtations:

adopt an 80/20 exploitation/exploration strategy.

That means 80% of the time “exploit” your current ressources or whatever, and 20% of the time search for new avenues/ways to do things.

Applying this strategy to your information gathering behaviour will let you benefit from good sources but avoid getting entrenched in citation/social/power hierarchies.

Technorati Tags: academia, internet, productivity

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