In the nature of things, individuals usually have less influence over events than larger groups. However, there are some cases where that’s not true—where individuals unilaterally can take a course of action, and where the effect is just the same as if a whole group had taken it. A salient example is the dissemination of dangerous knowledge. Suppose that a group of scientists have discovered how to create a dangerous virus, and there is the question of whether to publish the results. In this case, an individual scientist publishing the results unilaterally leads to precisely the same outcome as the group making a collective decision.
Interesting read. Aside from these 'bingo' sheets you often find jokingly shared by academics and others attending such conferences, there isn't any productive guideline to keep the debate from digress. I'd address the followings though :
'To lift the curse in the context of meetings, the chairperson could cut less interesting questions and comments short' the issue with such behaviors is that if the chair isn't strong-willed or afraid of heated discussions, they might shut down everything that might be critically relevant but that does not fit the 'peace-keeping' atmosphere. Or if the chair is ideologically aligned with the speaker (which happens often since they are usually the ones composing the panels), they might just shut down everything that does not align with their own paradigm. And if your primary goal is to reach maximum efficiency, relevantly challenging one's paradigm is exactly the point of these seminars.
I like the point about disregarding social norms that encourage everyone to speak as if everyone's point was on an equal footing in terms of content quality. Especially when one starts by saying 'it is more of a comment' which turns out to be just a willingness to tie the speaker's topic to their own research topic. Such formulations should be forbidden, and the chairperson should be able to say 'I see your contribution, but we should actually stick to the main point of this talk'.
As for the dominance being 'often a central component', it strikes me out that this would actually be the most rationally effective thing to do here, because it is, as you say, the central component of discussions ending up inefficient. So we might actually want to redirect our efforts towards that? A constructive solution would to be to distribute the floor equally, and not allowing a person to speak twice if there is somebody else who has not spoken yet that raises their hand.
Studies also show that women will be less proactive to put their point out there, so giving the floor to a woman first when a man and a woman raise their hands would end up more efficient as well (the German socialist party does that and saw that male participants ended up reproducing these productive behaviors outside of meetings after three weeks of such practices). A good example of this happened during a TedTalk when the speaker said 'one more question and we'll stop', and then after the said questions, all the men kept their hands raised while all the women had lowered theirs, respecting the rules.
Interesting read. Aside from these 'bingo' sheets you often find jokingly shared by academics and others attending such conferences, there isn't any productive guideline to keep the debate from digress. I'd address the followings though :
'To lift the curse in the context of meetings, the chairperson could cut less interesting questions and comments short' the issue with such behaviors is that if the chair isn't strong-willed or afraid of heated discussions, they might shut down everything that might be critically relevant but that does not fit the 'peace-keeping' atmosphere. Or if the chair is ideologically aligned with the speaker (which happens often since they are usually the ones composing the panels), they might just shut down everything that does not align with their own paradigm. And if your primary goal is to reach maximum efficiency, relevantly challenging one's paradigm is exactly the point of these seminars.
I like the point about disregarding social norms that encourage everyone to speak as if everyone's point was on an equal footing in terms of content quality. Especially when one starts by saying 'it is more of a comment' which turns out to be just a willingness to tie the speaker's topic to their own research topic. Such formulations should be forbidden, and the chairperson should be able to say 'I see your contribution, but we should actually stick to the main point of this talk'.
As for the dominance being 'often a central component', it strikes me out that this would actually be the most rationally effective thing to do here, because it is, as you say, the central component of discussions ending up inefficient. So we might actually want to redirect our efforts towards that? A constructive solution would to be to distribute the floor equally, and not allowing a person to speak twice if there is somebody else who has not spoken yet that raises their hand.
Studies also show that women will be less proactive to put their point out there, so giving the floor to a woman first when a man and a woman raise their hands would end up more efficient as well (the German socialist party does that and saw that male participants ended up reproducing these productive behaviors outside of meetings after three weeks of such practices). A good example of this happened during a TedTalk when the speaker said 'one more question and we'll stop', and then after the said questions, all the men kept their hands raised while all the women had lowered theirs, respecting the rules.
Good topic though!