Critically evaluating collaborative research : Why is it difficult to extend truth tests to reality tests?
Abstract
The trend of accelerating social dynamics (hereafter as SD acceleration) not only brings about the timespace problem of predictability of events, but also the coordination question of stability of order. SD acceleration is depends on decreasing level of coordination costs.
This jeopardizes order because its structures-game/play frameworks-arise from coordination and are maintained because any change to them is associated with relatively high coordination cost. This problem of vulnerability of variable order in modern societies is associated with our hypothesis: the sources of SD acceleration as well as coping with its externalities must be primarily sought in such constitutive arrangements of social affairs that help decrease the level of transaction/coordination costs.
Methodologically, three general and interdependent arrangements can be studied as sources of SD: (A) "uncertainty economics", (Aa) institutionalized competition of hierarchical/flat governance structures, and (Ab) interiorization of biographies and histories. Our theoretical study of the above-mentioned interdependent sources of SD will also address "lower-level", more specific issues, enabling us to confront general solutions of SD acceleration with relevant empirical evidence.