Group Decisions, Before and After

April 1, 2025. original tweet

I think there’s both a before perspective and an after perspective on group decisions, and the after perspective on past decisions informs the before perspective on future decisions. Voting is a before perspective that seeks to find group acceptance before the decision is actually made.

An example of an after perspective is case law where decisions that are made about past legal cases establish precedent that inform future decisions on similar cases, allowing future group decisions to be determined beforehand without deliberation or negotiation.

Another example of an after perspective is the rule of “yes, and” in comedy improv, which requires that the group always accept the decisions made by individual members of the group no matter what. This allows individual decisions to become group decisions similar to how leadership hierarchies do, but in improv everyone is both a leader and a follower, so there’s no hierarchy or power asymmetry.