Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs and Steel and never one to ask small questions, has a piece on EDGE about why groups make bad decisions, and the ways those group decisions are different than bad individual decisions.

Diamond begins: "What I'm going to suggest is a road map of factors in failures of group decision making. I'll divide the answers into a sequence of four somewhat fuzzily delineated categories. First of all, a group may fail to anticipate a problem before the problem actually arrives. Secondly, when the problem arrives, the group may fail to perceive the problem. Then, after they perceive the problem, they may fail even to try to solve the problem. Finally, they may try to solve it but may fail in their attempts to do so."