Wednesday 6 April 2022
Are crowds smart or dumb?
Rob Henderson has an interesting book review in Quillette.
Are crowds smart or dumb? You may have heard the terms “wisdom of the crowds” and the “madness of crowds.” The former idea is that the collective opinion of a group of people is often more accurate than any individual person, and that gathering input from many individuals averages out the errors of each person and produces a more accurate answer. In contrast, the “madness of crowds” captures the idea that, relative to a single individual, large numbers of people are more likely to indulge their passions and get carried away by impulsive or destructive behaviors. So, which concept more accurately reflects reality?
Noise: A Flaw in Human Nature by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, and Cass R. Sunstein provides the answer. The authors share research indicating that “independence is a prerequisite for the wisdom of crowds.” That is, if you want to use crowdsourcing to produce accurate information, you have to ensure that people make their judgments in private. If people provide their answers in a public setting where they can see everyone else’s answers, then the crowd can transform wisdom into madness.
Fairly long and it contains nothing startling, but it is still well worth reading the whole review because there are quite a few insights which modern life tends to obscure. This for example -
In 2011, the educated class generally favored meritocratic and objective measures for judgment and decision-making. They found the message that we should challenge the role of bias in our everyday judgments appealing, and believed that we should rid ourselves of habits that lead us to judge other people or situations unfairly. Today, however, much of intellectual culture has changed. Now that luxury beliefs are ascendent, relying on objective measures is no longer fashionable.
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6 comments:
A previous post by Rob Henderson suggested that luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that confer status on the rich at very little cost, while taking a toll on the lower class.
You could argue that Conspicuous Consumption has been overtaken by Conspicuous Conviction - which would go a long way to explaining 'the Woke'.
"Conspicuous Conviction": hats off.
@dearieme
Not my own phrase but I'm pleased to bring it to wider attention.It's more pointed than Virtue Sgnalling.
See Rob Henderson's article "Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class—A Status Update" on Quillette.
"Luxury beliefs" and "conspicuous conviction" are new to me, but they are excellent ideas and I will start using them forthwith.
It's interesting how the people I know who bang on about "islamophobia" have only met Muslim professionals ("That nice new doctor down the Health Centre", etc.) and don't have to protect their daughters from Pakistani rape gangs. And those arguing for "open borders" benefit from cheap nannies and cleaners and baristas, while in comfortable retirement or holding jobs where a knowledge of English and cultural idioms means there is no chance of being undercut by foreign labour.
Sounds very reasonable to me.
DJ and dearieme - something I like about modern times is the way insights are captured by pithy words and phrases and rapidly disseminated. In optimistic moments I think they may be indicators of common sense coming back into fashion.
Sam - yes, many professional people are insulated to a degree they never appear to understand. They appear to think that words of abuse like "islamophobia" are unassailable technical terms and not merely the equivalent of "oik". Comfort does things to comfortable people who also come from a comfortable background.
Tammly - to me too. I'll probably buy the book.
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