The Wisdom of Ignoring Crowds

Get your news from a source that’s not owned and controlled by oligarchs. Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily.

Ed Yong writes this week about various examples of crowds making better collective guesses than individuals: counting beans in a jar, guessing the weight of an ox, or the Ask The Audience option in Who Wants to be a Millionaire? And he notes a problem:

But all of these examples are somewhat artificial, because they involve decisions that are made in a social vacuum. Indeed, James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds, argued that wise crowds are ones where “people’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.” That rarely happens. From votes in elections, to votes on social media sites, people see what others around them are doing or intend to do. We actively seek out what others are saying, and we have a natural tendency to emulate successful and prominent individuals. So what happens to the wisdom of the crowd when the crowd talks to one another?

Long story short, it fails completely. This is why I’ve always been skeptical of the whole wisdom of crowds thing. You can make up all sorts of contrived situations where it works, but there aren’t very many examples from real life where people don’t communicate in one form or another and form feedback loops. We’re a social species, and lots of communication is very much the norm, not the exception.

Is the crowd doomed to groupthink? Not quite. King found that he could steer them back towards a wiser guess by giving them the current best guess….But King’s study still reflects an artificial situation, because he knew beforehand what the right answer was and could provide the crowd with the closest guess. Real crowds rarely, if ever, have that luxury….You can insert your own modern case study here, but perhaps this study ends up being less about the wisdom of the crowd than a testament to the value of expertise. Maybe the real trick to exploiting the wisdom of the crowd is to recognise the most knowledgeable individuals within it.

Well, sure, and that’s what most of us do on issues that are anywhere outside our own sphere of expertise — which is to say, most of them. Unfortunately, in practice most of us choose to follow experts who already agree with us. After all, track records are pretty hard to know in the best of cases, and in real life, where we seldom even agree on what constitutes being right in the first place, it’s just about impossible. Sadly, neither the wisdom of crowds nor reliance on the best experts provides much of a shortcut for getting things right.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

payment methods

PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate