The Wisdom of Crowds

Not known as a special scientific principle but widely recognized, even accepted, is the idea that a "collective" in a large group of people is smarter than a single individual. Let's make this clear from the beginning with an example. Recall the game show "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?".  Often the contestant when needing a lifeline calls an expert friend first, then 50-50, and almost always last is the audience (whose average answer is revealed, showing percentages of their pick from the multiple choice). The contestants seemed mostly unaware that the audience is almost always correct (not all the time but it is vastly more reliable). The wisdom of the crowd even beats the expert. I have a point to make here, I think.

   

 "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations, published in 2004, is a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

 The opening anecdote relates Francis Galton's surprise that the crowd at a county fair accurately guessed the weight of an ox when their individual guesses were averaged (the average was closer to the ox's true butchered weight than the estimates of most crowd members)".

Using a jar of jelly beans in a similar experiment worked just as well. Random people were asked to guess how many jelly beans there were in a transparent jar that contained over a thousand of the multi-colored candies, so there was a certain degree of difficulty. People's answers - guesses and educated estimates - were all over the place. But when averaged, the number was closer to the actual count, to within 1%. Hardly was any one individual's answer correct or even close. Yet, the "collective" (average) proved powerful.

Wisdom of the crowd is the statistical phenomenon of combining "diverse, independent and decentralized sources" to arrive at an intelligent choice.

The science of statistics define the wisdom of the crowd. Sampling or polling is the tool for determining the result without having to ask everyone. What a pot of soup would taste like after a thorough mixing can be determined with a teaspoonful sample - and it would be accurate.

Consumer Report's reliability ratings for cars is another good example of wisdom of the crowds. As a subscriber I had responded to a number of CR's annual surveys and I will have to say the ratings are quite accurate based on how they gather the data. Not every response will be positive for a particular model (there will always be lemons) but when the average of all the responses is taken the CR rating is an excellent indicator of the quality of the product.

This brings us to the concept of democracy. Is the majority the wisdom of the crowd? My musing on the subject, as in many others before this, would be of little value if it does not present a view outside of what is commonly believed. My hope is that it represents the average of the readers. In 2016 the Republican primary started with 17 or 18 candidates. As diverse as the number of aspirants were, the wisdom of the crowd was called for since there was no way an immediate and decisive majority was expected to favor one candidate. On the other hand, the Democratic primary looked like a foregone conclusion - a prelude to a coronation of a favored candidate. The wisdom of the crowd was replaced by well placed operatives that made sure the coronation was unimpeded. And it went flawlessly, which contrasted with the glaring chaos in the Republican Party. The general election result was so assuredly predictable that the New York Times gave the Republican candidate a 1-99% odds of winning.

The wisdom of the crowd was so well hidden that it was even invisible to all the pollsters.  The shock to every pollster, every political pundit, and to every political scientist (with doctorates in political science in college) who by the way truly believe that politics is truly a branch of science, reverberated with echoes of a gigantic oops!

What went wrong? Nothing. There was enough drama but should not have impacted the results as to defy the wisdom of the crowds. It was obvious that there was no monolithic criteria. There were diverse reasons held by the electorate and in the end, while there was no clear overwhelming single issue, the average of the collective thought favored one candidate over the other. Perhaps the result was well hidden because it was not predicted by the standard method. There may not have been one singular issue favored by the majority but by many seemingly unconnected elements.  But when averaged, it actually reflected the aggregate populist sentiments. A populist won over an ideologue. 

Democracy, though far from the benevolent ideal of an Omnipotent, Fair, all-knowing God managing our affairs, is the best we can have. In its present form, however, it had devolved from what it was originally intended. A representative government requires that people/voters get to cast a single vote each, the tallied result is the wisdom of the people. However, conditions have changed so that today money, which mobilizes modern political campaigning, can and had, in fact, destabilized the system when resources of one candidate far exceeded the other/s. The wisdom of the crowd was effectively dumbed-down; or worse, manipulated. The democratic principle, which should be the proper application of the collective wisdom of the population, can be compromised and may already have been irreparably damaged in today's electronic world of instant communication where opaque sourcing of information has ironically corrupted the dissemination of information. Information should be free from manipulation if everything was transparently above board. But that ship had already sailed.

The wisdom of the crowd has also been dimmed by today's sympathetic attention to the views of a minority against the wishes of (often) an overwhelming majority.  When a lone student can cause a teacher to be suspended for the latter's opinion when everyone else felt no offense was committed  then the wisdom of the crowd had been reduced to the opinion of a single individual. As a result, in this case, the other students representing the wisdom of the crowd protested  the decision of the school board en masse. 

In America never had issues coming from a number of various minority groups seem, or made to look like the voice of a far larger entity, been more influential than the majority that is often silenced. When a very thin slice of the population can cause the removal of historical statues, signs or relics in government buildings, or push regulations and laws adversely affecting the majority as to cause them broad  hardship, the wisdom of the crowd is rendered inutile.  Political correctness has become the chronic disease that plagues our society today. It is almost a sociological pathogen that defies a cure. Common sense is no longer a reliable vaccine because political correctness evolves virally rapidly and uncontrollably.

Let's take the case of celebrities. Their livelihood depends on favorability ratings they get from their fans who ought to come from all walks of life. When they inject politics into their public opinions, they must accept that they could be going against the wisdom of 50% of their fans (the nation being divided as such politically). They have every right to express their opinions, no question about that, with full guarantee provided by the Constitution, but if they're in the business of entertaining they could automatically diminish almost half of their earning potential and adulation by declining the wisdom of half the crowd. Again, there is nothing wrong with their public show of opinion, except it goes against something they strove hard to attain - popularity and acclaim. But if they wholeheartedly feel it is worth the sacrifice, then more power to them; though we must question the wisdom of their decision - their individual opinion versus the wisdom of the crowd.

  

Democracy. Why is this a fairly new phenomenon in the context of history? In fact, from millennia after millennia, the world had only known monarchy as a ruling system until much later with the introduction of democracy in Athens in 500 BC. But it was short lived with plenty of interruptions later from monarchs and oligarchs for centuries, as if democracy was just another failed sociological experiment.  It struggled to survive. Then the American revolution happened. Lest we forget the U.S. democracy is, so far, the longest running succession of leadership from free and effective elections.

The question has always been about why it took so long when the science of the wisdom of the crowds seems so natural.  But, is it? Well, in the natural world, except for the human species, democracy is nowhere to be found. The empire of the ants and termites are ruled by absolute monarchs - powerful queens that rule absolutely. Even herds of elephants, prides of lions and pods of whales, abide by the leadership of one. Succession can be violent, in some cases new leadership is preceded by the death of the incumbent.

  

There lies the difference, but here lies the dichotomy. Wisdom from our human context, once we've become sufficiently wise, superseded instincts, in a manner where the collective thought is the aggregate of the choices of individuals as to give each one a meaningful sense of his or her stake on the social structure. On the other hand, ants and termites merely heed the wisdom of one where, for reasons of efficiency and effectiveness, nature has provided them with natural instincts to do that. Electing a queen, matriarchs or alpha male or female leaders will take time. But here's the thing. Once leadership is established, the wisdom of the herd takes over - instinctively behaving as one collective organism.

  

Democracy, while not perfect, has provided civilization an alternative system of checks and balances while assigning a value to the individual. Alternatively, monarchy, socialism and communism, have not risen above the structure of the termite colony. We are not diminishing the successes of the ants and termites and other herding instincts in the animal world because they may prove to be the true inheritors of the earth if we mess up, but there is one limiting factor. The value of the individual is both invisible and insignificant in a colony. However, the collection of all the individuals are what provides the power of the monarchy. The insect colony continues to thrive but human monarchy, socialism and communism are on the decline. They will continue to eke out a prolonged existence to the detriment of the crowd but only benefiting the individual (the monarch) or a handful of individuals (the Communist Secretariat or the socialist bureaucracy).

Thank goodness for the wisdom of the crowds we may yet hold on to our individual freedom. Common sense may yet re-emerge to predominance and may the wisdom of the crowds restore order over the chaos of extreme political correctness. May common sense triumph over ideology.