Follow the Leader

The Wisdom of Crowds

A point that is sometimes missed when we speak of the wisdom of crowds is that the phrase itself is something of a misnomer. The wisdom of crowds is actually the wisdom of individuals operating in isolation. The sum effect of the private decisions of these individuals leads to an answer that is often more accurate or productive than the most expert individual would have arrived at alone. The wisdom of crowds requires four things:

• Diversity of opinion. There needs to be a diversity of viewpoints within the crowd.
• Independence. Each individual needs to make up their own mind uninfluenced by the decisions of those around them.
• Decentralization. Related to diversity, individuals make decisions based on their specialized, localized knowledge.
• Aggregation. After all decisions are reached, there needs to be some way to aggregate them to create an average decision.

In case you haven’t been looking, these preconditions aren’t met too often in our world. I sometimes wonder if people  want them to be common. As individuals we are too insecure, both by nature and by training, to want the responsibility of independence.

The Tipping Point

That may be why the tipping point is so common - that point in time when a movement, the result of many people making decisions with awareness of the decisions of those around them - causes a mass change in thought or behavior. Think about the flocking behavior in birds, or, for those of us who spend a lot of time on blogs or blogging, the flocking behavior of individuals to new social networks.

Flocking Behavior

Flocking behavior is the result of an informational cascade. An informational cascade occurs when, even though you may disagree with a particular decision, you go along with it if you know that others have already affirmed that decision. Flocking behavior and examples of the tipping point are extremely evident in the world. They depend on shared knowledge, and taking behavioral cues from those around us.

A easy way to understand human flocking behavior is to think about the last time you weren’t sure what to do, so you looked at those around you to see what they were doing. If you saw someone who appeared to know what they were doing, you followed their lead. You then appeared to know what you were doing, so someone else followed you. Soon, the entire crowd of people shifted their behavior as a result of that first person’s activity, even if they didn’t really know what they were doing, or they thought they did but it was dead wrong.

Activities, individuals, and forms of thought surging in popularity as they take over the public consciousness are examples of flocking behavior. Think hula hoop, blogging, social networks, or Barak Obama and you will get the idea. StumbleUpon and Digg are good online examples of flocking behavior in action.

Anyone who wants to influence public opinion relies on flocking behaviour to further their agendas, so they do their best to encourage informational cascades. Get Oprah to say she likes your book, and sales are guaranteed to go through the roof. Publicize a poll that says a certain politician is gaining ground, and he or she will gain even more ground.

Our propensity to flock is one reason for the idea of private balloting in elections. A private ballot is about as close as we can get to creating the optimal environment for the wisdom of crowds that we can get in our political life.

Get Out of the Flock

The problem with playing follow the leader, or even playing the leader being followed, is that we build cages around ourselves.

If we are part of a flock just because other people are part of the flock, we have abdicated our freedom to be ourselves. Instead of being the poet we dream of, we stay in the family business or go to college, get our MBA, and rise through the ranks of middle management for 40 years until we can retire.

If we are leading the flock because we want to be followed - a polite way of saying we want to shape the paths of our fellow beings - we are trapping ourselves with a cage as strong as that around those who follow. Even though we may not want to do it, knowing that others are following us influences us to manipulate those around us to lead them in the direction we want them to go. We may even think we’re doing it for their own good.  (This is why I believe that if someone wants to be president, or even in charge of anything, that’s a sure sign they shouldn’t be.) I have a suspicion that the most effective leader doesn’t think of themselves as a leader, but just someone going their own way.

And that is the secret to starting to get out of the flock. Ignore as much as possible popular culture. Ignore as much as possible the way things have always been done. Ignore as much as possible common beliefs. Make private decisions based on the information you know to be as true as possible. Make personal choices based on beliefs you have determined to be as free of manipulation as possible. Consciously avoid doing what everyone else is doing.

Be yourself.

Be free.

Technorati Tags: wisdom of crowds, tipping point, informational cascade, human flocking

Popularity: 10% [?]

This entry is filed under Beliefs. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.