Morpho Designs

Conventional Wisdom of Crowds

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Conventional Wisdom

Conventional wisdom is an unexamined proclamation that is generally accepted as truth. We use anecdotal evidence as a short-cut for critical thinking. The problem with conventional wisdom, where it relates to incorrect beliefs, is that it obscures our ability to become aware of the assumptions upon which we base those beliefs.

Knowledge is Powerless

How do we learn? As children, we may have been taught by rote, parroting words. As we grew older, we were taught to read, enabling us to regurgitate written words. Hopefully, during our education, we were trained to think critically. Without this step, we are limited to repeating as true whatever we have heard or read.

Unfortunately, critical thinking is exactly where many of us fall short in our daily lives. Whether or not we have the necessary skills to question whether certain proclamations should be accepted or rejected, the truth is that expediency usually dictates how we evaluate such utterances.

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We are bombarded with messages continuously. Advertisements make claims. Newspaper headlines declare doom. Commentators spew sound bites. Strangers offer unsolicited advice. Officials, supervisors and other authority figures issue orders. Then there are traffic signals, bodily signals, sensory stimuli and the on-going mental conversation that we carry on with ourselves. If we are going to get through the next hour, we need efficient methods for plowing through all of these messages.

Our most powerful weapon for processing incoming messages is our knowledge base. It is our stored collection of accepted and rejected notions, through which new information is filtered. The trouble is that the knowledge base may have been built upon a shaky foundation.

The Fallacy of the Informed Decision

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

-Mark Twain

We defer to specialists. We have to. We don’t have time to learn enough about every subject in order to qualify as experts.

As a result, we are susceptible to parroting whatever we read or hear from sources that are supposedly solid.

When bad information propagates through the knowledge bases of many people, it is not easily dislodged. As an example, the British Journal of Medicine published an article in 2007, debunking seven medical myths as either unproved or untrue. The list includes the compelling beliefs that eating turkey causes drowsiness and that we should consume eight glasses of water daily.

These myths persist, even though they have been debunked. The reason that they do is simple: not many of us read the British Journal of Medicine! This reason is not simplistic. Another science magazine explains:

- Michael Shermer, Scientific American Magazine, August 2008

This is just one example of our reliance on experts for information. If you think about how many people you regularly consult, you should not be surprised that you may be quite susceptible to misinformed messages and their attendant consequences – poor decisions.

Motivated Reasoning

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How do we justify our incorrect beliefs? Incorrect beliefs – apart from lack of knowledge – may be based on creative thinking.

An article in the March 2009 Sociological Inquiry, “There Must Be a Reason”: Osama, Saddam, and Inferred justification, put forth the concept of motivated reasoning.

Essentially, sociologists from four major research institutions culled a group of test subjects from over one thousand study participants. From this group, the researchers concluded that these interviewees used a variety of creative strategies to justify their incorrect beliefs:

• Counterarguing

• Attitude bolstering

• Selective exposure

• Disputing rationality

• Inferred Justification

The point here is not to become armchair sociologists, but to recognize that we actively strive to support our belief systems.

Wisdom of Crowds

Have you ever reviewed a product or service? Do you rely on them, even a little?

Companies like Amazon.com would like you to believe that these reviews are relevant. Perhaps they are.

Sarah Perez, in her article, The Dirty Little Secret About the Wisdom of the Crowds, discusses a study that refutes the trustworthiness of such rating sites.

This study was conducted by professor Vassilis Kostakos of Carnegie Mellon University. Professor Kostakos found that user-generated content on sites like Amazon.com, Digg.com and IMdb.com are created by a small subset of the user base. This certainly is not representative of the website community at large!

Jason Cohen, of asmartbear.com, suggests that we ignore the wisdom of crowds. He states that, even though groups collectively do better at guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar, there is no good reason to use groups for innovation. Cohen uses a holiday meal planning exercise to illustrate his point:

- Jason Cohen, blog Ignoring the Wisdom of Crowds

Sarah Perez goes even further:

- Sarah Perez, The Dirty Little Secret About the Wisdom of the Crowds

You can always flip a coin.

“Introduce a little anarchy. Upset the established order, and everything becomes chaos. I’m an agent of chaos. Oh, and you know the thing about chaos? It’s fair!”

- The Joker, Dark Knight