I just finished reading a book titled 'The Wisdom of Crowds' by James Surowiecki. A fascinating book. It details the phenomenon where large group of people always make smarter decisions collectively than the brightest individual in the group, with some conditions in place, one of them being that the group is a mixture of bright, not so bright, and also really dumb people, like you. Hahaha........!!!Wahahaha.......!
'm sorry. Kidding, kidding, ok. Just that you've not been here at my blog for so long (cause I've not updated it, haha...), just messing with you a bit, you know, a little bonding. No?
Not funny? Whatever.
What this means is that, if some inherent conditions apply, groupthink always outsmart the decisions of individual experts. Yes, polling the results of a group always outperform the opinion of some of the most well educated and informed experts on any particular topics, consistently. Only very few percentage of individuals are able to make better decisions than when the general public (which includes the whole spectrum of intelligence) decides to poll their wisdom.
Well, let's take the example of the financial market. For those who have invested in mutual funds before, we know that the majority of mutual funds underperform market indexes. This is because mutual funds are managed by fund managers, a small group of people who are supposed to be expert in investing, but these few individuals, with all their knowledge and experience still make us lose our hard earned, like what we Chinese like to say, blood sweat money. Damn those fags. Of course there are a very selected few in the world of investment who constantly beat the market average, one of them being the ultimate guru of investing, Warren Buffet, the second richest man in the world, but there are not many.
Some commented this is a counter intuitive model. Yea, I believe it is. Ever since that 'Men in Black' movie, where, if you remember, Tommy Lee Jones explained to Will Smith why the existence of aliens are not made public, he said: 'An individual is intelligent, calm, blah blah..and some shit I don't remember. Mainly good shit. But people, as in a group, a country, is chaotic, panicky and so would not take the knowledge of existence of aliens well. It would only cause mass hysteria. That has been my model of the world ever since. Until I read the book, that is.
Why am I telling you all this? I'm not trying to do a book review here actually, although it may seem to be. I'm writing this post after, once again, I'm astounded by the display of lack of cognitive abilities among even some of the smartest people by doing something every other moron is doing, and I'm sorry if you happen to be one of them.
What triggered this is when I saw a message on my friendster Bulletin board titled 'I'm deleting you from my friendster list'. It reminded me of the numerous emails and sms I received with somewhat the same kind of title, but more potent threats incorporated into it. The one in my bulletin board is really quite harmless and different from the ones I'm condemning (So don't be angry ya, Marilyn!).
I'm sure you've encountered them also. See if you remember any emails or sms that ends with anything that sounds like these:
'You must forward this mail to at least 15 billion people or so in the next gazillion of a millionth second or else your love life would suffer for eternity, meaning, you'll end up marrying someone from 'Buy a Russian Bride' programme and find out she's a transvestite on your wedding night.'
'You have been tagged by the good luck deity. You must forward this sms to all your friends, your enemies, and the people you don't even know but for some bizarre reason, you have their phone number, or else all hairs on your head would fall off and hair will grow on your buttocks as thick as the Amazon forest.'
'Hotmail is shutting down inactive accounts! Please forward this message to as many people as possible because we at Hotmail are too lazy to do anything more than lifting our fingers or ordering pizza for lunch. Failing to do so, we would assume your email account is inactive and your existence in the online world insignificant, and that you're impotent, and would delete and bar you from using our services ever again for your entire lifetime, and your next life, and the next one...and...well, you get the drift.'
The amazing thing is after all efforts by some of us, the smart ones, to inform those who feel intimidated by these messages that these are hoax and is probably written by losers as a viral marketing bid to get some messages across, we still see it in our mailbox and sms from time to time. I still do. I bet you do too.
I can't believe it when even Youtube is infected by this virus. In the comments section, I found this:
'DONT READ THIS!
In 1932 A Girl was Raped And She Said Hei Do Laki Before She DIed. IF You Dont Repost This In 5 Topics She Will Appear By Your Bed With Glowing Red Eyes And Stare At You Until YOu Fall ASleep'
Not surprisingly, people do repost this. I have no idea whether they do it out of fear or because they think it’s funny. It is not.
You know what? I give up. There is no way to stop the world from acting dumb. Just one thing, if you receive one of those emails or sms, don’t send to me, even if you have only 5 friends in the entire world and I’m one of them. Even if you think your life (or sex life for that matter) depends on it. Don’t, please, I beg you. Deal?
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