Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Strength in Numbers, Weakness in Collectives

More evidence that groupthink tends to take over, preventing the best ideas from emerging. In this case, the article argues that the Wisdom of Crowd phenomenon disappears if we learn what others are thinking. Nothing like peer pressure -- even unseen peer pressure, when the peers aren't putting any pressure on you at all -- to disrupt variety and creativity. People want to be like everyone else. Unfortunately, this can result in less than optimal solutions and less accurate information and predictions.

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