How free are we in all of the decisions that we make? Not at all according to my studies. During the 2008 financial crisis customers of the financial institution Washington mutual withdrew $16,000,000,000 from their accounts within a matter of days. Simply because that hurd that this is what other people were doing. The phenomenon is cold herd instinct. Another form of collective behaviour is the 'swarm intelligence'. Familiar to us from ant algorithms. On first sight the ant colony appears to be moving around completely randomly but if you look closer a patern can be seen. The swarm finds the shortest route to the best source of food and allocates defence territories.Based on this observation professor Marco Dorigo solved a variety of logistics problems. Truck routing slot allocations at airports and controlling a military robots.
But it is debatable whether this sort of algorithm also works with groups of people because it does not take into account the human side of swarm intelligence. Group thinking. In homogenous groups, opinions and viewpoints can intensify and become cohesive very quickly. And if too many people act to show up at the same thing attitudes can become radical and actions rash. Researchers have observed this phenomenon with juries. The more united a jury is the harsher the sentence and the more convinced the members of the jury are that their verdict was the right one. It is a kind of uncritical consensus: if everyone does the same as you, you believe your are in the right.
'Why do we follow the majority?' Is it because they have more reason? No, because they have more power. Blaise Pascal
No comments:
Post a Comment