Epidemics, the Statue That Didnt Look Right, and the Wisdom of Crowds

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Epidemics, the Statue That Didnt Look Right,
and the Wisdom of Crowds
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The Statue That Didnt Look Right

• J. Paul Getty Museum and the kouros
• intuitive repulsion and fresh
• Our brain uses two very different strategies to
• make sense of many situations
• (1) conscious and (2) unconscious.
• The latter operates entirely below the surface of
  
• consciousness.
• Fast and Frugal you often simply know before
• knowing why (e.g., Iowa card decks experiment).
• Unknown Greek about 530 B.C. or modern
  forgeryMarble H 6 ft. 9 1/8 in. W greatest,
  at forearms

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Getting That 6th Sense with Blue (good) Red
(bad) Decks of Cards
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The Adaptive Unconscious as an Internal Computer

• As a form of rapid cognition, it quickly and
  quietly processes a lot of the data we need in
  order to keep functioning.
• We toggle back and forth between conscious,
  deliberative decision-making and unconscious,
  more spontaneous decision-making.
• e.g., Nalini Ambadys teacher rating
  experiment
• started with 3 ten-second silent video clips,
  then five-second clips and then finally
  two-second clips . . .
• end-of-the-semester full student evaluations
• Your adaptive unconscious still makes mistakes
  it can be thrown off, distracted and disabled,
  but it tends to be for specific and consistent
  reasons (as we will see later on).

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The Wisdom of Crowds

• Conventional wisdom beware of the masses,
  avoid the herd mentality,
• Henry David Thoreau The mass never comes up to
  the standard of its best member, but on the
  contrary degrades itself to a level with the
  lowest.
• Friedrich Nietzsche Madness is the exception in
  individuals but the rule in groups. e.g., mobs,
  genocide
• Soren Kierkegaard Wherever the crowd is, there
  is untruth.
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------
• 15 questions in a row 1 million
• Stumped?
• (1) Have 2 of the 4 multiple-choice questions
  removed
• (2) Call a friend or relative, a smart person
  (65 correct)
• (3) Poll the studio audience (91 correct)
• key individual guesses aggregated (no
  consulting on another)

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The Wisdom of Crowds

• Norman L. Johnson (Los Alamos National
  Laboratory)
• In calculating what he called the groups
  collective solution, he simply noted what a
  majority of the agents did at each node and then
  plotted a path through the maze based on the
  majoritys overall decisions.
• Instead of 34.3 steps, which was the average for
  each agents first trip, or 12.8 steps, the
  average for their second trip, the groups path
  was, on average, just 9 steps long.

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Stock Market as an Individual Aggregator

• Teacher Christa McAuliffe, 37
• Rockwell International (shuttle/main engines)
• Lockheed (managed ground support)
• Martin Marietta (ships external fuel tank)
• Morton Thiokol (solid-fuel booster rocket)
• Within a half-an-hour, the stock market knew
• what company was responsible. How?

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The Wisdom of Crowds

• Four Key Conditions that Characterize Wise
  Crowds
• Diversity of opinion (each person should have
  some private information, even if its just an
  eccentric interpretation of the known facts)
• Independence (peoples opinions are not
  determined by the opinions of those around them)
• Decentralization (people are able to specialize
  and draw on local knowledge)
• Aggregation (some mechanism, like Wall Street or
  a casino, exists for turning private judgments
  into a collective decision)
• --------------------------------------------------
  --------------------------------
• Ask a hundred people to run a 100-meter race, and
  then average their times. The average will be
  worse than many of the fastest runners.
• Ask a hundred people to answer a question or
  solve a problem, and the average answer will
  often be at least as good as the answer of the
  smartest member.
• With most things, the average is mediocrity.
  With decision-making, its often excellence.

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The Wisdom of Crowds Iowa Electronic Markets
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The Wisdom of Crowds Controversy

• The program, called the Futures Markets Applied
  to Prediction (FutureMAP), would have involved
  investors betting on the likelihood of the
  assassination of Yasser Arafat, the overthrow of
  the King of Jordan, or a missile attack from
  North Korea.

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Syphilis Tipping Point, Baltimore

• 1995-1996 exponential increase
• Different explanations . . .
• increase in crack cocaine
• (overall context of the disease the Power of
  Context)
• reduction in medical services
• (the disease itself the Stickiness Factor)
• destruction of housing projects and exodus from
  old row houses
• (people carrying the disease the Law of the
  Few)

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The Law of the Few

• the 80/20 rule the Influentials (the 1-2
  Americans in 10 who tells the other 8-9 how to
  vote, where to eat, and what to buy) medical
  costs costs of caring for the homeless
  polluting cars RA write-ups Rxs by MDs
• The behavior of a few, unique individuals
• - Darnell Boss Man McGee, Nushawn Williams,
  Gaetan Dugas

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The Stickiness Factor

• HIV strains in the 1950s vs. the 1980s
• Influenza 1918
• A diamond is ______ Frosted Flakes, theyre
  ___! Got M----? BMW, the ultimate driving
  _______ Miller Lite Less Filling/

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The Power of Context

• Syphilis cases and weather patterns
• Kitty Genoveses death in Queens and the
  bystander problem