Comments on: Ignorance of Crowds

By: Beth

Beth — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 14:56:22 +0000

You are assuming that more subscriptions always means “more informed”. However, not all subscriptions are identically informative and many are repetitive. One person who reads a neutral and trustworthy but widely read aggregator is likely to be more informed than someone who reads many ideologically-identical new sources, or many news sources of limited scope.

It would be interesting to incorporate the networked quantities of the information sources in question. I don’t bother subscribing to news papers, because as unconnected news sources I find them less valuable than those that are participating in a networked discussion.

By: John Hyland

John Hyland — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 21:45:43 +0000

It seems like you are leaving out some knowledge that a user has when deciding whether to follow a particular stream. To wit, a user knows whether any of their friends are already retweeting “all the good stuff.” This removes the probabilistic angle completely: if you want Justin’s tweets, you will follow him with 100% probability if none of your friends do, and with 0% probability if at least one friend is retweeting everything you want, and you can (un)subscribe later if circumstances change.

That said, a somewhat similar approach might apply if you consider differences between your tastes and your friends’ tastes – maybe they’ll pass over a tweet you would have wanted to read. I think the effect would be much lessened in that model, however.

By: Gerald Biehle

Gerald Biehle — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:35:44 +0000

This sounds related to groupthink and confirmation bias in that the more connected, or insiders, get less outside information.

By: Clustering and the Ignorance of Crowds | Social Dynamics

Clustering and the Ignorance of Crowds | Social Dynamics — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 15:51:25 +0000

[...] on the Cheap Talk blog (@CheapTalkBlog), Jeff Ely (@jeffely) has an interesting post about the “Ignorance of Crowds.” The basic idea is that when there are lots of connections among people, each individual has less [...]

By: Jeff Kish

Jeff Kish — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:44:18 +0000

If you rely on reteeets- you miss things others seem no value on. There is a subset of those which YOU extract value from. That’s a problem with following percentages, and the price you pay. This price will be to some degree homogeneity of the idea-space.

By: koenfucius

koenfucius — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 08:20:50 +0000

Are you not assuming too much rationality on the part of the subscribers by saying that they will do so provided the value v exceeds the cost c? In other words, are the individuals in your model rational agents – or are they instead real people whose behaviour is not easily captured in a simple formula like v – c > 0?

By: Graham Stanton

Graham Stanton — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:01:11 +0000

It actually gets more complicated if you recognize that non-followers can still retweet a retweet. In the extreme case, all worthwhile news is always retweeted, so then in a dense network, you’re virtually guaranteed to get the important news (as long as there’s a path to you from Justin Wolfers). But I wonder how it changes if likelihood to retweet is a constant r less than 1 but independent of prior number of hops.

By: KevinH

KevinH — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:05:57 +0000

I’m not sure people become less well informed on average. It seems like this mirrors classic specialization. If you have a finite number of posts you can see and curate during a day, having your friends select only the best Wolfer’s posts frees up your time to go and curate some perhaps more obscure poster and share those ideas with your friends, enriching everybody.

By: Assorted links — Marginal Revolution

Assorted links — Marginal Revolution — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:41:10 +0000

[...] 4. Nonetheless, you still should follow Justin Wolfers. [...]

By: Marc Gawley

Marc Gawley — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 13:42:21 +0000

Here are some stats on switching off from reading the news:
http://marcgawley.com/2011/10/30/stop-reading-the-press/