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Fark Creator Slams 'the Wisdom of Crowds'
GovTechGuy writes with some harsh words from Fark.com founder Drew Curtis, speaking at a conference Tuesday in Washington, DC: "'The "wisdom of the crowds" is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb,' Curtis said. 'It takes people to move crowds in the right direction, crowds by themselves just stand around and mutter.' Curtis pointed to his own experience moderating comments on Fark, which allows users to give their often humorous take on the news of the day. He said only one percent of Web comments have any value and called the rest 'garbage.' Another example Curtis pointed to is the America Speaking Out website recently launched by House Republicans to allow the public to weigh in on the issues and vote for policy positions they support. Curtis called the site an 'absolute train wreck.' 'It's an absolute disaster. It's impossible to tell who was kidding and who wasn't,' Curtis said."
I have never frequented fark.com, only clicking through on occasion the last X? number of years it's been running, but TFS makes me appreciate the founder's own wisdom....
GENERATION O98346: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig and remove a random number from the generation. T
He said only one percent of Web comments have any value and called the rest 'garbage.'
Funny, that also seems to be the case with most articles. Garbage in, garbage out.
I believe a soon to be classic movie explained it best.
Edwards: Why the big secret? People are smart. They can handle it.
Kay: A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it. Fifteen hundred years ago everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you'll know tomorrow.
Keep in mind that Drew is running Fark as a business, and certain comments that might rail against his corporate superiors will get modded or banned. Drew and his modmins are know to ban people based on petty rivalries and personality conflicts. Fark is no bastion of "free speech", and what would he know about "wisdom" from a site that is dedicated to goofball headlines and accelerated political trolling.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
Is like resistance in a parallel circuit.
Come on. "America Speaking Out" is not about getting wisdom from people, any more than the White House's solicitation of ideas for the oil spill was. It's about allowing people to feel like they have a voice. Don't spoil the illusion!
As to the "wisdom of crowds" in general, it depends entirely on the context. We know for a fact that when crowds have significant enough motivation (like money), they do an excellent job of predicting things, for example. But if your motivation is to have people point at your comment and emote somehow (laugh, get angry, friend you, whatever), then obviously, truth and wisdom are not your goals, so you don't often find truth and wisdom there.
Slashdot is not so different, there are some pretty useless comment here. Hell, I make a lot of them on occasion myself.
But if you read between the lines and "cherry pick", there are usually hidden gems about a software package, a piece of advice or something truly fascinating.
The noise to signal ratio is what matters, and on Slashdot it is better some days than others but in general it's a lot better than a lot of other sites. Some sites like YouTube or even to some extent Digg have almost no added value in their comments and the "noise" is pretty high.
It's not just about the freshest content (which is why I think a lot of people frequent Digg or Hacker News), the comments are what makes a user-generated-content site work... at least for me.
That's why I keep coming back here.
If you can't mod them join them.
They can just rename the "Meetings" poster to "crowds"
"None of us is as dumb as all of us!"
I run a site that targets the same demographic as Curtis and while I concur that the vast majority of posts provide little value, there are a subset that are well reasoned and very helpful.
Any crowd is going to eventually devolve into a set of leaders and a set of followers and I think the problem that we see online is that the leaders are often not the most informed, but the most controversial.
However, i'm not sure that's much different from anywhere in the real world
Yeah because democrats are better?
Lets just say that both major parties have an underlying sameness that prevents any progress other than over tiny issues.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It was noted in the original paper that the wisdom of crowds applies when comprised of aggregate decisions of individuals making decisions as individuals. On most websites this is not what you get.
Drew goes so far as to imply (by my reading) that crowds act more stupidly than individuals. These crowd failures are identified and discussed even on the Wiki page, most notably relevant to Fark.com and Americans Speaking Out:
Due to the nature of the websites various factors come into play which ruin contra to requirements for "the wisdom of crowds". Not forgetting that if it's on the internet, it's probably not being taken seriously and therefore is hardly a gauge of anything.
(I'm not wanting to be seen as endorsing the "wisdom of crowds", I'll take the wisdom of a few experts instead thank you very much, but the argument presented here is extremely flawed).
I suspect that the anonymity granted by a mere handle online gives many people license to compete for "points" on any ground that can get a laugh or comparable reaction from their online peers. The few who may have actually something to contribute to society will either find their attempts drowned out by that crowd, or won't bother to frequent Fark towards that end.
By comparison, I find that Slashdot's peer-based moderation system fares quite well in filtering the noise. It's not perfect, but the Slashdot crowd seems also a good bit less driven to cash in on quick, cheap thrills.
On the whole, though, I trust far more in the thoughtfully conducted discourse of the considerate few, than the multidirectional pull of large crowds. I wonder if that says something, too, about the effectiveness of our democracy.
--Udo.
Interesting. The thing is that people like to believe that crowds are smart.
A good example for me was in a class I took in college.
It was the classic you are on the far side moon and put this list in order from the most important to the least.
The point of the exercise was to show that one person could make choices faster but as a group you made better choices.
Well when we put our scores together I scored higher than my group did.
They really had a hard time understanding that a compass wouldn't work on the moon or that the radio would be limited to line of sight. The decided they knew better than I did.
The professor was really kind of upset with that result because it sort of messed up her point since I had gotten the best answers correctly and quickly on my own.
The professor asked me why I thought that was. The only thing I could come up with was that once you have an optimal solution bringing more people in only increases the chances that you will end up with a sub optimal solution.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Both sides of are equally stupid. When you go Far RIght you are hindering all progress. If you go to the far Left you are trying to fix things that doesn't need to be fixed, or with solutions that just makes them worse.
When you open the gates for public opinion you are going to get the Crazies from both sides. And because they feel so insanely strong about their opinion they will be the most vocal... Drowning out the ideas of the more sane people.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
What makes fark "anonymous" but something like HuffPo not? Perhaps there's a market for a real-name-only, must post your address discussions site, but it'll be largely unused in this world.
So what are the major difference between the two parties?
The democrats want a -bit- more government, and are totally willing to enforce the parts of the constitution they like, namely the right to free speech (so long as you aren't promoting "hate" crimes, can't have true freedom now can we?). The republicans want a -bit- less government, and are totally willing to enforce the second amendment but forget any right to privacy (look at the PATRIOT Act), etc.
Ok, so you might get different views on abortion, welfare, etc. but forget any real debate over hard money, real tax reform, elimination of various government programs, etc.
They are two sides to the same coin and any differences serve to cloud the main issue of sameness.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
This same "theory" has been made countless times before, and it's BS. It's just "funny 'cuz it's 'kinda' true" (before you really think about it).
The truth is that one-on-one, if you explained a comparatively difficult concept to an individual, you have a higher chance of getting the idea across, because you're giving that person your attention and answering any specific questions they might have. If you did the same thing to a room full of people (sound familiar?), and just stopped talking after you *thought* you'd given them enough information, many of the listeners will sit there scratching their heads and think "well, I don't get it now, but I'm not going to be the idiot who raises his hand and asks questions... It'd be better if I just asked one of the smart guys. After class.".
There are enough "smart" people out there who could relay the information to the "dumb" people if they did so with small groups, who could ask questions back. This is why it takes a few days for an idea to "sink in" after a public announcement has been made -- the people who didn't get it are looking for ways to properly understand whatever it was they were told. This reason alone, means that they are not "dumb", it may just take them a bit longer to ingest a new idea.
If you take 100 people, throw them in a room, tell them something that goes against everything they know and then yelled: "Tell me what you think of that! Now!", then sure, you won't get very encouraging result. But that's just because you used the wrong method to convey the information. They're not dumb for not getting it. But you may be, since you chose this method to get your idea across.
Entomologically speaking, the spider is not a bug, it's a feature.
How About "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nation" It is a nice counter to Charles Mackay. It's funny how people like to say crowds are morons and then try to prove it Scientifically like Francis Galton did with his Ox Experiment. If a crowd is so stupid why is the Mean of Francis' experiment within 1 pound of the weight of the Ox? From what Fark is ranting about he seems more irked about his crowd not self organizing when he wants it to. Wikipedia and Youtube self organize not just because of leadership but because the crowd wants to organize. If you have a meaningless concept that doesn't have the interest of the crowd then it wont self organize. And just because a group of people can be tricked like in the many witch burnings doesn't mean they have more or less wisdom then the individual since I've seen individuals go far more mad than that.
the problem is, his feelings lead one to think this dangerous thought: "99% of the crowd is dumb... therefore, we need some more trustworthy entity for wisdom"
when you say that, you've committed a worse stupidity than the aggregate stupidity of the crowd
what he says is essentially true, the crowd is stupid in aggregate. getting wisdom from the crowd is a process of gleaning the nuggets from the bullshit. the problem comes when the process of separating the wheat from the chaff gets so tedious that you wish there were a shortcut, that you wish there were some special class of people who are better than the average man, and trust them for wisdom instead. which is a FAR more dangerous thought than simply recognizing the plainly obvious stupidity of crowds. there's no shortcuts: placing your trust in some sort of clique or aristocratic division is when the REAL trouble starts
so yes, people are dumb. but yet it is even dumber to trust some small segment of people according to some ill-defined parameters of what wisdom is instead
i think drew has just been modding too much. if i were a proctologist, i would be sick of looking at assholes too. if i were modding comments all day, and i was constantly exposing myself to the kind of mental diarrhea you see when browsing slashdot at -1, then i would hate people and crowds as well
i think reading the shallow end of the comment pool constantly will turn you into a misanthrope, a hater of mankind
limit your exposure to the idiot area of comment boards, or it will give you brain damage
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This same "theory" has been made countless times before, and it's BS.
[...]
"well, I don't get it now, but I'm not going to be the idiot who raises his hand and asks questions..."
You just put forth the perfect evidence to SUPPORT that theory. The fact that a bunch of people getting together makes a person seperate from the logical process of asking for more information.
Who better to point out that crowds are dumb, irrational, and poorly-researched?
The best system is adversarial but friendly: liberals arguing for each change that sounded good, conservatives challenging each proposal demanding evidence that it actually is good, but both agreed that the goal is to make the country better. We pretty mich have none of that; it's all meme-parroting and visciousness and stealing from our grandchildren.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
No single person could ever believe the idea that god had a head of an elephant or jackal, or that god created woman from man's rib. But somehow, when a billion people believe it, it's easier to fall in line.
Do people often associate the word 'wisdom' along with the word 'Fark'? From HIS point of view, I'm sure he's absolutely correct. Depends on the crowd, though. If you go to a TED conference, the crowd is going to be substantially more wise than the crowd on Fark.
It also depends on the subject. Religion and politics can overwhelm even the most wise person. (see also: the 'Conservative Right' in the U.S.)
...I'm not.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
I understood that the difference between wise crowds and stupid mobs is the processes of selection of good results that have become feasible with modern technologies.
For example, asking random people is not the best way to know about encyclopedic subjects. Wikipedia works because it has crowds and a process (easy edition, easy correction, talk pages, contributions history,...) that preserves good contributions and rejects bad ones.
Same about the Linux kernel, Torvalds' role filters good and bad contributions.
In Slashdot, we have moderation that allows me to read the cream of the comments avoiding hundreds of trolls, redundant comments and not very enlightened sentences.
__
Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Which reveals the screenwriter as one of the dumb ones...
rj
There's more to it than that. I've observed many times that stupidity is contagious. People who are smart tend not to be loud and obnoxious, but idiots love to holler. It's hard not to notice someone who's hollering, and as we can all attest, it seems the stupider you are, the louder you're going to holler. Talk radio has become a huge business on this principle alone. So now you've got a bunch of people who are at the fat part of the bell curve, who are all paying attention to the idiot hollering, and after a while, they start to think: "Well, he's pretty loud so he must know what he's talking about". And if the idiot is not only loud, but plays upon most peoples' preference for standing behind the bully instead of in front of him, then you've got a recipe for a stupid stampede. Finally, because a lot of people like to be in the biggest, loudest group just because it seems safest there, you've got a group that's inoculated against the incursion of information. Game over, stupidity becomes the new norm.
No, I'm inclined to believe the article, that crowds are indeed stupid, perhaps dangerously so.
You are welcome on my lawn.
That seems like an odd reaction from the prof. It is well known that groups producer better results than the average person, but worse results than the best.
Actually, if that were the case, we'd at least average out to somebody reasonably competent who represents the average view of the public as a whole. That's a heck of lot better than what we usually get.
Generally speaking, voters vote for the person who shouts the loudest/most frequently/most recently. The result is that the person with the most money wins, which in general is the person least like the people voting. If the two candidates shout equally loudly, frequently, and recently, then voters vote for the person who does the best job of telling them that he or she is the most like they are, which is almost never a person who actually resembles them.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
Even if 99% of all comments are garbage, that is simply an argument for better filtering, not that the crowd has no wisdom. The whole point of the wisdom of the crowd in the first place was to apply filtering mechanisms to ensure the best gets to the top. It seems to work well for Wikipedia and it even will work for this comment if you mod me +1.
The reason 99% of comments are garbage is the motivation behind the comments, a well though out insightful comment may take too much effort for the little gain (many intelligent comments simply get passed over), while a witty comment or troll that does nothing to advance the discussion takes much less effort and has more gain.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
And yet, Drew Curtis was smart enough to make a very good living off of said Boobies and Weenies links.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
Counter example: The recent democratic primary in South Carolina. An unemployed person with no campaign, no money, practically no anything living in his parents basement won. How did he win? Why did he win?
Because his name was placed first on the ballot.
People are only as smart as they want to be, and unfortunately as a country we are intellectually lazy. Look no further than any of the 24 hour news networks for proof. Everything is a soundbite, designed to cause as little original thought and critical thinking as possible. Look at congress, and how campaigns are run. Soundbites that pander to their base, telling people what they want to hear instead of what needs to be heard. Everything is spin and distortion, wrapped in colorful glitz and glamor packages for the masses to make sure they keep the ratings up. Divide and conquer.
Yes, there are enough smart people to relay information to less informed. That isn't the problem. The problem is that people don't want to listen. Thinking is hard. Changing or questioning your perceptions and beliefs is too unsettling. People like being lied to as long as it is the lies they want to hear. Many people are so wrapped up in their own reality distortion field that it takes an act of $DIETY to shake them out of it.
Ignorance really is bliss.
~X~
This would be fine, except for one thing. The idiots are sheep. They don't vote randomly, they follow the the leader. Sure they leader may be an intelligent/benevolent* influence, but even so, this doesn't change the fact the the crowd are still stupid.
*In my experience this is rairly the case. Rather, the crowd tend to follow the the loudest bigot who affirms their prejudices.
*runs*
He's clearly missing the point behind the concept, but I can't tell if he's doing it on purpose to try to make a joke out of it, or if he simply doesn't understand the term. Since this is the internet, and it's traditional, I'll respond under the assumption that all his comments were intended to be taken at literal face value.
The idea is that the crowd, as a whole, is smarter than the smartest individual within it. If you attract a dumb crowd, you're not necessarily setting a high bar. And, even with a smart crowd, you get a lot of noise. You need a way to filter out all the noise, you can have just one "editor" do it, but that's not really the best way. When the information you want the crowd to process for you can be broken down completely into mathematics, you're in luck because the noise will simply drop out naturally -- as is the case when you, for instance, have everyone guess the weight of an Ox and then simply average the guesses or when you write a search engine that uses links as "votes". Back in the days when Google was new and link farms didn't exist, it was orders of magnitude more effective at returning relevant results (even if you only got a relevant result say 85% of the time, other serach engines could only deliver them maybe 10-20% of the time) simply because it harnessed the "wisdom" of the crowd. It put every other search engine at the time to absolute shame, and that's why it became dominant practically over night. Clearly there is something there.
On the other hand,when its written text like Slashdot or even Fark comments, then you need a good system in place to do it. Yes, you need something akin to editing, but as Wikipedia and Slashdot show us, you can crowd source the editing as well. When you look at the collected moderated-up analysis on Slashdot on any given article, you end up with content that is overall more thoughtful, comprehensive and thorough than any given individual within the crowd could have produced.
Yes, Slashdot could have a single editor in place moderating all the forums, but that would neither be realistic or as effective. Once again, a crowd can do the job better than an individual.