宜昌市自贸区示意图:独立思维才能造就集体智慧 2011-07-16

独立思维才能造就集体智慧
2011-07-16 11:26
独立思维才能造就集体智慧
2011年 05月 31日 07:42
When We're Cowed by the Crowd
America depends upon the wisdom of crowds. When voting, we rely on the masses to pick the best politicians. When investing in stocks, we assume that, over time, people will gravitate toward the best companies. Even our culture is increasingly driven by the collective: Just look at 'American Idol.'
The good news is that the wisdom of crowds exists. When groups of people are asked a difficult question─say, to estimate the number of marbles in a jar, or the murder rate of New York City─their mistakes tend to cancel each other out. As a result, the average answer is often surprisingly accurate.
But here's the bad news: The wisdom of crowds turns out to be an incredibly fragile phenomenon. It doesn't take much for the smart group to become a dumb herd. Worse, a new study by Swiss scientists suggests that the interconnectedness of modern life might be making it even harder to benefit from our collective intelligence.
The experiment was straightforward. The researchers gathered 144 Swiss college students, sat them in isolated cubicles, and then asked them to answer various questions, such as the number of new immigrants living in Zurich. In many instances, the crowd proved correct. When asked about those immigrants, for instance, the median guess of the students was 10,000. The answer was 10,067.
The scientists then gave their subjects access to the guesses of the other members of the group. As a result, they were able to adjust their subsequent estimates based on the feedback of the crowd. The results were depressing. All of a sudden, the range of guesses dramatically narrowed; people were mindlessly imitating each other. Instead of canceling out their errors, they ended up magnifying their biases, which is why each round led to worse guesses. Although these subjects were far more confident that they were right─it's reassuring to know what other people think─this confidence was misplaced.
The scientists refer to this as the 'social influence effect.' In their paper, they argue that the effect has grown more pervasive in recent years. We live, after all, in an age of opinion polls and Facebook, cable news and Twitter. We are constantly being confronted with the beliefs of others, as the crowd tells itself what to think.
In an ideal world, all this information would improve our beliefs. The range of viewpoints in the media and on the Web would be translated into a diversity of thoughts and collective wisdom. Alas, that doesn't seem to be happening.
Consider a recent study by James Evans, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, in which he analyzed 34 million academic articles published in the last 50 years. Though the digitization of journals has made it far easier to find this information─most articles are now accessible online─Mr. Evans found that digitization also coincided with a narrowing of citations. Since search engines rank highly cited articles first, scholars tend to focus on them, which leads to the neglect of more obscure research, even when it is relevant.
We live at a time when seemingly everything is available, but it's more likely than ever before that we're all reading the same thing. The lure of conformity is hard to resist.
This research reveals the downside of our hyperconnected lives. So many essential institutions depend on the ability of citizens to think for themselves, to resist the latest trend or bubble. That's why it is important, as the Founding Fathers realized, to cultivate a raucous free press, full of divergent viewpoints.
And yet, while the Web has enabled new forms of collective action, it has also enabled new kinds of collective stupidity. Groupthink is now more widespread, as we cope with the excess of available information by outsourcing our beliefs to celebrities, pundits and Facebook friends. Instead of thinking for ourselves, we simply cite what's already been cited.
We should be wary of such influences. The only way to preserve the wisdom of the crowd is to protect the independence of the individual.
JONAH LEHRER
2011年 05月 31日 07:42
独立思维才能造就集体智慧
美国有赖于集体智慧。投票时，我们依靠大众来选择最杰出的政治家。投资股市时，我们假定随着时间的推移，人们会受最出色的公司所吸引。甚至是我们的文化也越来越多地由集体行为所推动：看看电视节目《美国偶像》(American Idol)就可一目了然。
好消息是集体智慧确实存在。当一群人被问到一个非常难的问题时，比如说，估计一下罐子里的弹球数，或是纽约市的谋杀率，人们的失误往往会彼此抵消。结果就造成平均答案常常出人意料地准确。
不过，坏消息是：集体智慧是一种脆弱得难以置信的现象。一群聪明人与一群盲从之流仅有一步之遥。更糟糕的是，瑞士科学家进行的一项新研究显示，现代生活的互相联系性可能开始使我们更难以从集体智慧中获益了。
试验很简单。研究人员召集了144位瑞士大学生，安排他们坐在彼此隔绝的工作隔间中，然后让他们回答各种问题，比如住在苏黎世的新移民有多少。在很多情况下，事实证明集体智慧是正确的。比如，当问他们苏黎世的新移民有多少时，学生们估计的中值为10,000。正确答案是10,067。
然后，科学家们告诉研究对象组里其他人的估计数字。这样，学生们就可以根据组里其他人的反馈调整自己随后的估计。结果令人失望。突然之间，估计的区间明显变窄；人们在无意识地彼此模仿。最终他们放大了自己的误差，而不是彼此抵消误差，正因为如此，每一轮都造成估计的数字误差更大。尽管这些研究对象更有自信认为自己是正确的──知道别人的想法让他们更加安心──这种自信却用错了地方。
科学家们将这种现象称为“社会影响效应”。在报告中，科学家们说，近年来这种效应变得越来越普遍。毕竟，我们生活在一个充斥着民意调查、Facebook、有线新闻和Twitter的时代。我们不断地遇到其他人的想法，群体会告诉自己该怎么想。
在一个理想的世界中，所有这些信息都将完善我们的想法。媒体和网络上的各种观点将转化成各种思想和集体智慧。不过，看起来事实并非如此。
看看芝加哥大学社会学家埃文斯(James Evans)最近进行的一项研究。在研究中，他对过去50年中发表的3,400万篇学术文章进行了分析。尽管期刊数字化令寻找这些信息变得容易多了──大部分文章现在都可以在网上找到──埃文斯却发现，伴随数字化而来的是引用文章范围的收窄。由于搜索引擎按照被引用次数排列文章，学者们往往会专注于排在前面的文章，造成对知名度较低的研究的忽视，即使是相关的研究。
我们生活的时代看似一切皆可得，但我们却比以往任何时候更有可能是在阅读同样的东西。随大流的诱惑力是很难抗拒的。
这项研究揭示了我们彼此超级联系的生活的不利方面。那么多重要的机构有赖于公民独立思考的能力，有赖于他们抗拒最新潮流或泡沫的能力。正因为如此，就像我们的国父们所意识到的，培养言论自由、百家争鸣非常重要。
然而，尽管网络培养了新形式的集体行为，它也助长了新型集体愚昧。在我们适应信息过剩、将我们的想法“外包”给名人、学者和Facebook好友之际，集体想法现在更加普遍。我们只是引用别人引用过的东西，而不是独立思考。
我们应该警惕这类影响。保护集体智慧的唯一方法是保护个人的独立性。
JONAH LEHRER
（本文作者JONAH LEHRER是《华尔街日报》Head Case 栏目专栏作家。）
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