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Google and the Herd Behavior model
June 29, 2006
Are Google and all those social bookmarks relying on wrong informational cascades1?
In social science, it has been shown that rational individuals often tend to rely on information conveyed by others. They would have taken a different course of action if they were left alone in their own private information. Evolving Trends has demonstrated that all those social bookmarking portals are indeed being built upon a wrong cascade where individual rationality may be easily overshadowed by the “wisdom of the crowd”. The logic can be easily extended to search engines like Google which return results largely based upon link popularity.
Cascades, when feeding on wrong information, can be damaging. And all it takes to develop a wrong informational cascade is a small amount of original information followed by imitations. The availability of information often adds weight to its perceived reliablity despite that fact that they are totally unrelated.
In this age of mass data falsification (don’t call it “lies”), we have to be wary of cascades especially when governments are particularly good at using them to sway public opinions.
fn [1] A Quick Introduction to Informational Cascade and Rational Herding
Posted to Web at June 29, 2006 06:53 PM :
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Comments
Looks like “Lemmings over a cliff” or the crowd mentality has not changed. It has just moved to the net. Interesting, if we read it off a computer screen, it must be true. I have caught myself in the past doing just that, now I know better. Of course you can cross reference your sources to corraborate the resource. We may find the same data cut and pasted numerous times compounded the inaccurate data.
posted by: collectivesoul ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.hollymolly.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at June 30, 2006 05:03 PM
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