Jef's web files - Group behavior

All For One? Why Humans Cooperate

Fri, 25 Feb 2005 13:31:34 -0500

Cooperation Makes Humans Unique, But Study Finds Most Are Reluctant Cooperators

Despite the fact that humans sometimes fight fiercely among themselves, one of our most distinctive human traits is our willingness to cooperate with others. Why we are like that is one of the really big questions confronting evolutionary psychologists.

"The fact that people cooperate is quite mysterious," says Robert Kurzban, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. "People are constantly talking about how organisms are competing, but one thing that humans do that's distinctive is they cooperate in groups."

Other animals, from ants to wolves, also cooperate to a degree, but not as extensively as humans. As evolutionary psychologists, Kurzban and Daniel Houser of George Mason University are trying to figure out why.

The Wisdom of Crowds

Sat, 03 Jul 2004 15:36:03 -0400

Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations

In the summer of 2003, analysts at the Department of Defense had an unusual idea. To predict important events in the world, including terrorist attacks, they would create a kind of market in which ordinary people could actually place bets. The proposed Policy Analysis Market would allow each of us to invest in our predictions about such matters as the growth of the Egyptian economy, the death of Yasir Arafat, and the likelihood of terrorist attacks in the United States. Investors would win or lose money on the basis of the accuracy of their predictions. Predictably, the Policy Analysis Market produced a storm of criticism. Ridiculed as "offensive" and "useless," the proposal was abandoned.

Amid the war on terrorism, why was the Defense Department so interested in the Policy Analysis Market? The answer is simple: it wanted to have some help in predicting geopolitical events, including those that would endanger American interests, and it believed that a market would provide that help. It speculated that if a large number of people could be given an incentive to aggregate their private information, in the way that the Policy Analysis Market would do, government officials would learn a great deal.

Does this idea seem ludicrous? Since 1988, the University of Iowa has run the Iowa Electronic Markets, which allow people to bet on the outcome of presidential elections. As a predictor, the Iowa Electronic Markets have produced extraordinarily accurate judgments, often doing better than professional polling organizations. In the week before each of the last four elections, the predictions in the Iowa market have shown an average absolute error of just 1.5 percentage points, a significant improvement over the 2.1 percentage point error in the final Gallup Polls. Or consider the Hollywood Stock Exchange, in which people predict Oscar nominees and winners, as well as opening weekend box-office successes. Here, too, the level of accuracy has been exceptionally impressive, with (for example) correct predictions of thirty-five out of forty Oscar nominees in 2002.

In fact, prediction markets are springing up all over the Internet, allowing people to make bets on the likely outcomes of sports, entertainment, finance, and political events. On tradesports.com, people have been betting on whether Donald Rumsfeld will resign soon (extremely unlikely), whether Osama bin Laden will be captured by June 2004 (extremely unlikely), whether John Edwards will be selected as John Kerry's running mate (a good chance, but probably not), and whether George W. Bush will be re-elected (more likely than not). One can imagine prediction markets on any number of questions: Will gas prices reach $3 per gallon? Will cellular life be found on Mars? Will smallpox return to the United States? Will there be a sequel to Master and Commander? Will the Federal Communications Commission be abolished? (I didn't make these up; they are actual or proposed questions on existing markets.)

James Surowiecki is fascinated by prediction markets. In his opinion, they demonstrate that crowds are often wise. He rejects the widespread view that groups of ordinary people are usually wrong--and that we do better to ignore them and follow experts instead. Even when individuals blunder, he believes, groups can excel: "Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." This is so even when "most of the people within the group are not especially well-informed or rational." What is wonderful, and surprising, is that "when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent." Instead of chasing experts, we should consult that collective intelligence.

If you want good information, ask around - a lot

Sun, 30 May 2004 13:44:34 -0400

In 1906, English scientist Francis Galton visited a country livestock fair and stumbled upon an intriguing contest. An ox was about to be slaughtered, and the villagers in attendance were invited to guess the animal's weight after being slaughtered and dressed. Nearly 800 gave it a go, and not surprisingly, no one hit the exact mark: 1,198 pounds. Astonishingly, however, the average of those 800 guesses came close - very close indeed.

It was 1,197 pounds.

This anecdote captures the striking thesis of James Surowiecki's new book, "The Wisdom of Crowds: How the Many Are Smarter Than the Few." "Under the right circumstances," Surowiecki argues, "groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them."

Caught Between Choices: Personal Gain vs. Public Good

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 01:38:00 -0400

I teach a seminar titled "Ideas of Human Nature" in which I restrict enrollment to 15 students. Others typically want to get in, and yet much of the class's popularity stems from the benefits that come from keeping it small. Most students understand the advantages of small classes, and they wouldn't want everyone who wishes admittance to get in; just themselves! If everyone gets in, the class becomes too big and discussion is inhibited, to everyone's disadvantage. And so, each year I find myself in the difficult position of telling a number of students that there simply isn't room for them. Each student turned away from this class understands the logic, but nonetheless, each would like the limit to be expanded -- by just one.

Utopia theory

Thu, 11 Dec 2003 00:47:14 -0500

From theories of pedestrian movement and traffic flow to voting processes, economic markets and war, researchers are striving towards a physics of society

"It may be", said US sociologist George Lundberg in 1939, "that the next great developments in the social sciences will come not from professed social scientists, but from people trained in other fields." Take a look at any issue of a physical-sciences journal in the past five years and you will see one such field staking its claim vigorously. Physics is muscling its way into social science. Not content with explaining the behaviour of atoms and electrons, semiconductors, sand and space-time, physicists are now setting out to understand the behaviour of people.

A Course in Evolution, Taught by Chimps

Tue, 25 Nov 2003 19:12:00 -0500

Fossil bones record the history of the human form but they say little about behavior. A richer source on the way human social behavior evolved may come from chimpanzees, with whom people shared a common ancestor as recently as five or six million years ago.

Richard Dawkins Launches Sharp Critique of Religion

Sun, 23 Nov 2003 13:42:42 -0500

Despite the massive costs religion has imposed on human society, it persists because children do not question their parents’ beliefs, renowned Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins argued in a fiery lecture last night at Lowell Lecture Hall.
Before a packed house of 450 community members, faculty and students, Dawkins argued that the widespread presence of religion —despite its lack of obvious benefits—suggests that it was not an evolutionary adaptation.

Trading Life for Identity Key to �Logic� of Suicide Terrorism

Sat, 05 Apr 2003 12:20:55 -0500

Suicide terrorism seems to many to defy logic. Economists find the idea particularly hard to understand in the context of economic theories that are usually based on ideas of self interest: surely self interest must preclude self killing? But now a new research paper by Professor Mark Harrison an economist at the University of Warwick says that the value placed on personal identity by suicide terrorists provides some of the answers.

Derrida, Derrida, Etc.

Sun, 11 Jan 2004 12:06:07 -0500

Zeitgeist Films, distributor of the documentary Derrida, currently in limited release in select cities across the country, poses the following rhetorical question on its promotional website: What if you could watch Socrates, on film, rehearsing his Socratic dialogues? The insinuation, of course, is that Jacques Derrida, the contemporary French thinker sometimes called the "father of deconstruction" deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the ancient Greek thinker sometimes called the "father of philosophy." This is true only insofar as a firecracker and a hydrogen bomb both go pop. Otherwise, the comparison is ludicrous.

No man is an island

Sat, 18 Jan 2003 14:32:00 -0500

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
- John Donne

Advisors Put Under a Microscope

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 12:33:59 -0500

The Bush team is going to great lengths to vet members of scientific panels. Credentials, not ideology, should be the focus, critics say.

When psychologist William R. Miller was asked to join a panel that advises the National Institute on Drug Abuse, he thought he had been selected for his expertise in addiction. Then a Bush administration staff member called with some unexpected questions.
Did Miller support abortion rights? What about the death penalty for drug kingpins? And had he voted for President Bush?

Not All Iraq Claims Backed by Evidence

Fri, 23 Apr 2004 11:13:38 -0400

Sun Dec 22, 1:12 PM ET

By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Today's claims about Iraq could become tomorrow's call to arms. But not all the statements coming from the Bush administration have been supported by evidence, and some that haven't are central to the question of whether Americans should go to war.

The overarching claim, that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction, may have the weight of probability behind it, but it has yet to be backed by proof shared with the public.

Behind that is a cast of supporting allegations, some veering off into murky territory.

Peer pressure

Sat, 21 Dec 2002 12:15:43 -0500

Examples and discussion of peer pressure.

advertising, fads, body piercing, "keeping up with the joneses", risk taking...

Evolutionary ties
Military benefits

James Randi Educational Foundation

Tue, 20 Jan 2004 16:22:27 -0500

...cloud of comforting confictions...

Sun, 18 Jan 2004 18:47:40 -0500

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions which move with him like flies on a summer day.
- Bertrand Russell