Notes on Various Aspects of Society

Human Consensus Building

Humans naturally build consensus when in groups, even when they don’t intend to.

And that’s all great and intuitive… until you get to humans. Humans, he said, demonstrate the opposite principle: more interactions equals dumber behavior. When we come together and interact as a group seeking consensus, we lose sophistication and intelligence. Ants get smarter while we get dumber.

At its simplest form, it means that if you take a bunch of people and ask them (as individuals) to answer a question, the average of each of those individual answers will likely be better than if the group works together to come up with a single answer.

– Kathy Sierra, The “Dumbness of Crowds”

Source: https://headrush.typepad.com/creatingpassionateusers/2007/01/thedumbnessof.html