Mass Intelligence

We all know people are pretty stupid (a subject I tend to work with from time to time). We even recognize moments when we as individuals act completely oblivious and idiotic. I was discussing just how stupid people could be with two co-workers of mine today, and I decided to throw a curve ball at them, namely that there is intelligence in the masses. In other words, individuals independently act pretty stupid, but in the masses people tend to be quite intelligent. I am a firm believer in mass intelligence for several reasons, but the big reason is that it is a natural occurrence and common in the animal kingdom.

Of course, we all tend to think that if individuals are stupid, then their stupidity only augments as one adds more individuals to the equation. This can be so in small groups, but as groups gain momentum the intelligence spikes. There are several examples, and I will discuss only four. The first one is a natural example in the animal kingdom : ants.

That's right, ants. If we watch a single ant we notice a pattern : there is no pattern. They act rather chaotically and individually, idiosyncratically whimsical. Add a few more ants to the equation and the chaos propagates. There does come a point of critical mass in which there will be enough ants that order begins to rise. These insects develop caste distribution systems and can even preform some extraordinary tasks. For instance, ants, if they need to cross a gap, say from one branch to another (relative to an ant), they will start linking with one another to form a bridge across the gap like an anamorphic particle sponge (that's team work!). Now how can a bunch of stupid individual ants preform such an amazing task? Simple, entropy of stupid declines at a critical number of ants until the intelligence in masses begins to rise.

Now does this occur with humans? Yes. I only need to give three examples to demonstrate the variety of intelligences that reside in the human masses. Since there are different types of intelligences, we will look at three : survival, accuracy (in numbers), and optimal path coordination.

Survival. If one ever reads the Darwin Awards one would know that people do some pretty stupid things that put their own lives in danger (often taking them). So, if we assume that stupidity grows as the masses grow, then how do people survive catastrophes? Let's look at one of the most remarkable example of humans cooperating, staying calm, and working through heavy stress under violent conditions, while ultimately surviving : the terrorists attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11. Of course, there was some looting and vandalism, but those are mostly outliers. In comparison, there were millions of people who stayed calm (relatively calm for such an event), helped each other out, and cooperated with one another as well as with the authorities. It was so amazing that so many people could work together through such an event that it stunned the media (I still remember CNN wouldn't stop commenting on how cooperative people were being). In fact, the whole nation shaped up. People volunteered, MTV started playing music again (a rather amazing event), and we all started respecting firefighters and police officers for what an immensely difficult job they have.

This is survival through cooperation. Humans are naturally a communal species. We evolved and survived through cooperating in groups. It seems logical that in times of catastrophe we would revert to our primitive instincts that helped us survive over the millenniums : communal cooperation.

So, can we be intelligent in other ways? Yes. In fact, we can even be smarter than an expert on some very fundamental things like guessing the weight of an ox (article here). In the early 1900s Francis Galton, a renowned statistician went to the country fair. While at the fair there was a contest to see who could most accurately guess the weight of an ox. Expert cattle farmers believed they could accurately guess the weight of the ox given their experience, but they were always off by a few pounds. But the layman was even worse, usually being off by many more pounds. But when all the guesses were averaged together the collective guessed the most correct. In other words, the average guess was closer to the actual weight of the ox than the experts on their own.

The other way in which people are intelligent is in pathway coordination. This is something that people are absolutely horrible at when in small groups. Actually in small groups they are worse than when they are by themselves. I am often met with frustration when I am walking down the sidewalk and I am approaching a group of, say, three people, and they walk abreast. I particularly get frustrated when none of them budge and think that I will some how magically walk through them (or vice versa). Then last minute one of them (usually the one I target deliberately) just barely budges and we still collide and the other person gasp in amazement that I would walk right into them. Every had this happen?

Now, if one goes to New York City into a location such as Time Square, aside from it being densely crowded, traffic flow is fairly consistent for a sea of people. In fact, people hardly collide unless someone stops to take a picture. Why is this so? If you watch a high speed video of people walking through Grand Central Terminal at rush hour one would notice something quite extraordinary : there appears to be coherent paths that people follow (an example of this can be found in the Ron Fricke film Chronos). In fact, the paths are so consistent and coherent that they are identical to particle flow. There are a minimum number of paths that are localized on transit vectors from platforms to exits. Note that none of these paths are physical, but rather abstract constructs of human activity. These paths to not intersect, but rather merge and depart, which optimizes the flow of particles / individuals, while avoiding interferences. How does this happen at rush hour with hundreds of thousands of people every hour, but three people cannot accommodate a single individual walking down the sidewalk?

I can really only give an opinion or a guess, but it seems plausible. It is because in the masses usually a single objective is initiated. In 9/11's case it was to survive, and the survival of the individual depended on the survival of the collective. In guessing the ox's weight the collective's objective was strictly guessing the ox's weight. At Grand Central Terminal the objective is to get to work or home as quickly as possible, and the only way to do that is to go with the flow; to go against the grain is to cause delays for yourself, the collective, and if the collective is delayed then that means further delays for the individual.

Additionally, I would suspect that when the collective is focused on a common objective those that go against the grain are easily canceled out, and that everyone striving together to achieve a the common goal will ultimately succeed by sheer numbers alone. This is probably why riots and protests are often successful.

Ad Hoc :

One may think I completely pulled from James Suromiecki's Wisdom of Crowds. Point in fact, I have never read the book. In fact, I have never heard of the book until a moment ago when I was searching for some articles or books on the subject for further research. I was rather stunned that he finds that there are three primary intelligences in masses, and that the ones I discuss are pretty much the same thing. I actually feel like not posting this writing for the simple reason that it is already been discussed elsewhere. But, I will anyway.