Independence in diversity: Trusting the people's wisdom

Thomas Hidya Tjaya, Boston, Massachusetts

For a very long time the people of this planet have been engaged in one of the perennial debates over the collective wisdom of crowds. The basic questions are these: Are crowds smart or stupid? Is their judgment reliable? On the one hand, the belief in the wisdom of crowds seems counterintuitive. First, we tend to trust the expertise of a few people who are acknowledged as the masters in their fields.

Instead of asking for the opinions of ten different people on a particular issue, we would rather ask one or two experts in that matter. Second, throughout human history we have seen various examples of crowds doing stupid things such as rioting or taking the law into their own hands. In such circumstances the low intelligence quotient (IQ) of the masses is apparent. Third, the judgment of crowds in an election setting may be made on sheer popularity of one of the candidates, which does not necessarily reflect the relevant qualities sought for. All this points to the general intuition about the unreliability of collective judgment.

This conclusion is not unlike Sigmund Freud's premises in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego that when people assemble en masse, all the raw material making up the individual psyche (libido, aggression, etc.) is also present on a gigantic scale, which dwarfs the power of rational thought.

On the other hand, the democratic model of government is based on the idea that people have an undeniable right to choose their own leaders. It assumes that the collective intelligence of the voting public is better at deciding who should govern a country, and how, than the single, narrow mind of a king or dictator. In this setting the slogan "father knows best" would never find its place. Political practicalities suggest that, to a certain extent, we do trust the wisdom of crowds.

James Surowiecki's new book, The Wisdom of Crowds (2004), makes a significant contribution to this debate. A business columnist for The New Yorker, Surowiecki in his book argues that crowds are decidedly more intelligent and reliable decision- makers than most of us would ever suspect. At the individual level we may have many limitations, as emotion often affects our judgment. But when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent. Thus, he postulates, that a large group of minds working together can be uncannily accurate when it comes to answering and solving certain types of questions and problems.

Of course, not every crowd is smart. Several conditions need to be met in order to produce a smart crowd, namely, diversity, independence and a particular kind of decentralization. The more diverse members of a group are, the more likely they will make up a smart group, because such a group will have a diversity of opinion.

Surowiecki contends that groups do not need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. The factor of independence on the part of the members is no less important. They should have enough freedom to provide opinions that are not determined by the opinions of those around them.

Moreover, in making a judgment, they should be able to rely on their individual expertise and local knowledge. This form of decentralization will certainly enrich and strengthen the group as a whole. There is definitely some mechanism needed for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

It is important, I think, to ponder over the relevance of this idea with regard to the world of politics. Besides democracy that hinges upon the wisdom and judgment of people, the theory also touches upon the many socio-political problems that we face: Cognition problems which address questions such as how to run a good election or how to solve the problem of traffic congestion in the capital; coordination problems that require members of a group (or a city or country) to figure out how to coordinate their behavior with each other; cooperation problems which involve the challenge of getting everybody, the self-interested and the generous alike, to work together.

We know that in politics we do not follow a certain blueprint on how to run a country, but rather make sound judgments and decisions based on certain principles and circumstances. Therefore, the involvement of many people in decision making is necessary.

Given the contingency of various factors in making up a smart group, the real key seems to be satisfying the conditions -- diversity, independence and decentralization.

Diversity clearly makes it easier for a group to make decisions based on facts, rather than on influence, authority or group allegiance. In picking out members in his or her cabinet, for instance, a president needs to pay careful attention to this factor.

Homogeneous groups tend to fall victim to what the psychologist Irving Janis called "groupthink" as they become cohesive more readily than diverse groups, and at the same time become more dependent on the group and more insulated from outside opinions. To guard this independence, a certain form of decentralization in the system must be maintained so that the individuals or local components may exercise sufficient freedom in determining their own stance.

For a country like Indonesia that has the characteristics of religious and ethic plurality, maintaining diversity, independence and a certain degree of decentralization becomes imperative. Diversity and independence are particularly important because, as Surowieki suggests, the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contests, not consensus or compromise.

Efforts must be made to produce mechanisms, for instance, through intelligent voting systems, to aggregate and yield collective judgments that represent not the thought of certain individuals in the group, but rather, in some sense, what they all think. It is paradoxical that the best way for a group to be smart is for every person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

It is a manifestation of trust towards all members of the group, no matter how diverse the group may be. Only when all those conditions are met can we hope for a better and stronger Indonesia.

The writer is a lecturer at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in philosophy at Boston College in Massachusetts.