Cognitive Daily reports on a study showing that one person repeatedly reiterating of their point of view is as influential as multiple people giving their opinion separately.
From the comments:
"I was about to point out that a lot of people are saying that in their opinion Islam must be destroyed, but then I realized: I don't know if it really *is* a lot of people, or if it's a few people repeating it over and over until it *seems* like a lot of people, which is exactly the point."
Indeed.
3 comments:
Thanks for the link -- and thanks for setting that fellow straight in the comments. I love your blog, btw -- just added you to my RSS reader.
Hi Dave (& Greta) - you're most welcome! I'm a big fan of Cognitive Daily. Kepp bringing us the good stuff.
I wonder how this compares to the "wisdom of crowds" idea? If one person in the crowd repeatedly says "that cow weighs 3 tonnes" then the mean will be way out. Not wise. I guess one has to somehow de-correlate responses before collating them, in order to remove this kind of repeat bias. Or just ignore those who keep wittering...
Incidently, Googling for "wisdom of crows" gives quite a different result...
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