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More random pickings from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• For complex problems, go with your gut.
• Emotions are contagious - as seen through Facebook status updates.
• How to encourage organ donation? Cue regret. (And how to encourage moral behavior in general? Place a pair of eyes in view.)
• In car designs, we prefer the prototypical but with a little complexity on top. (But when it comes to architecture, we prefer the prototypical and less complex.)
• Poor impulse control may not always be a bad thing. (But those of us with poor impulse control, can train ourselves to resist temptation nonetheless.)
• We not only judge people more who are actively (vs. passively) immoral; we are also less apt to be actively (vs. passively) immoral.
• A comparison of Northern vs Southern public identities - as surmised from personal ads.
• Individualism is good for the economy.
• Montreal: how a creative urban petri dish gave birth to Cirque du Soleil.
• Want to know what tunes will be future hits: hook a few teens up to an MRI.
• The messenger is the most powerful message - at least when it comes to political videos on Youtube. (And Youtube watchers feel more politically effective than non-watchers, although they're more cynical about government.)
• A sense of humor is, no joke, good for dating.

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More from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Are their fundamental differences between tight and loose cultures? A study of 33 nations tries to tease them out.
• Irrational markets: 41% of auctioned gift-certificates on eBay are bid up beyond their face value.
• Reading about stupid people can make you temporarily stupid.
• Want to ace that test? Don't look at red.
• Getting money can be lethal.
• Terror makes you cling to your group - but only if you don't believe in the afterlife.

Genetically modified crowds

To anyone familiar with human stampedes, financial panics or professional soccer games, the “Wisdom of Crowds” may seem more like an oxymoron than a legitimate pursuit of study.

But as James Surowiecki so adeptly describes in his book of that name, crowds can be wise.

Under certain conditions. First, they must be diverse; homogeneous groups will be limited – or aggravated – by their shared narrow perspective. Next, groups must be set up so that individuals can think independently, thus avoiding the twin traps of groupthink and mis-information cascades. Finally, they have to have a way to aggregate their ideas, inputs and decisions.

Open source communities and (some) markets are good examples that meet all three conditions. Filter bubbles, which encourage homogeneity and cascades while eschewing communal aggregation, are not.

But if filter bubbles may make online communities stupid, could we make algorithms that make us collectively smarter?

We’re probably a long way off, but the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT is at least moving in the direction. Led by Thomas Malone, the center is looking more deeply at the “DNA” of smart groups; how the “what, who, why and how” of a group correlates to group intelligence.

In a study published last year, Malone and his colleagues discovered that average intelligence, for one, does not predict group intelligence. Other factors, such as group cohesion, satisfaction and motivation, are only moderately correlated. What does make a group smarter? Having a few people who are “socially sensitive;” that is, members who tend to be more open and receptive.

Malone and his crew are taking results like that and mapping them onto a “genome” of group intelligence. Workplaces and organizations are taking note, but so are news sites and online government initiatives interested in harnessing the intelligence of readers and constituents. Have an under-producing team or a comment thread full of flamers? Time for some group dynamic gene-splicing.

It might be too far a reach to translate MIT’s work to the the group dynamics of the internet as a whole – at least in the near future. But perhaps one day we’ll be building algorithms to maximize collective intelligence rather than just personal relevance.

cross-posted from TheFilterBubble

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More finds from Kevin Lewis' blog:

• Stronger family ties may mean weaker social capital.
• The age of fairness and self-sacrifice: 8 years old.
• We're more charitable tomorrow than today.
• We know ourselves all too well: people tend to avoid situations where they know they can deceive others and get away with it.
• Thinking of ourselves makes us stricter judges of fairness.
• "I'll let the other guy help": 50 years of bystander-effect studies.
• Do-gooders are more selfish; they're just better at integrating selfishness with communitarian impulses into enlightened self-interest.

The creativity that cannot be bubble-wrapped

In spite of Eli’s and this blogger’s concern that filter bubbles could put a damper on innovation and creativity, there is one realm that is evidently immune to the filter: the humorous internet meme.

Whether photo-shopping, re-mixing, re-producing or auto-tuning, online denizens show no shortage of creativity in riffing off of each other and, to reference Arthur Koestler again, “bisociating” two ideas into new, clever, creations.

You’re no doubt familiar with the “Charlie Bit My Finger” phenomenon (if not, do a search and enjoy the hundreds – or thousands – of knock offs on the original home video sensation). I thank Michael Agger over at Slate for introducing me this morning to an endless trove of similar comic collaborations. Know Your Meme will chart you through the history of the Bed Intruder, the Double Rainbow, the Fashionable Chinese Bum, and countless others. (If you don’t want to waste hours of your day, do not check out Super Cut Movie Cliches.)

Perhaps the filter bubble can’t stifle humorous creativity precisely because, as Eli writes about, humor is one of the few things that manages to pierce our bubbles. If you glance at any “top emailed” or “most popular” list, you’re certain to see humorous articles and videos monopolizing the list. For anyone who’s spent more than an hour online, it’s almost not worth explaining why this is so. Who can resist an opportunity to laugh, whether it comes in the form of a forwarded email, a Facebook post or a link on our favorite online mag?

But should we be encouraged by the the penetrability of humor? Probably not. The darker side of humor is that it represents one the “junk foods” we do tend to feast off of online – along with gossip, cute animals, morally shocking news and, of course, porn. None of these items are likely to be slowed down by our filter bubbles. Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that. But when Antoine Dodson is the one thing we’re sharing and collaborating on, it’s nothing to sing (or auto-tune) about.

cross-posted from TheFilterBubble

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The weekly browse through Kevin Lewis' blog:

• What we want is relative to what we have, politically speaking.
• We root for the underdog, unless he gets too violent.
• Hearing what the enemy has to say may not be a good thing.
• Political progress follows economic setbacks.
• Feeling like a global citizen makes us act more globally.
• Uncertainty and low self-esteem make us less democratically inclined.
• Is conservatism a response to our fear of death? Or will any ideology do.
• Schadenfreude: a product of envy.
• Politics is personal: men more likely to be drafted are also more anti-war.
• Contrary to stereotypes, more emotional voters are not the less sophisticate voters. (Even though emotions make us all less rational.)
• What ticks us off are not acts that hurt us, but acts that we deem immoral.
• Laws affect our attitudes - but only when we can see the effects of the laws.
• When it comes to analyzing other's "selfless" behavior, we're cynics.
• More evidence that power pays: US House members earn abnormal stock market returns.
• And that payment is power: interest groups have an effect on immigration policy.
• Which party is responsible for the economic booms and busts? Depends upon what party you belong to.
• House members on health care committees get more contributions from the health care industry, right? Not necessarily so. But maybe lobbyists make up the difference.
• Corporations that are more likely to contribute to campaigns: those privately owned or with a principal owner.

The – true – Republic of Twitter

As has been mentioned before in this blog and in Eli’s book, the internet has not turned out to be the democratic utopia of information it was once hoped to be. If our information is not being piped through (albeit new) elite media hubs, then it is being filtered through the bubble of our and our friends’ preferences.

That’s at least the case for most of the internet. One exception, however, may be Twitter.

Unlike Facebook and Google, Twitter doesn’t make assumptions about the tweets you’d prefer to see. What you sign up for is what you get. It’s bubble-free media.

Twitter, new research suggests, may also be anti-elitist. We’ all know about the Ashton Kutchers and Old Spice Men of mega-twit fame. Turns out that, in spite of their gajillion followers, those Tweet Leviathans have little influence in spreading memes. Looking at 580 million tweets over 8 months and using some fancy statistical crunching, researchers found that mid-range tweeters (who have about 1,000 followers) are much more influential when it comes to creating and spreading hashtags.

Could that mean Twitter is indeed the democratic medium we’ve all been looking for? We don’t like to jump to conclusions based on one study (especially one with new-fangled statistical techniques), but the study’s findings temptingly align with the theory that on Twitter information roams free. (On an even more conjectural note, their research may also mean Twitter deserves credit on the “maximizing creativity by minimizing silos” front.)

The impressive research – which comes in two reports and which also tracked memes in stories longer than 140 characters – contains some other fun tidbits, although none directly relevant to the filter bubble. Of note:

• Partly depending on whether memes (defined in longer stories as “short phrases”) started in mainstream news sites or blogs, they had disparate patterns of peaking and trothing online. (The researchers found 6 distinct patterns).
• The influence of mainstream media v. blogs in spreading memes depends on the subject area. When it comes to Entertainment and Tech, for example, blogs rule.
• Finally, don’t tell Bill Keller, but when comparing the influence of the New York Times, USA Today and the Wall Street Journal, USA Today wins out on every beat, except for National News where it is bested by WSJ. (Note: even the authors are surprised by these results.)

reposted from TheFilterBubble