Attempting to Avoid Baseless Information Cascades
In class we discussed the basics of information cascades and how exactly they get started. In the article “Arresting Irrational Information Cascades,” Robert Wiblin goes more in depth about information cascades. He explores where they come from in terms of general human behavior and also gives a few suggestions on how to avoid information cascades where the information may not actually be correct. I think that if any information on information cascades is to be useful and able to be applied to real situations, it’s almost necessary to learn about how to avoid this kind of information cascade.
Wiblin first explains why information cascades come about in people. He says they originate from Aumann’s Agreement Theorem which states that when two people come together with initially differing positions, their positions will eventually converge. Applying this is real life in larger groups is essentially what causes an information cause. Wiblin explains that not everyone lives by this theorem otherwise a lot more irrational information cascades could occur, but he states that using this theorem in real life leaves people vulnerable to an information cascade. So this theorem is one step towards creating information cascades. I think it’s really interesting that information cascades come from a generalization of individual human behavior and can be applied to very large groups and still have the same underlying concepts.
Next, Wiblin defines information cascades and says what conditions must exist for them to be able to occur. His definition and conditions are the exact same as the ones we discussed in class. However, he then goes further and begins his suggestions on how to avoid irrational information cascades (ones that are based on very little or nothing where the information has a high likelihood of being incorrect), which is something very applicable to real life. He gives four main suggestions. The first way to avoid an irrational information cascade is to have people actually discuss the issue at hand as opposed to just blindly following somebody. His second suggestions is for first few people of the cascade to make sure that the information is valid before agreeing with it. The third suggestion is to assume that there are a few people who will never just follow the crowd and will, no matter what everybody else is doing, look into the issue at hand, form their own opinion and call everybody out if they are assuming false information. Lastly, Wiblin suggests that people that are part of group in which this occurring go against their nature and stop being assured in the truth of something just because a lot of the group is saying that it is true. He says that these are all possible ways of stopping the spreading of people agreeing with false information. He does say that some are unlikely to actually happen in real life, but it is extremely interesting that there are set and stone ways of stopping this common occurrence and that they are seemingly easy to achieve. I think that the problem is that people don’t realize that there is even the issue of irrational information cascades, much less how we would actually fix them. However, with this knowledge it would be relatively easy to stop irrational information cascades from forming.
Source: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2012/10/arresting-irrational-information-cascades.html