Covid-19:
Reliability
of Crowd Wisdom
Nidhu Bhusan Das
Crowd Wisdom does
not exclusively mean Collective Wisdom.
Neither is it synonymous with a Jury in the court of law. We find today in the
social networking sites that provide platform for free expression of wisdom as
well as nescience. Wisdom is not knowledge per se.A person is wise when (s)he
knows that (s)he knows very little and there is much more to know. Knowledge
refers to the awareness of a person that (s)he knows. Such a person is
complacent about what (s)he has intellectually grasped. Wisdom looks beyond the
boundary of knowledge. We may recall what poet Tennyson’s Ulysses says: “ Yet
all experience is an arch wherethro’/ Gleams that untravell’d world, whose
margin fades/For ever and for ever when I move.” A knowing person would say: “I
know that I know.” His/her knowledge is limited to what (s)he knows. A wise
person would rather say: “I know that I
do not know.” Wisdom is the knowledge of
the non-knowledge. This is genuine knowledge, and is, therefore, wisdom.
My friend Bikram
in a Facebook post on 21 March 2020 stated: “Bangladesh seems to have the highest number of
experts on Coronovirus. My inbox is overflowing with tons of advice and
prescriptions.” True, Facebook and other social networking sites provide open
forum for sharing perceptions, feelings and understanding. Most of them do not
have the weight of being recognized as wisdom. When an innocent milkman speaks
on astronomy and confuses it with astrology, it may provoke our laughter, and
we cannot take it to be an expression of wisdom.
In his 2004 book The
Wisdom of Crowds, New Yorker writer James Surowiecki first popularized
the idea of Crowd Wisdom. It refers to idea that large groups of people are
collectively smarter than individual experts. Within financial markets, the idea
helps explain market movement and herd-like behaviour among investors. Herd-like
behaviour cannot be the demonstration of wisdom. And my friend’s satirical
observation tells a lot about the reliability of many a post on social sites.
So, we need not be influenced by such unsolicited posts.
