Covid-19: Reliability of Crowd Wisdom

            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.