[RP TownTalk] Recommended mechanics? & Dentist rec?

[Lou King]

Nicholas Laureys wrote, On 8/14/2010 7:26 PM:
>
> Think about it: many of us aren't mechanics or dentists, yet the OP's
> will trust our recommendations more than any objective rating or report.
>   I just don't get this preference for outsider rather than expert
> information.
>
> --
> Nicholas Laureys
>

Two points - "We" the buyer assume that the seller (including you at 
Best Buy) have a bias and the third party has no monitory involvement ie 
no reason to lye or give a biased answer.  I agree that what may be an 
uninformed opinion is no better than what may be a bias one. My 
experience, particularly in big box stores, has been it is even money 
which is which.

On the other hand, there have been several studies, none of which I can 
sight right now, that have demonstrated the wisdom of the "collective." 
In other words 'lots of uninformed people can be right.' This is nothing 
new; '10,000 Frenchman can't be wrong' sound familiar.

But back to the studies. Is I remember they created a situation where 
they could used market forces to evaluate the collective opinion of a 
large number of people, self-selected non-experts. One study effectively 
bought and sold shares as a predictor of election outcome. The 
collective was better than pollsters. These were not proxy shares. 
Everyone knew what they were doing. The premiums was that the market 
price for a stock (candidate) reflected the collective "value" of the 
candidate. Memory tells me that the results were duplicated by others.

Now this does not validate the opinion of one person standing around in 
the store, or one opinion on this forum. However, it does give some 
validity to group think, wikipedia and social networks (I can not 
believe I said that!)


Lou
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