Monday, September 29, 2008

Wisdom of the crowds

Orkut is full of Indians. Well, not exactly, because Brazilians are apparently more jobless than we are, but according to latest estimate, Indians constitute 17%+ and rank third. And whoever said anything about wisdom of crowd should merely look at Orkut forums to swim in depth of knowledge. That all Indians think alike is profoundly observed where irrespective of the theme of community, topic of discussion always involves various stupid and stupider games which in some way or other involve meaninglessly increasing length of the thread.

Even if you join the Orkut not to talk but merely to connect, as I do, you will fail miserably. You see, rule of Orkut is that Ashish Gupta will not be named "Ashish Gupta", he will named "HAPPY HOLI EVERYBODY lol", "my number has changed", "go india go" and some such nonsense least of which will give any inkling about who exactly the person is. And combine this with fact that women have genuine reason not to post their pictures and many men don't or can't, often I have been left wondering who is this person in my friends list and why did I accept his friendship request. I've spoken about peoples' profile before and only conclusion I reach is that I must resist forming any impression about people from their internet profiles or else I will end up breaking friendship with more than half my friends.

And it's not merely Orkut. Go to rediff comments, youtube comments or digg.com, you will see profound nuggets of wisdom of dimwitted shredding any semblance of sanity on internet. This post from Onion (which by the way is an extremely funny satirical news source) perfectly sums it up.

We are blessed to be living in an age when we have a global communications network in which idiots, assholes, and total and complete wastes of fucking human life alike can come together to give instant feedback in an unfettered and unmonitored online environment...What better way to take advantage of this incredible technology than to log onto the Internet and insult a complete stranger?

Breaking the Bias – Lessons from Bayesian Statistical Perspective

Equitable and fair institutions are the foundation of modern democracies. Bias, as referring to “inclination or prejudice against one perso...