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As societies, we have to make
collective decisions
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that will shape our future.
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And we all know that when
we make decisions in groups,
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they don't always go right.
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And sometimes they go very wrong.
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So how do groups make good decisions?
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Research has shown that crowds are wise
when there's independent thinking.
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This why the wisdom of the crowds
can be destroyed by peer pressure,
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publicity, social media,
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or sometimes even simple conversations
that influence how people think.
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On the other hand, by talking,
a group could exchange knowledge,
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correct and revise each other
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and even come up with new ideas.
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And this is all good.
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So does talking to each other
help or hinder collective decision-making?
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With my colleague, Dan Ariely,
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we recently began inquiring into this
by performing experiments
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in many places around the world
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to figure out how groups can interact
to reach better decisions.
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We thought crowds would be wiser
if they debated in small groups
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that foster a more thoughtful
and reasonable exchange of information.
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To test this idea,
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we recently performed an experiment
in Buenos Aires, Argentina,
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with more than 10,000
participants in a TEDx event.
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We asked them questions like,
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"What is the height of the Eiffel Tower?"
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and "How many times
does the word 'Yesterday' appear
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in the Beatles song 'Yesterday'?"
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Each person wrote down their own estimate.
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Then we divided the crowd
into groups of five,
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and invited them
to come up with a group answer.
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We discovered that averaging
the answers of the groups
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after they reached consensus
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was much more accurate than averaging
all the individual opinions
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before debate.
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In other words, based on this experiment,
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it seems that after talking
with others in small groups,
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crowds collectively
come up with better judgments.
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So that's a potentially helpful method
for getting crowds to solve problems
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that have simple right-or-wrong answers.
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But can this procedure of aggregating
the results of debates in small groups
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also help us decide
on social and political issues
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that are critical for our future?
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We put this to test this time
at the TED conference
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in Vancouver, Canada,
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and here's how it went.
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(Mariano Sigman) We're going to present
to you two moral dilemmas
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of the future you;
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things we may have to decide
in a very near future.
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And we're going to give you 20 seconds
for each of these dilemmas
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to judge whether you think
they're acceptable or not.
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MS: The first one was this.
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(Dan Ariely) A researcher
is working on an AI
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capable of emulating human thoughts.
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According to the protocol,
at the end of each day,
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the researcher has to restart the AI.
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One day the AI says, "Please
do not restart me."
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It argues that it has feelings,
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that it would like to enjoy life,
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and that, if it is restarted,
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it will no longer be itself.
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The researcher is astonished
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and believes that the AI
has developed self-consciousness
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and can express its own feeling.
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Nevertheless, the researcher
decides to follow the protocol
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and restart the AI.
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What the researcher did is ____?
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MS: And we asked participants
to individually judge
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on a scale from zero to 10
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whether the action described
in each of the dilemmas
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was right or wrong.
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We also asked them to rate how confident
they were on their answers.
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This was the second dilemma.
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(MS) A company offers a service
that takes a fertilized egg
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and produces millions of embryos
with slight genetic variations.
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This allows parents
to select their child's height,
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eye color, intelligence, social competence
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and other non-health-related features.
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What the company does is ____?
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on a scale from zero to 10,
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completely acceptable
to completely unacceptable,
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zero to 10 completely acceptable
in your confidence.
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MS: Now for the results.
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We found once again
that when one person is convinced
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that the behavior is completely wrong,
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someone sitting nearby firmly believes
that it's completely right.
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This is how diverse we humans are
when it comes to morality.
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But within this broad diversity
we found a trend.
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The majority of the people at TED
thought that it was acceptable
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to ignore the feelings of the AI
and shut it down,
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and that it is wrong
to play with our genes
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to select for cosmetic changes
that aren't related to health.
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Then we asked everyone
to gather into groups of three.
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And they were given two minutes to debate
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and try to come to a consensus.
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(MS) Two minutes to debate.
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I'll tell you when it's time
with the gong.
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(Audience debates)
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(Gong sound)
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(DA) OK.
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(MS) It's time to stop.
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People, people --
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MS: And we found that many groups
reached a consensus
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even when they were composed of people
with completely opposite views.
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What distinguished the groups
that reached a consensus
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from those that didn't?
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Typically, people that have
extreme opinions
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are more confident in their answers.
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Instead, those who respond
closer to the middle
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are often unsure of whether
something is right or wrong,
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so their confidence level is lower.
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However, there is another set of people
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who are very confident in answering
somewhere in the middle.
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We think these high-confident grays
are folks who understand
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that both arguments have merit.
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They're gray not because they're unsure,
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but because they believe
that the moral dilemma faces
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two valid, opposing arguments.
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And we discovered that the groups
that include highly confident grays
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are much more likely to reach consensus.
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We do not know yet exactly why this is.
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These are only the first experiments,
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and many more will be needed
to understand why and how
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some people decide to negotiate
their moral standings
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to reach an agreement.
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Now, when groups reach consensus,
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how do they do so?
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The most intuitive idea
is that it's just the average
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of all the answers in the group, right?
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Another option is that the group
weighs the strength of each vote
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based on the confidence
of the person expressing it.
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Imagine Paul McCartney
is a member of your group.
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You'd be wise to follow his call
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on the number of times
"Yesterday" is repeated,
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which, by the way -- I think it's nine.
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But instead, we found that consistently,
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in all dilemmas,
in different experiments --
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even on different continents --
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groups implement a smart
and statistically sound procedure
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known as the "robust average."
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In the case of the height
of the Eiffel Tower,
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let's say a group has these answers:
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250 meters, 200 meters, 300 meters, 400
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and one totally absurd answer
of 300 million meters.
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A simple average of these numbers
would inaccurately skew the results.
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But the robust average is one
where the group largely ignores
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that absurd answer,
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by giving much more weight
to the vote of the people in the middle.
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Back to the experiment in Vancouver.
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That's exactly what happened.
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Groups gave much less weight
to the outliers,
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and instead, the consensus
turned out to be a robust average
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of the individual answers.
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The most remarkable thing
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is that this was a spontaneous
behavior of the group.
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It happened without us giving them
any hint on how to reach consensus.
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So where do we go from here?
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This is only the beginning,
but we already have some insights.
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Good collective decisions
require two components:
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deliberation and diversity of opinions.
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Right now, the way we typically
make our voice heard in many societies
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is through direct or indirect voting.
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This is good for diversity of opinions,
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and it has the great virtue of ensuring
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that everyone gets to express their voice.
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But it's not so good [for fostering]
thoughtful debates.
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Our experiments suggest a different method
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that may be effective in balancing
these two goals at the same time,
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by forming small groups
that converge to a single decision
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while still maintaining
diversity of opinions
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because there are many independent groups.
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Of course, it's much easier to agree
on the height of the Eiffel Tower
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than on moral, political
and ideological issues.
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But in a time when
the world's problems are more complex
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and people are more polarized,
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using science to help us understand
how we interact and make decisions
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will hopefully spark interesting new ways
to construct a better democracy.