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Reading\u00a0The Importance of Small Decisions <\/a>by\u00a0Michael O\u2019Brien, R. Alexander Bentley and William Brock for New Scientist,\u00a013 April 2019<\/a><\/p>\n What if you could map all kinds of human decision-making and use it to chart society\u2019s evolution?<\/p>\n This is what academics Michael O\u2019Brien, Alexander Bentley and William Brock try to do in\u00a0The Importance of Small Decisions<\/i>. It is an attempt to expand on a 2014 paper, \u201cMapping collective behavior in the big-data era\u201d, that they wrote in\u00a0Behavioral and Brain Sciences<\/i><\/a>\u00a0. While contriving to be somehow both too short and rambling, it bites off more than it can chew, nearly chokes to death on the ins and outs of group selection, and coughs up its best ideas in the last 40 pages.<\/p>\n Draw a graph. The horizontal axis maps decisions according to how socially influenced they are. The vertical axis tells you how clear the costs and pay-offs are for each decision. Rational choices sit in the north-western quadrant of the map. To the north-east,\u00a0bearded capuchins teach each other how to break into palm nuts<\/a>\u00a0in a charming example of social learning (pictured). Twitter storms generated by fake news swirl about the south-east.<\/p>\n The more choices you face, the\u00a0greater the cognitive load<\/a>. The authors cite economist Eric Beinhocker, who in\u00a0The Origin of Wealth<\/i>\u00a0calculated that human choices had multiplied a hundred million-fold in the past 10,000 years. Small and insignificant decisions now consume us.<\/p>\n Worse, costs and pay-offs are increasingly hidden in an ocean of informational white noise, so that it is easier to follow a trend than find an expert. \u201cWhy worry about the underlying causes of global warming when we can see what tens of millions of our closest friends think?\u201d ask the authors, building to a fine, satirical climax.<\/p>\n In an effort to communicate widely, the authors have, I think, left out a few too many details from their original paper. And a mid-period novel by Philip K. Dick would paint a more visceral picture of a world created by too much information. Still, there is much fun to be had reading the garrulous banter of these three extremely smart academics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reading\u00a0The Importance of Small Decisions by\u00a0Michael O\u2019Brien, R. Alexander Bentley and William Brock for New Scientist,\u00a013 April 2019 What if you could map all kinds of human decision-making and use it to chart society\u2019s evolution? This is what academics Michael … Continue reading