{"id":424,"date":"2017-09-24T21:22:50","date_gmt":"2017-09-25T01:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/?p=424"},"modified":"2017-09-24T21:22:50","modified_gmt":"2017-09-25T01:22:50","slug":"on-being-all-you-should-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/2017\/09\/24\/on-being-all-you-should-be\/","title":{"rendered":"On being all you should be"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Do you think you are better than everyone else?\u00a0\u00a0 Well<\/strong>?!\u201d<\/em><\/h3>\n

I immediately knew that the pause had done, done me in. Her stare turned into a glare and with a quick heel-turn she exited, stage left.<\/p>\n

We instinctively know that the only answer to such a question is a quick, unequivocal, \u201cNO\u201d. But for me, it is all about context.<\/p>\n

A vacationing family\u2019s car breaks down in the middle of the night on the interstate; everyone<\/em> is speeding past, but you stop to render assistance. Doesn\u2019t that make you better than everyone else?<\/p>\n

How about you are walking downtown and an elderly woman falls down several yards ahead of you. Everyone<\/em> steps around or over the injured person, not you. You stop and render assistance.
\nBetter? Of course.<\/p>\n

A house is on fire, and everyone<\/em> is watching, but you run in to rescue a trapped child. Are you better than everyone else? Absolutely!<\/p>\n

The issue is with herd, or mob, mentality. There have been multiple studies that provide evidence of how groups of people are influenced by those surrounding them. In a study by researchers at Leeds University volunteers were asked to randomly walk around a large hall without talking to each other.
\nThe experiment revealed that people ended up following one or two \u201cinstructed\u201d individuals who appear to know where they\u2019re going, without ever knowing why. Most strikingly, this study showed that it only took 5% of confident-looking (and instructed) people to influence the direction of the other 95% of people in the crowd.<\/p>\n

This type of group thinking is not isolated to just social behavior, but in Crowd Wisdom critical thinking can be disrupted.
\nWisdom of the Crowd is defined as the collective opinion of a group of individuals rather than that of a single expert.<\/p>\n

There have been examples of a large group’s aggregated answers to questions, involving quantity estimation or spatial reasoning, has generally been found to be as good as (and often better than) the answer given by a single individual within the group.
\nBut specific answers requiring advanced study or experience fall far short of the answers given by acknowledged experts.<\/p>\n

If everyone says something is impossible, even those knowledgeable in the field are less likely to attempt it.<\/div>\n

Everyone says that human flight is impossible, so you develop a working wingsuit. You\u2019re better.<\/p>\n

Everyone knows that an object can\u2019t do two different things at the same time. Except a team of UC Santa Barbara physicists did it with a quantum machine in 2010. They were better.<\/p>\n

What incredible inventions, discoveries or cures will be found by those better than everyone<\/em> else.
\nWho knows you may even be saved by someone who doesn\u2019t go along with the crowd and actually stops to help.<\/p>\n

So next time you think you are better than everyone else, my advice to you is; Please Be!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Do you think you are better than everyone else?\u00a0\u00a0 Well?!\u201d I immediately knew that the pause had done, done me in. Her stare turned into a glare and with a quick heel-turn she exited, stage left. We instinctively know that the only answer to such a question is a quick, unequivocal, \u201cNO\u201d. But for me, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"chat","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-chat","hentry","category-consulting","post_format-post-format-chat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/eric.washburn.name\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}