Cascades and ambush

 

In the United States, truth has fallen out of fashion.  A December survey by National Public Radio asked 1,115 Americans if they thought that "a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media," as claimed by the alleged government insider known as Q.  About one in six respondents agreed with Q, and nearly two in five said they weren’t sure that Q was incorrect.  Even with a margin of error of 3.3%, these results astound: Less than half of the respondents said Q was dead wrong, although Q's theory is obviously ludicrous.  QAnon believers include two Congressmen. And adherents were conspicuous in the mob that stormed the Capitol on January 6, when the Senate was certifying the Presidential victory of Joe Biden. What gives?

QAnon may owe its success to an "information cascade," a series of decisions that depend on your observations of what other people do rather than on the facts.  Here’s a simple example.  Dmitriy, a high school graduate, mulls whether to go to KIMEP University.  He reads the prospectus and (correctly) decides to go.  Dmitriy’s friend Sonya doesn't read the prospectus and (wrongly) decides not to attend.  Next is Vladimir, who decides what to do based on what his friends do. Dmitriy attends but Sonya doesn't, so Vladimir concludes that the chances that going to KIMEP would be the right move are 50-50.  He flips a coin. It comes up tails, so he decides not to go. Anastassiya sees that only one of her friends (Dmitriy) went to KIMEP and that the other two (Sonya and Vladimir) did not. So she figures that the chances that going to KIMEP would pay off are just one in three.  She decides not to go.  And any other friend observing this growing sequence and basing her decision on what friends do, will decide not to go...although by hypothesis the right decision for everyone is to enroll.  What's curious is that the outcome depended on a random event.  Had Vladimir's coin come up heads, he and his successors would have gone to KIMEP. 

In the same way, Internet users who trust their friends more than they do scholars and journalists may subscribe to the QAnon conspiracy at an ever-accelerating rate although it is a sheer skazka (fairy tale).  The problem is that the social media enable cascades—not only in the US but in Central Asia. In 2014, social media messages falsely claiming that three banks in Kazakhstan were nearly bankrupt led quickly to bank runs withdrawing hundreds of millions of dollars.  –Leon Taylor tayloralmaty@gmail.com

 

Good reading

Anderson, Lisa R., and Charles A. Holt. 1996. "Classroom games: information cascades." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 10(4): 187-193.  DOI: 10.1257/jep.10.4.187

Bikhchandani, Sushil, David Hirshleifer, and Ivo Welch. 1998. "Learning from the behavior of others: conformity, fads, and informational cascades." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 12(3): 151-170.  DOI: 10.1257/jep.12.3.151

MacKay, Charles.  1841.  Extraordinary popular delusions and the madness of crowds.  London: Richard Bentley.

Rose, Joel.  2020. “Even if it’s ‘bonkers,’ poll finds many believe QAnon and other conspiracy theories.” Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers-poll-finds-many-believe-qanon-and-other-conspiracy-theories).