Friday Night Miscellany

It’s been one of those weeks and I’m glad the weekend is finally here, but hate the fact that – a scant 6 days ago, it was 85 degrees outside and the dew point was 69 and now it’s 47 with a frost warning for tonight – and the same for the weekend. Geez! No more sitting outside on the deck with a glass of wine close to hand and a book on my lap. Darlings, I sat down here at the computer tonight with no idea what on earth I was going to write about – but it seems the Chess Goddess has spoken and I cannot ignore her (or, just to clarify, will not!) I swore up, down and all around that I wasn’t going to devote any more words or blog space to the hoo-ha about Sam Sloan filing a law suit against the USCF, Texas Tech University, God and the Entire Universe, et al. for alleged harm against Mr. Sloan. Mr. Sloan has published his Complaint at google/rec.chess/misc and google rec.chess/politics if you wish to read it. I was absolutely amazed at some of the things I’ve read over the past few days at various blogs/message boards. It seems a lot of folks have the impression that this case (if it continues to be a case) will just whiz along and be resolved in a couple of months, if not weeks! Granted, it’s been a long time since I was involved in either prosecuting or defending a litigation case, but even THEN it was nearly impossible to meet court-imposed date deadlines for concluding discovery, filing motions in limine, drafting jury instructions, etc. etc. within 24-36 months in the county court here, which isn’t nearly as busy as the Federal District Courts in New York and Texas. Assuming Mr. Sloan’s case eventually moves forward, I believe it will take 5 years, minimum, and quite possibly many more years if – as is usually the case in this type of action with multiple claims for relief – appeals are taken of interim Orders. The thing I really wanted to write about tonight was this: within a few hours of the "scandal" breaking, I was absolutely amazed by how quickly so many people concluded that some of the defendants named in Mr. Sloan’s suit were "guilty as charged." You have only to read the entries at Mig’s "Daily Dirt" blog to see what I mean. I couldn’t figure it out. Why would people whose prior posts I had often admired for being so balanced were now sounding so, well, rabid – I found it shocking, actually. I was at a loss to explain this behavior and was about to write off most of those people as a-holes after all. But, tonight, I came across a blog entry that has nothing to do with chess, yet it made a lot of sense to me in describing the exact behavior I had seen exhibited in some of my hereforefore favorite posters at Mig’s Daily Dirt. It describes something called "informational cascade": We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong. If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an "informational cascade" as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong. Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better, according to the economists Sushil Bikhchandani, David Hirshleifer and Ivo Welch. If, say, 60 percent of a group’s members have been given information pointing them to the right answer (while the rest have information pointing to the wrong answer), there is still about a one-in-three chance that the group will cascade to a mistaken consensus. Here is the blog entry from which this quote is taken, if you want to read more. Personally, I find this a compelling explanation. Will people who at present give all appearances of having been captured by the seeming tabloid sensationalism of Mr. Sloan’s approach to life come back to their rational minds eventually? I sure hope so.