The Wisdom of Communities

Since practically the beginning of civilization, people have been trying to understand what men & women want.

This question interested me so much that I spent months preparing for and filming a documentary that sought to answer it (or at least the female half of it). But the feedback I received from men & women around the world is trying to find global answers to questions of opinion and perspective is pointless: “Women want so many different things,” a female friend said. “There’s no way any poll or scientific study could give a voice to us all.”

She was right, of course. The problem with social science, traditional polls, Q&A sites, and more, is they can usually only understand people in the context of a single, amorphous crowd (whoever votes or participates), rather than in the context of unique, relevant, clearly identifiable communities.

Luckily, the fundamental revolution of the Wisdom of Communities theory is that people, for the first time, have access to any of potentially millions of perspectives when they ask a question of opinion and perspective.

When CoffeeCup used Avanoo to ask, “Which of the following actions do you consider cheating?“, and 252 people responded to the question by depositing their own wisdom (their opinions… perspective) he got access to a world of answers that were never before available.

For me, personally, here’s the most intriguing wisdom that I found from this question. Women in California (where I live) are much less strict about what they consider cheating than women in the rest of the world:

• Whereas 75.8% of all women consider kissing cheating, only 64.7% of California women do.
• Whereas 69.7% of all women consider dating cheating, only 58.8% of California women do.
• Whereas 63.6% of all women consider online sex cheating, only 47.1% of California women do.

California women have long been stereotyped as more sexually liberal, but it’s interesting to see data that seems reinforce the stereotypes. Perhaps I should be more wary from now on?

I’m excited to see what wisdom people from other communities — whether geographic, ethnic, racial, a combination thereof, or other — find when they use Avanoo.