pawartur

I agree that it's a very good example that following Social Proof can be misleading, but I still think it makes sense as a strategy to minimalize the risk of making a very bad decision. I realize that it's preety vague ant thus not exceptionally interesting point though :).

Actually, you can even point out that a decision made by the majority can't be the worst one in a social sense and I don't think it's completely stupid - after all, if you're in a social group and don't know what to do, it's always good to make sure that you won't end up worse that the majority since it happens quite seldom that the majority ends up very bad.

I think that this Social Proof is one of the most important factors we take under consideration, also in the internet - how often do you check google search results that are not on one of the first three pages?

And in this case it is also not hard to show that such behaviour is not a winning strategy, if you want to maximalize your chance to make the best choice. But still it seems to be a winning strategy, if you want to avoid making the worst one.

I think the catch here is that people tend to think that they in fact want to make best choices and not just avoid the worst ones.

I like the idea a lot... And I think we can draw some interesting parallels to other kinds of artistic activities. Let's see... My mother's a scupltress. Anybody :)?