An Information Cascade in Progress!

A fun example of an information cascade. If there was nobody pulling an invisible rope, nobody would stop, right? However, with two people cooperating, they are able to make people stop and carefully walk over the line. However, it only takes one person to barrel through the setup for others to just laugh, albeit while still being confused.

It’s true that some of the people still look confused after seeing somebody else barrel through, but what I find the most amusing is the look of embarrassment some of the people have after finding out they have been tricked by the cascade. I think this sometimes even happens in progress. I’m sure some of the people stepping over the “line” had a good idea they were being misinformed while they were doing it but stepped over anyway. I feel the same way about some pop music, most people know a song might be terrible but they run with the cascade anyway just because it’s the thing to do.

This is a cool video. It is similar to the example they gave in class of the people looking up at the sky and how the more people they got to stop and look up, the more the passing people were inclined to join in and look up as well. It is surprising to me just how many people did not see that there was no string. Its almost as if because they saw other people stepping over, they automatically decided that there was a string and needed to follow suit. But even the people who looked down to see what it was they were stepping over didn't seem to notice there was nothing there, because they had already made up their minds that there was.