Never mind about that blind spot...
I just finished a book called The Wisdom of Crowds. It had been highly recommended by a friend and the daily long ride to work helped in my catching up with my reading.
So the book is about how collective intelligence works better on an average than that of the individual expert. The group need not have experts in it. Laymen with their own sources of information, who do not influence each other and each with some individual gain from the decision have been seen to perform better than the expert. It's very non-intuitive but the book was very convincing. It talked about markets and how they adjust and why they sometimes fail altogether. Rather interesting.
Anyway, so like I mentioned, I would read a lot while going to work and back and I couldn't help but observe the traffic. One of the kinds problems that groups solve are co-ordination problems. It's very striking how vehicles on Bangalore road co-ordinate their movements. Even the little traffic rules there are aren't followed. Vehicular movement is completely random (if you don't believe me, watch this and imagine it ten times worse). Everyone watches out for himself and tries to get ahead of the everyone else. And surprisingly, this seems to work. May not be the best solution, but a workable solution. Given the structure of roads here, lanes anyway wouldn't make sense because they would just stop existing halfway on the road! Also, there aren't as many (minor) accidents as one would assume because of the constant lane changing and halting and all that.
When I drove for the first time in the US of A a friend was telling me about the blind spot and she was wondering how people in India can drive without even side rear view mirrors. I couldn't remember why I didn't need it here when it was so important there. Anyhow, when I got back here the first thing I did while driving was turn and look at the blind spot to watch out for cars and after a few times I figured that it's more dangerous here watching for someone else than for yourself. It is accepted that people around you and behind you will take care of themselves. You'll hear shouts and honks if you veer too close to them. A lot of these things that form the driving culture have just developed over time, as a collective decision by the crowd. I'm not saying it's the most optimum solution - I still hate driving here. But it does seem to work if with a little bit of fist-shaking and hair-clutching. Perhaps that's part of the collective folly!
So the book is about how collective intelligence works better on an average than that of the individual expert. The group need not have experts in it. Laymen with their own sources of information, who do not influence each other and each with some individual gain from the decision have been seen to perform better than the expert. It's very non-intuitive but the book was very convincing. It talked about markets and how they adjust and why they sometimes fail altogether. Rather interesting.
Anyway, so like I mentioned, I would read a lot while going to work and back and I couldn't help but observe the traffic. One of the kinds problems that groups solve are co-ordination problems. It's very striking how vehicles on Bangalore road co-ordinate their movements. Even the little traffic rules there are aren't followed. Vehicular movement is completely random (if you don't believe me, watch this and imagine it ten times worse). Everyone watches out for himself and tries to get ahead of the everyone else. And surprisingly, this seems to work. May not be the best solution, but a workable solution. Given the structure of roads here, lanes anyway wouldn't make sense because they would just stop existing halfway on the road! Also, there aren't as many (minor) accidents as one would assume because of the constant lane changing and halting and all that.
When I drove for the first time in the US of A a friend was telling me about the blind spot and she was wondering how people in India can drive without even side rear view mirrors. I couldn't remember why I didn't need it here when it was so important there. Anyhow, when I got back here the first thing I did while driving was turn and look at the blind spot to watch out for cars and after a few times I figured that it's more dangerous here watching for someone else than for yourself. It is accepted that people around you and behind you will take care of themselves. You'll hear shouts and honks if you veer too close to them. A lot of these things that form the driving culture have just developed over time, as a collective decision by the crowd. I'm not saying it's the most optimum solution - I still hate driving here. But it does seem to work if with a little bit of fist-shaking and hair-clutching. Perhaps that's part of the collective folly!