It is interesting to consider the phenomenon of information cascades when people have to make decisions between several choices.  This does not seem to be too big of a deal when making decisions as to where to eat, how to dress, etc. based on what other people are doing.  However, when an information cascade concerns how individuals feel about things such as a political or moral topics, this could greatly affect outcomes of a more significant impact.  As we discussed in class, information cascades do not have to necessarily cascade correct, relevant, or even favorable information (such as the most popular restuarant is not your preferred choice).

I recently found this story involving a post on Digg in which someone is accused of stealing a stylesheet from Digg.  This story in itself is not a big deal, but this post on Digg was heavily upvoted as one of the best, most popular posts on the site.  In a situation like this you have to wonder if any of these upvotes were because the readers did investigation on the topic, or were just persuaded by those before them to agree with the writer (chances lean heavily on the second choice).  This shows that an information cascade can deface an individual among other harmful things (such as make one restaurant go out of business while another prospers).

This particular situation is almost like spreading a rumor online where everyone can see it.  One person says it is true, so everyone else agrees that it must be too.  This kind of statement is not in the same spirit as drawing marbles from two bags with different colors at differing probabilities.  In a case such as that, subsequent individuals have some private information they can base their judgement on as well as the results of the previous individuals.  In fact, each individual has some solidly factual information on which to base their judgment.  In the Digg case, other individuals can either agree, disagree, or just abstain from partaking in a story without having any factual information for certain.

This also relates to the small world phenomenon that we discussed in class.  For a normal rumor, if everyone spread it, then it would become popular knowledge in very little time.  For a social site like Digg, people have even more of a chance to interact with others that they do not personally know in “real” life.  This allows false information like this to spread rapidly amongst visitors of the site.  As stated previously, they can vote that post positively so that others will see it, subsequently making it spread more rapidly.  Needless to say, one should be very judicious when viewing the opinions of others.  With the way that people interact and think, especially with the way information spreads on the internet, it seems sufficient to say that individuals should keep these ideas in mind when reading or discussing any sort of non-trivial information.