Had lunch with a good friend I hadn’t seen in a while and we spent a lot time talking about the Pokémon trading card game. I don’t know a thing about Pokémon, but what “Joe” told me about how the game works posed some interesting questions about the concept of the “wisdom of crowds”.
Joe has been mad for card trading games for years. And while Pokémon is aimed at kids, he’s a serious player and competes in the “senior” category. According to Joe, game play is pretty simple—a player assembles a “deck” and competes in a sort of rock, scissors, paper way. Each year, Pokémon issues a new series of cards and there’s a season ending in an international tournament every year.

Players from all over the world share ideas about strategies and figure out what combinations of cards are the most effective. In other words, they create a global “evolutionary” environment where many, many players are constantly making tweaks and figuring out winning combinations. The result is an unbeatable “super deck” that, if played well, virtually guarantees a winning result.

Joe told me he’s been expecting to meet an individual player who’s better at assembling a deck than he is, and he’s not found one yet. But he can’t beat the super decks. He’s a very smart guy with a strategic mind, but as he said, “I’m not smarter than the internet.”

I asked him, “But where’s the fun, just in the winning? If everybody’s playing the proven performer, where’s the suspense, the fun, of competing?” But he told me there’s a catch. Typically, most of the players that make it to the finals are playing the super deck, but that is often not who wins. Even though “the internet” has created the super deck, it’s often the individual who’s come up with the combination that beats that deck that takes home the trophy.

I think this example has interesting implications for the nature of social networks. There’s no question that a large number of people contributing to finding a solution to a problem can often lead to a really smart solution, a solution that’s “smarter” than you are as an individual. 

But we shouldn’t forget that there is still that potential out there for a scary smart individual to beat the crowd, and do it consistently. To rely only on the wisdom of crowds would be a mistake—whether in investing, research, politics, etc. Potentially, relying on the crowd misses the opportunity for a contrarian or an original thinker to produce a world-beating idea.

Now that social networking technologies are linking more and more “crowds” together, do we risk becoming lazy about challenging assumptions and looking for the best solution? When is it appropriate to challenge the wisdom of a crowd? Is it more efficient to go with the almost best solution to a problem, even if it means sacrificing the very best idea? When should we kick over the conventional wisdom, even when it’s proven to be effective?