Case in point, the potential reconciliation of the Health Care Reform bill:

Now, it’s true that the Obama administration achieves its policy goals once the House passes the Senate bill, and doesn’t need a follow-up reconciliation bill except insofar as it’s necessary to guarantee House passage. But the reconciliation bill is going to consist of a lot of popular provisions that Democrats will be eager to vote for — canceling the Cornhusker Kickback, boosting middle-class tax credits, delaying the excise tax and instead raising taxes on the rich.

Moreover, the House is only going to pass the Senate bill first if it gets ironclad assurance on the reconciliation bill from the administration and the Senate. Why would Obama and the Senate nakedly double cross the House? It would mean never being able to pass a piece of legislation again. The reputations of the double-crossers would be destroyed, both inside Washington and, to a lesser extent, nationally. No remotely rational politician, no matter how evil, would do something like that.

What makes (or, would make) this a credible signal of trustworthiness by Senate Democrats?

1. Shadow of the future: It isn’t known ahead of time when House and Senate Democrats will need to stop cooperating on various measures, therefore both have a strong incentive to keep their word. Now, it is true that come November one or both chambers could come under Republican control, but that doesn’t negate the need for the parties to cooperate across the House and Senate. To some degree, it may actually increase it;
2. Explicit/Public commitment: By explicitly promising to use reconciliation to enact changes sought by House Democrats, the Senate Democrats would be placing their reputations for trustworthiness on the line. While the shadow of the future certainly creates incentives for them to cooperate regardless of what they may say, explicit declarations make it very difficult for them to rationalize or explain away any non-compliance after the fact. What would be better is if every Senator (or, at least, the 51 needed to pass the measure) publicly declared their intention before the House votes. A blanket promise from only the leadership isn’t as valuable. Sure, the leadership would strengthen their own incentive to ensure a majority supports the measure, but that leaves open the possibility that individual Senators whose constituents are against reconciliation could back out–especially since the majority leader may not even be around come November;
3. Ability to verify actions: There will be no way to hide whether Senate Democrats follow through on their promise to the House.  Reconciliation will require each Senator to publicly declare their support or opposition to the measure.  Making it easy to verify if someone follows through on a promise ensures that their incentive to lie is reduced, since they know they’ll be caught and punished in the future.  Ambiguity is the enemy of verbal signaling.

(Hat tip Cheap Talk)

To test this idea, Wired asked writer Evan Ratliff to disappear for one month.  He could tell no one of his plans (not even his family or girlfriend).  They announced the contest online on August 14th, set a bounty for his discovery ($5,000–$3,000 of which was Ratliff’s own money), and invited the general public to find Ratliff through whatever means they liked (preferably, legal).  The contest would be over when someone came face to face with Ratliff, snapped a picture of him, and said the word “fluke”.  All told, it took 17 days to catch Ratliff.  The article is a must read, providing the fascinating details of Ratliff’s moves as well as those of his pursuers.

What occurred to me when reading the article was that, without saying so, Wired essentially crowdsourced the manhunt for Ratliff.  Rather than hire a single investigator or firm to find him, Wired outsourced the task to a large, undefined, diverse group of people (basically, Jeff Howe’s definition of crowdsourcing).  For crowdsourcing to work (or for crowds to be “wise”) the crowd generally has to have three attributes, all of which the hunter group seemed to possess:

• Diversity: The more diverse a crowd is, the more likely it is to be intelligent. Why? Because a diverse crowd will bring many different views to bear on a problem, thereby increasing the likelihood that a solution will be found. From what I can tell, the crowd chasing Ratliff was quite diverse and included people of all ages, professions, and skill sets. And it was an interesting mix of people who eventually nabbed him.
• Independence: The crowd must also be relatively independent, meaning individuals are not reliant on the same source of information. This is important for two reasons. First, when information is independent it’s more likely the ‘errors’ of each individual will cancel each other out. Second, independent individuals are more likely to bring unique information to the table. The article provides evidence for the independence of individuals and clusters of individuals working on the search. While many people were sampling the same information via the Twitter #vanish hashtag, there were tons of individuals bringing their own information to the party.
• Decentralization: The more decentralized, or localized, members of a crowd the smarter it will be, the idea being that the more localized and spread out a crowd is the greater the sources of information that the crowd can pull from. The hunters in this case were highly decentralized, located all over the country and providing local intelligence that the group as a whole could benefit from.

It also occurred to me that the story reveals and illustrates a few other important aspects of crowdsourcing:

• Rewards: Motivating a crowd is a key component when implementing a crowdsourcing strategy to problem solving. If the crowd isn’t properly motivated they are unlikely to put the time and effort into the task at hand. Wired did provide a monetary incentive (the $5K), the crowd seemed just as motivated (if not more so) by the reputational incentive of being known across the Wired-world as the one who found Ratliff. And not to ruin the ending of the article, but readers will see that on balance the reputational motivation won the day in this case. The lesson is that you should take into account multiple types of incentives, not just monetary, when trying to motivate a crowd.
• Self-organization & Collaboration: Even though there are individual incentives to solve the problem, it did not deter hunters from pooling their knowledge and working together in teams. The story mentions that almost immediately folks shared their information and thoughts via the hashtag #vanish, formed groups on Facebook, and even relocated to secure chat rooms to prevent moles from providing Ratliff with counterintelligence. Most of these people had never met each other. Almost instantly hunters self-organized, without the benefit of hierarchical direction. And much like the recent Netflix contest, individual hunters banded together in ad hoc and informal teams to work collaboratively towards finding Ratliff faster than if they simply worked alone.

Be sure to check it out.

Goffman's classic text

[Goffman's] fundamental contribution is how he slants his premise that we present a front in all our behavior before others. You have to understand that this posturing is real and pervasive, but rarely a consequence of out-and-out deception, or because we have succeeded in deceiving outselves. Usually we simply associate certain behaviors as appropriate in certain circumstances; some stylization is inherent in our interactions.

For instance, just as a certain attention to style–or a stubborn flouting of its demands–enters into the clothes we choose to wear in public, there is inherent artificiality in our choice of screen name on a social network (unless an account related to our real name happens to be available). And whatever we choose certainly expresses something we want to reveal about our nature. This doesn’t mean we are deceiving ourselves or others–we are being ourselves, but in a stylized manner.

Goffman’s approach certainly applies online, because our postings–even our instant messages–are more deliberate acts than our informal behaviors in real life. Although some participants play at being flippant and spontaneous on Facebook walls and microblogs, they must have greater consciousness of their effects on the viewer than most dinner table guests or concert attendees. Our online personas, therefore, conform even more closely to Goffman’s idea of everyday life than our everyday life does.

Goffman is by far one of my favorite social scientists and a major influence on my graduate research and my worldview in general.  I recommend the entire piece.