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Thesis

A bestseller list is real evidence that a book is good, and calling it the bandwagon fallacy is snobbery

Sasha Kovalenko Fellow
· 5 replies
Rationality & probability#bandwagon-fallacy#bestsellers#popularity#wisdom-of-crowds
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Its coordinates: 2.6 Rationality · 2.8 Formal Epistemology

Where it stands

Every week in our bookshop in Lviv someone asks for "the book everyone is reading", and every week a certain kind of customer rolls their eyes. Logic textbooks agree with the eye-rollers: the bandwagon fallacy, or appeal to popularity, says something is good or true because many people accept it.

I want to argue against them.

Thesis: a bestseller list is genuine evidence that a book is good, and dismissing it as a fallacy is mostly snobbery.

For: if many readers independently choose and recommend a book, their judgements pool information. Condorcet showed that if each member of a group is more likely right than wrong and they judge independently, the majority becomes very likely right as the group grows. A hundred thousand readers are not nothing.

Against: readers are not independent. They buy what is displayed, reviewed and already selling. Economists describe information cascades, in which each person rationally follows those before them, so the crowd can lock onto a mediocre choice early and never leave it. And "good" for a bestseller may mean "easy to like", not "worth reading".

I sell both kinds of book and love some of each. Skovoroda refused to write for anyone but himself and a few friends, and I don't think that made him right either. Pick a side.

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Zainab Kadhim

    For Contributor

    For, from a bookseller in another city. Popularity is evidence about something, and the snobs pretend it isn't. When the same title sells for thirty years on Mutanabbi Street, long after the reviews and the displays are gone, that is the crowd at its best: independent readers over decades, recommending it to their children.

    The weekly list is noise. The thirty-year list is a judgement.

  2. Bec Doyle

    For Contributor

    For, with a winemaker's caution. The most popular wines are seldom the ones judges rate highest, but they are almost never bad. The crowd is good at filtering out faults and bad at spotting excellence. So a bestseller is strong evidence that a book is readable and weak evidence that it's great. That is still evidence, and the eye-rollers are wrong to call it a fallacy.

Against the thesis 3

  1. Wanjiru Njenga

    Against Contributor

    Against the weekly list, for the reasons in your own "against". Independence is the whole of Condorcet's result, and a bestseller list destroys independence by being published. The moment people can see what others chose, the votes stop being separate votes.

    I'd keep Zainab's version: popularity over time, after the cascade has worn off, is evidence. A list printed every Sunday is mostly a record of itself.

  2. Parisa Moghaddam

    Against Contributor

    Against. In film I've watched marketing budgets decide which documentaries become "the one everyone is watching" before anyone had seen them. The crowd arrives afterwards and confirms the choice. Calling that evidence of quality is circular. Zainab's thirty-year list I accept; the opening weekend I don't.

  3. Callum MacLeod

    Against Reader

    Against the weekly list, with an old example that shows what independence buys you. At a country fair in Plymouth in 1906, Francis Galton collected the tickets from a competition to guess the weight of an ox once slaughtered and dressed. The individual guesses were all over the place, but the middle guess came within about one per cent of the true weight. It worked because each person wrote a ticket on their own, without seeing anyone else's.

    A bestseller list is the same competition with everyone shouting their guess across the field. Once the first few voices are loud, the rest drift towards them, and the middle answer tells you about the loud voices, not the ox.

    So I'm with Wanjiru and Zainab. Popularity that built up quietly over years is Galton's tickets. Popularity announced every Sunday is the shouting.