{"id":214,"date":"2006-08-15T21:37:01","date_gmt":"2006-08-16T04:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=214"},"modified":"2007-04-01T10:15:20","modified_gmt":"2007-04-01T17:15:20","slug":"conjurers-confounded-reality-is-what-it-is","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/214\/conjurers-confounded-reality-is-what-it-is\/","title":{"rendered":"Conjurers confounded: Reality is what it is . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

Joel Burslem<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If enough people believe their Zestimate to be true (consumers, journalists, realtors, whomever) – then reality really can be altered. It just shows how malleable the wisdom of the crowds really is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh, good grief… Consciousness does not cause reality.<\/p>\n

The meta-topic is interesting, however, first because it highlights one of the more pernicious aspects of Web 2.0, the idea of collective wisdom, and second because it brings out one of the better features of Web 2.0, the ferocious pursuit of canonical truth.<\/p>\n

In the first case, the social web is largely harmless, even if its epistemology is absurd. The nonsense Joel Burslem is citing would be dangerous — and assuming that he is not actually joking — if it actually came to pass, but this seems hugely unlikely. One of the subterranean tenets of Post-Modernism is the subtly communicated dictum that nothing matters until it does. David Letterman does not chuckle when you back into his car. The owners of Zillow.com will not buy or sell real property on the basis of their own dubious Zestimates. In any real-life real estate transaction, if one party loves the Zestimate, then the other necessarily hates it. If people labor in error, in Wikipedia or elsewhere, it is because they believe the marginal cost of improving their knowledge of reality exceeds the marginal benefit of having done so — which calculation may itself be in error.<\/p>\n

So what falls out? It is possible that people directly involved in real estate transactions may decide that the cost of pursuing a better alternative to Zillow exceeds the benefit. This seems doubtful to me, but we can stipulate the point for the sake of the argument. Even so, their doing so will not have “altered” reality. Zillow will still and always be unable to report the most important fact about the structure — is it still there? — at the time of the Zestimation. To agree to decide something by a means that is known to be fundamentally defective but which is nevertheless mutually-acceptable to the parties is not metaphysically dispositive, despite the fabulist hyperbole we hear everywhere. The Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joel Burslem: If enough people believe their Zestimate to be true (consumers, journalists, realtors, whomever) – then reality really can be altered. It just shows how malleable the wisdom of the crowds really is. Oh, good grief… Consciousness does not cause reality. The meta-topic is interesting, however, first because it highlights one of the more […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6,5,25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-blogging","7":"category-disintermediation","8":"category-marketing","9":"category-real-estate","10":"category-zillowcom","12":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":79,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/79\/o-for-a-young-and-money-hungry-web-programmer\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":0},"title":"O, for a young and money-hungry web programmer…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 10, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Joel Burslem The Future of Real Estate Marketing cites ShackYack.com, but I don't think we're seeing the same thing. What he sees is another manifestation of what he calls Real Estate 2.0. What I'm seeing is a particularly user-friendly interface to an IDX system. In other words, this is not\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Disintermediation"","block_context":{"text":"Disintermediation","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/disintermediation\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2320,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/2320\/inman-bloggers-disconnect-absorbing-the-priceless-wisdom-of-brilliant-speakers-who-are-not-doing-what-youre-trying-to-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":1},"title":"Inman Bloggers’ Disconnect: Absorbing the priceless wisdom of brilliant speakers who are not doing what you’re trying to do…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"December 4, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Here are a couple of salient facts, evidently unknown behind the Rust Curtain of the Inman Empire:To the extent that Glenn Kelman is a weblogger at all, he is a corporate weblogger. He doesn't know anything about real estate weblogging, as he made plain in his sweet, charming, engaging keynote\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":929,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/929\/wordpress-21-has-been-released-and-it-may-be-the-perfect-platform-for-real-estate-web-sites-as-well-as-weblogs\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":2},"title":"WordPress 2.1 has been released, and it may be the perfect platform for real estate web sites as well as weblogs . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"WordPress 2.1 is out. More news from BloggingPro. Standout among the new features:You can set any \"page\" to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.What this means is that there is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1997,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1997\/oh-good-grief-he-went-to-jared\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":3},"title":"Oh, good grief! He went to JARED…","author":"Greg Swann","date":"October 2, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Joel Burslem cites a Glenn Kelman quote from a comment to John Cook's post this morning, but I think this one is more interesting:By the way, no matter how many times the real estate industry insists that we're JARED (Just Another Real Estate Discounter) we can't help but add that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1664,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1664\/what-would-seth-godin-do-probably-not-one-size-fits-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":4},"title":"What would Seth Godin do? Probably not one-size-fits-all . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"July 16, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"(I'm waiting for a phone call, which is how Realtors address that awful burden of time that befalls them between birth and death.) Joel Burslem mentioned the What Would Seth Godin Do plug-in today, and Jim Duncan has also written about it recently. I like the idea, I just don't\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1986,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1986\/the-odysseus-medal-competition-voting-for-the-peoples-choice-award-nominated-posts-is-open\/","url_meta":{"origin":214,"position":5},"title":"The Odysseus Medal competition — Voting for the People’s Choice Award is open","author":"Greg Swann","date":"September 30, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"This was a great week. It wasn't easy getting to a short list of twenty nominees, and I think it's going to be particularly tough to pick an ultimate winner. I can't imagine it will be any easier for you to vote for the People's Choice Award. What gets a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blog Carnivals"","block_context":{"text":"Blog Carnivals","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blog-carnivals\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}