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Good_Burning_Plastic comments on Rationality Quotes Thread August 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion
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Have there ever been no problems actually solved by massive, broad-based, spontaneous, decentralized collective action? (I can think of none off the top of my head and I agree it's extremely unlikely to happen, but have there even been coutnterexamples?)
Even if there were problems that were solved by such collective action, you should not create plans that rely on things like that happening (by definition, you cannot create a spontaneous action). Your plans should not rely on the problem having to solve itself. Edit: unless the type of spontaneous collective action you need is known to happen often or the problem you want to solve is of the type that are known to often solve themselves.
Actions of the crowd during the fall of the Berlin Wall seems to be an example of an event that fits the description, as it wasn't centrally organized, many people simply tried to make use of opportunity that suddenly appeared due to actions of East German government and other circumstances.
An interesting property of that example is that each individual was taking an action, attempting to escape to the west, that would benefit him personally. This is different from typical examples of "collective action" that have mass prisoners' dilemma/free rider problems.
If the words are interpreted broadly enough then the non-existence of a free online encyclopedia is an example of a problem that was solved in such a way.
The defeat of the Evil Empire, aka the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics :-D