The Wisdom of Crowds: Who to Turn to?

When you are faced with a dilemma or major decision, who do you turn to for advice?

Having had experience in the past with glancing through some advice columns in the news paper or magazine and having time to look over the various advice columns presented in the assignment along with sidetaker.com, I realize that these forms of advice columns can definitely be very helpful to people when they may not know where else to turn. I also realize the importance of having someone of an impartial view consulted when looking for another opinion on a subject that needs dealing with. Many of these columns as well as the site sidetaker deal with rather personal problems or to be more specific between one person and their significant other, one who they have invested a lot of time in. In my personal experience, I have found in general that an unrelated advisor from a site or newspaper is not the best answer for me when I look for advice concerning my personal problems. Someone of this nature I will use for general information or for decisions that I feel are less important than ones concerning someone i am close to. In such situations I have always felt that it would be best to reach a decision based mostly on my own feelings or with minimal input from others who know me and have some idea of what is going on. What I have found through personal experience is that the ones with the most helpful advice possibly simply because they know how to get through to you, are other people close to you such as friends or family. Of course I have to remember that most of the time a single person can not come up with the right answer so instead it becomes about gathering the opinions of many of those around me and in the end adding their knowledge to mine to formulate a piece of advice for myself to follow. In the end I would say a group would be more knowledgeable with advice than any one single person, but remember to incorporate your own thoughts, don't betray your own beliefs.