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March 20th, 2006
On Individual Wisdom
by Joshua Porter | 
6 Comments
Kathy Sierra talks about how she misinterpreted the Wisdom of Crowds idea. Great read. I had a similar AHA moment about it myself recently, which is why I still consider it the most crucial idea of Web 2.0.
The Wisdom of Crowds is not about group decision making. It’s about aggregating individual decisions.
Big difference.
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Bokardo is the blog of Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer. I live in Newburyport, MA, USA.
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Comments ( 6 Responses so far )
1. billg on March 20th, 2006 (Comment) #
>>”The Wisdom of Crowds is not about group decision making. It’s about aggregating individual decisions.”
Agreed, but if a crowd of 1000 makes 900 individual unwise decisions, what’s the result?
2. Josh on March 20th, 2006 (Comment) #
The whole argument of the wisdom of crowds is that, on average, aggregating the decisions of 1000 usually produces a wise result.
And as Kathy wrote about, the more diverse the population the better the results.
3. Eric on March 22nd, 2006 (Comment) #
More precisely than individual decisions–selfish decisions, or individual decisions that the decisionmaker believes will create value for him or herself. Aggregate intelligence tends to emerge from those.
Regarding the hypothetical posed above, selfish decisionmaking need not always, or even on average, produce good results. Proponents (rightly, I think) argue it need only be better than alternative regimes. Thanks, Josh!
4. pauric on March 23rd, 2006 (Comment) #
Is this new? I’d like to hear from an anthropologist on their take on all these crowd priciples falling out of the innovation we are seeing.
Granted the application of these concepts is novel. I cant help but think about certain good UI design rules that state the analysis of group of real users will produce better results than the design decisions of one good designer. There are many examples of this.
Credit where credit is due for pointing this stuff out but I dont think this is a new, simply the same old principles being exposed within the design innovation we are seeing.
Realising this will allow us to highlight other crowd principles… alternatively… those who do not learn from history will be forever doomed to repeat it.
5. Rui Alao on April 4th, 2006 (Comment) #
Hm…. Don’t you guys think that if the “wisdom of crowds” was valid, the world of politics would be better? Why such a huge (and diverse, and independent) crowd still vote on the same stupid and corrupt politicians?
6. Pauric on April 11th, 2006 (Comment) #
as opposed to the righteous, saintly politicians?
Dont forget the large portion of people who abstain.