Comments on: On Individual Wisdom

By: Pauric

Pauric — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:10:42 +0000

as opposed to the righteous, saintly politicians?

Dont forget the large portion of people who abstain.

By: Rui Alao

Rui Alao — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 00:46:23 +0000

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?

By: pauric

pauric — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 13:19:09 +0000

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.

By: Eric

Eric — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 02:30:48 +0000

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!

By: Josh

Josh — Tue, 21 Mar 2006 01:34:08 +0000

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.

By: billg

billg — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 22:15:25 +0000

>>”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?