Mr. Zeitgeist
I can't imagine a book more relevant to blogging than The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations by James Surowiecki. It is like the outing of the latent understanding a few hundred thousand people have been chewing on for the past few years, in blogs, wikis, and other minimal barrier modes of publishing.
I'm still reading the book. Certain of its implications - of what it calls cognitive diversity, for example, are broad, fascinating and destined to be upsetting.
Surowiecki argues that the greater the diversity of any human group, the better the collective judgment. So including people who clearly have less than expert knowledge or information about something actually increases the chances that a group will arrive at the best answer. Why? In part because experts share narrow expertise that tends to view its subject through a largely redundant lens. Group homogeneity means less new information, entropy, greater chance of poor judgment.
This goes against much that we think we know about knowledge, intelligence, problem solving. Except that it rings true, so we knew it all along.
Since it is an argument against central authority, it largely works via anecdote and invokes studies across a range of disciplines. Its central insight bears the mantle of no single authority, which makes it a daring tome indeed. It's also very well written.
Here's an excerpt. Here's Surowiecki on his understanding of diversity.
I want to say more about this book, but need to finish it first. Love to hear from other readers.
I'm still reading the book. Certain of its implications - of what it calls cognitive diversity, for example, are broad, fascinating and destined to be upsetting.
Surowiecki argues that the greater the diversity of any human group, the better the collective judgment. So including people who clearly have less than expert knowledge or information about something actually increases the chances that a group will arrive at the best answer. Why? In part because experts share narrow expertise that tends to view its subject through a largely redundant lens. Group homogeneity means less new information, entropy, greater chance of poor judgment.
This goes against much that we think we know about knowledge, intelligence, problem solving. Except that it rings true, so we knew it all along.
Since it is an argument against central authority, it largely works via anecdote and invokes studies across a range of disciplines. Its central insight bears the mantle of no single authority, which makes it a daring tome indeed. It's also very well written.
Here's an excerpt. Here's Surowiecki on his understanding of diversity.
I want to say more about this book, but need to finish it first. Love to hear from other readers.
posted by Tom Matrullo at Monday, June 28, 2004
6 Comments:
I've been interested in this line of research for a while. (See Who's the Weirdo? and the entry after.)
Thanks for the pointer to the book; I look forward to looking through it. But I have to worry about the title's emphasis on "crowds" and "collective wisdom". Plenty of studies and life experiences indicate that community tends to stifle diversity. From your synopsis and links, it's clear that the author knows this -- but community also tends to simplify (and falsify) messages into what will support communal preconceptions, so he may have a hard time making that aspect heard.
Blogger did interesting things to that link, didn't it?
http://www.pseudopodium.org/ht-20020616.html#2002-06-29
Jon, I can tell you're going to find this a stimulating read. Much has to do with modes of aggregation, since in this "funny community" no one can be trusted to get it right. I'll be looking for your thoughts.
Ray, please ignore my hasty and reductive outline. I think you'll find your (entirely sensible) suspicions about communities and consensus are addressed in the book. One chapter is devoted to varieties of peer influence, mimicry, and homogenization. Surowiecki uses "crowds" precisely to distinguish random or disjointed groups from self-conscious communities.
Dorothea, I'll be very interested in whether some of the patterns noted in the book relate to your experience of games (not to mention the gamesmanship of academia).
Thanks for the pointer, Jon - a large and searching excursus there. I have only dipped in. I seem to have a constitutional aversion to the word "meme," which might pose a problem. I always fail to see the reason for using the word, except insofar as it gives us a kind of rigid marker to use in place of more elastic cognitive tropes like "idea," or "concept."
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