Definitely a worthwhile read, and Surowiecki presents his arguments well, especially for such a counter-intuitive hypothesis, as before I read the book I would have associated crowds with "lowest common denominator" decisions where the best solutions are "diluted".
As previously mentioned, a necessary requirement is that the decision makers are independent, diverse and decentralised (this principle would probably apply to the jury system also... remember the movie with Henry Fonda?). However, one thing that Surowiecki does not seem to address is what to do when you cannot resolve the wisdom of crowds, where you have a number of competing solutions to a problem where averaging might not be appropriate.... how can you reconcile views in these situations? One technique I've come across before is Soft Systems Methodology, where different world views can be presented and accomodated... I wonder if people have come across similar approaches? regards, Jim. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471986054/104-2590797-3530315?v=glance&n=283155 for info on SSM. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Owen Densmore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Friam" <[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, June 06, 2006 5:02 AM Subject: [FRIAM] Amazon.com: The Wisdom of Crowds: Books: James Surowiecki > I've been reading this critter: > http://tinyurl.com/hexhe > .. and am interested in its application to social modeling, and > possibly business/organizational modeling. > > The thesis is that good decisions can be made by crowds if they are: > - Diverse > - Independent > - Decentralized > - Good method for aggregating the results. > > I started on the book a while back while discouraged after the > democrats shot themselves in the foot the last election. Thinking > crowds were stupid, I was surprised a bit by the author's thesis. > > Anyone read it? Have opinions? Got ideas how to apply it to > community modeling? > > -- Owen > > Owen Densmore > http://backspaces.net - http://redfish.com - http://friam.org > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org > ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
