Wisdom Of Crowds

book by James Surowiecki, ISBN:0-375-43362-7

• book tour schedule

• In order to get optimal results from a group-based effort, you need three things: diversity, Independence, and an objective method for aggregating results.

• hmm, I wonder how you avoid SelectionBias in a study like this?

• kinda sounds like F A Hayek

• Cosma Shalizi says To Surowiecki's credit, he does acknowledge various possible ways in which crowds can go wrong, including herding. To his discredit, he doesn't seem to adequately appreciate the importance of Design-ing institutions to keep this from happening, and the difficulty of doing so.

  • quotes the abstract-factory guy saying The phrase "wisdom of crowds" carries within it the seeds of the message that gosh darn it, if you just got those elitist social engineers out of the way, and let everybody alone to act on their common sense, everything would be just peachy... By contrast, the phrase "the behavior of distributed algorithms" is a more forbidding thing, one that highlights a crucial fact: all systems for extracting knowledge from "crowds" are, in fact, intricate constructions that achieve their results through precise engineering of the rules governing the crowd.

• Dave Pollard model for using Collective Intelligence to solve problems.

• Idea Futures tie?