Four Elements Required To Form A Wise Crowd
Not all crowds (groups) are wise. Consider, for example, mobs or crazed investors in a stock market bubble. According to Surowiecki, these key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:
| Criteria | Description |
|---|---|
| Diversity of opinion | Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts. |
| Independence | People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them. |
| Decentralization | People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge. |
| Aggregation | Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision. |
Based on Surowiecki’s book, Oinas-Kukkonen captures the wisdom of crowds approach with the following eight conjectures:
- It is possible to describe how people in a group think as a whole.
- In some cases, groups are remarkably intelligent and are often smarter than the smartest people in them.
- The three conditions for a group to be intelligent are diversity, independence, and decentralization.
- The best decisions are a product of disagreement and contest.
- Too much communication can make the group as a whole less intelligent.
- Information aggregation functionality is needed.
- The right information needs to be delivered to the right people in the right place, at the right time, and in the right way.
- There is no need to chase the expert.
Read more about this topic: The Wisdom Of Crowds
Famous quotes containing the words elements, required, form, wise and/or crowd:
“A party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“After I have said what is required by my vanity and my morality, I may find a moment for Truth.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“Manners have been somewhat cynically defined to be a contrivance of wise men to keep fools at a distance. Fashion is shrewd to detect those who do not belong to her train, and seldom wastes her attentions.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Unreal city,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)