The Wisdom of Crowds
Surowiecki argues that, under the right conditions, large groups of people exercise exceptionally good judgment. Even accounting for individual limitations and natural tendencies toward prejudice and irrationality, collective decisions usually will outperform expert opinion, particularly when the group does not defer to those opinions. What those “right conditions” are is the good part. Wise crowds, the author says, must be decentralized, independent and diverse, and their individual opinions must be aggregated with transparency. “Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise,” Surowiecki writes. “Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is often for everyone in it to think and act as independently as possible.”
I hold these truths to be self-evident. Decentralization of decision-making has always been a basic theme in Anarchy. It’s nice to have these views backed-up by independent research.
