In The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowieki, explains how crowds can be smarter than the best of people, given certain circumstances. Surowieki discusses three types of problems Cognition problems, those with certain answers, cooperation problems and coordination problems. I found how he shows that crowds can be excellent at cognition problems to be the most illuminating. Perhaps this is because it is the type of problem that he is able to give many examples of it working, and show that it works in a wide variety of questions makes his theory work so well. It is also able to be tested, as I did this summer a couple of times. For cognition problems, Surowieki explains that given three prerequisites crowds will be remarkably smart. If they are discreet, meaning the people being asked do not effect each other, diverse, meaning they will not all have the same opinions, and that you have a way to aggregate the information you get from the crowd. Even if the people being asked have very incomplete information about the problem, as an average of the disparate people the crowd can be remarkably exact. A very simple example that Surowieki talks about is tracking guesses at a county fair of the weight of a bull. While no person got all that close to the actual weight of the bull, the aggregate average of all the guesses were within one pound of the bulls actual weight. This theory sounded so interesting so I decided to try it myself. I asked ten people how many spoons were in a bag. I added up their answers, took an average and then counted the spoons in the bag. The average added up to 277 and there were 279 spoons in the bag. No singular person was anwhere near that number and as Surowieki predicted the crowd was smarter than any of the parts of the group. It is as a group when individuals are strong.
The implications for how we should be making decisions, and running government, is substantial. Singular people or small groups of people cannot approach the genius of the general population. Except for democracy in Greece, where every one could come and vote, we usually assume we should have a couple people making discussions. We can choose those people, but we choose to trust their judgement. Instead, those that are making decisions, rather than making them on their own, they should be aggregating what the public thinks and acting accordingly.
Recently, I have be watching a lot of The West Wing. In one episode (Inauguration 2), President Bartlett says: "There's a promise that I ask everyone who works here to make: Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Do you know why? To which Will Bailey replies: "Because it's the only thing that ever has. While this may be true that generally it has been special individuals, the public has a power that the individuals can not have. The book makes a powerful statement about the power of the people, something democracy has helped use, but perhaps not enough.
I would definitely suggest this book as great insight into the wisdom of crowds. There is a lot from the book that I was not able to discuss here, so it is well worth it to read through the book.
