4 ms·

> I've been running somewhat sadistic live experiments over the last years. The results show that loosely-organized groups of "average" people will systematical

> I've been running somewhat sadistic live experiments over the last years. The results show that loosely-organized groups of "average" people will systematically beat tightly-coupled teams of "brilliant" people, when solving the same problems, on the same playing field. We have done twin studies: take the same software DNA, fork it, and raise in two opposed environments. The outcome is dramatically clear. The crowd beats the genius. Not just once either. It happens over and over. I'd like to know more about this. Has he written about these experiments elsewhere?

PieterH 10y ago
The specific case was the fork of ZeroMQ in 2011 to create Crossroads.io, in which the two dominant contributors took the project and created a head-on competitor. They used their own preferred process. The ZeroMQ project switched to a community-driven process (C4). Crossroads died after a short while. It then spawned Nanomsg, which tried again to beat the ZeroMQ community in this game. Again it failed. That spawned several dark forks, none of which has had any traction. I wrote about this in http://hintjens.com/blog:112 http://hintjens.com/blog:112. I didn't provoke the fork, really, yet when it happened, it seemed like a perfect experiment. Same DNA, two different environments.
- mwcampbell 10y ago
  I think the sample size may be too small to draw any general conclusions.
  - PieterH 10y ago
    This is absolutely true, and why it can only aspire to science at this stage. Many factors were involved, such as network effects.
Applejinx 10y ago
I think that's a very plausible conclusion. I've been working up something along the same lines (further justifying the underlying concept). The mechanism you're using is essentially the genetic algorithm, and that depends on being fed an extensive diet of 'not brilliant' people to throw semi-complete and individually failing ideas into the mix until you get a lucky combination. It is indeed science, just maybe not the science you expected :)
armitron 10y ago
This is obviously entirely false if one takes "genius" to mean someone who does things a non-genius would not be able to do. There have been attempts in recent years to roll back and debase the definition of genius to be more compatible with egalitarianism (especially in parts of Europe) and the tenet of homogeneity but this is not what genius originally stood for. Fabian Tasano writes: "Regarding the version of “genius” that is currently in retreat but still occasionally used: many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept — assuming we’re applying the word to (say) Gauss or Picasso, rather than John Cleese or Wayne Rooney — may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens." I could not agree more with this. Alan Kay also outlines an extremely similar point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc (Normal considered harmful). Programming is an artistic/creative process. The crowd will never beat genius in this game since the "vision" of the crowd will be diluted by each participating individual. The obvious exception here lies in crowds that are ruled by geniuses with an iron fist (thus not really committees), something which can only strengthen my point. Examples that support this from the past 30 years in technology are countless. We even have sayings about software designed-by-committee. The point Hintjens is trying to make with ZeroMQ is flawed because he equates the evolution of an idea that has already manifested to the inception of the idea itself.
- PieterH 10y ago
  You're simply shifting the goal posts to try to keep others from scoring. There is no "idea". There are hundreds of thousands of small incremental steps.
stcredzero 10y ago
Apparently, there was a story about Murray Gell-Mann, where his graduate students realized that he didn't think of things they couldn't, he only got there faster. So while exploring a new line of research, they brainstormed for an hour without Gell-Mann, then had their new insights thought out ahead of time. So they then reenacted the brainstorming session with him, such that they could blurt out all of the new insights just before he could speak. (Usually, it worked the other way around.) He was left wondering if he was losing his touch. I had a grad school professor who was like this. He was constantly speaking the thought, just as you were completing it in your head.

PieterH 10y ago

The specific case was the fork of ZeroMQ in 2011 to create Crossroads.io, in which the two dominant contributors took the project and created a head-on competitor. They used their own preferred process. The ZeroMQ project switched to a community-driven process (C4). Crossroads died after a short while. It then spawned Nanomsg, which tried again to beat the ZeroMQ community in this game. Again it failed. That spawned several dark forks, none of which has had any traction. I wrote about this in http://hintjens.com/blog:112 http://hintjens.com/blog:112. I didn't provoke the fork, really, yet when it happened, it seemed like a perfect experiment. Same DNA, two different environments.

mwcampbell 10y ago
I think the sample size may be too small to draw any general conclusions.
- PieterH 10y ago
  This is absolutely true, and why it can only aspire to science at this stage. Many factors were involved, such as network effects.

Applejinx 10y ago

I think that's a very plausible conclusion. I've been working up something along the same lines (further justifying the underlying concept). The mechanism you're using is essentially the genetic algorithm, and that depends on being fed an extensive diet of 'not brilliant' people to throw semi-complete and individually failing ideas into the mix until you get a lucky combination. It is indeed science, just maybe not the science you expected :)

armitron 10y ago

This is obviously entirely false if one takes "genius" to mean someone who does things a non-genius would not be able to do. There have been attempts in recent years to roll back and debase the definition of genius to be more compatible with egalitarianism (especially in parts of Europe) and the tenet of homogeneity but this is not what genius originally stood for. Fabian Tasano writes: "Regarding the version of “genius” that is currently in retreat but still occasionally used: many people seem to have a simplistic idea of what it takes to be one. According to one popular model, all that is required is an increase in the magnitude of certain qualities which everyone already possesses in some measure. Make the particular qualities pronounced enough, and you get to genius. But a better way to understand the concept — assuming we’re applying the word to (say) Gauss or Picasso, rather than John Cleese or Wayne Rooney — may be that a genius has a particular capacity, which on a certain level can seem obvious or unremarkable, but which no one else has. A genius, on this understanding, is a person uniquely capable of making a leap ‘off the path’. With hindsight the leap may seem simple or obvious, but at the time no one else was, apparently, capable of making it. A potential leap of this kind is made possible by preceding leaps. Nevertheless its actual occurrence may go on not happening for decades. During that time there may be clear pointers towards it. Yet it is not until a genius comes along that the leap actually happens." I could not agree more with this. Alan Kay also outlines an extremely similar point of view: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvmTSpJU-Xc (Normal considered harmful). Programming is an artistic/creative process. The crowd will never beat genius in this game since the "vision" of the crowd will be diluted by each participating individual. The obvious exception here lies in crowds that are ruled by geniuses with an iron fist (thus not really committees), something which can only strengthen my point. Examples that support this from the past 30 years in technology are countless. We even have sayings about software designed-by-committee. The point Hintjens is trying to make with ZeroMQ is flawed because he equates the evolution of an idea that has already manifested to the inception of the idea itself.

PieterH 10y ago
You're simply shifting the goal posts to try to keep others from scoring. There is no "idea". There are hundreds of thousands of small incremental steps.

stcredzero 10y ago

Apparently, there was a story about Murray Gell-Mann, where his graduate students realized that he didn't think of things they couldn't, he only got there faster. So while exploring a new line of research, they brainstormed for an hour without Gell-Mann, then had their new insights thought out ahead of time. So they then reenacted the brainstorming session with him, such that they could blurt out all of the new insights just before he could speak. (Usually, it worked the other way around.) He was left wondering if he was losing his touch. I had a grad school professor who was like this. He was constantly speaking the thought, just as you were completing it in your head.