4 ms·

What are they saying? Can somebody explain like I'm 5? "the idea that aggregating or averaging the imperfect, distributed knowledge of a large group of people

What are they saying? Can somebody explain like I'm 5? "the idea that aggregating or averaging the imperfect, distributed knowledge of a large group of people can often yield better information than canvassing expert opinion." What? Often? If I have a pain in my lower right abdomen and I poll the human population, I'm going to get a better answer than a doctor? If I poll the human population about a physics problem, I'm going to get a better answer than a physicist? "But as Surowiecki himself, and many commentators on his book, have pointed out, circumstances can conspire to undermine the wisdom of crowds. In particular, if a handful of people in a population exert an excessive influence on those around them, a “herding” instinct can kick in, and people will rally around an idea that could turn out to be wrong." Conspire? Undermine the wisdom? Wow... So when somebody realized blood-letting wasn't helping, I guess those folk 'conspired' to 'exert an excessive influence on those around them' until a 'herding instinct' kicked in... Brain explodes from the stupidity When it's wrong, somebody conspired, when it's right, oh, well, don't mention that it's the exact same process.

ghaff 12y ago
As tessierashpool notes, it's not a statement that a random bunch of people will always give a better answer than an expert, especially if that expert knows the correct answer with high confidence. Rather, it's an observation that crowds who know something about the question being asked will often do better than experts who are also "guessing." It requires a particular set of circumstances and tends to be most associated with people independently guessing numbers about things they can hazard an intelligent guess about.
- alexashka 12y ago
  "It's an observation that crowds who know something about the question being asked will often do better than experts who are also 'guessing.'" Can you give some examples of this? I don't think that works at all. If you ask me and 100 strangers about programming, I'll do better than 100 strangers every time. Unless one of them is a better programmer than me and has the authority to convince the others that they should listen to him/her OR! they work together to solve the problem. In which case um yeah. So either way it boils down to 2 groups of experts, not the crowd. The 'particular set of circumstances' are not well defined in the article from what I can tell - which renders the whole thing worthless doesn't it? It's like saying it is going to rain. When? Well, under a particular set of circumstances it will. lol :) When it comes to guessing numbers - there are no experts, so who is the crowd's opinion better than? I still feel like I'm 5 and not getting it.
  - ghaff 12y ago
    I'll give you one very specific example from data that I crunched myself. A friend of mine has run an Oscar contest for about 25 years. Everybody picks their choices in the usual manner. In addition, he has a score for "consensus"--which is a virtual contestant which predicts each category winner based on the most popular pick. For example, if 30 people picked Birdman and 20 picked Boyhood, consensus would pick Birdman. Here's the thing. A few people usually beat consensus in a given year. However, over the course of 25 years, no single person has a better average score than consensus and, in fact, not even a small panel of those who (retrospectively) were the best pickers do. As others have said, in contests like how many jellybeans are in a jar, the median or mean tends to do better than the vast majority of individuals as well.
compbio 12y ago
> If I have a pain in my lower right abdomen and I poll the human population, I'm going to get a better answer than a doctor? You could. It is why people prefer a second opinion even when dealing with an expert. There are programs where everyone can join and try to diagnose disease. See CrowdMed (https://crowdmed.com https://crowdmed.com) -- a YC company (http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/16/yc-startup-bets-crowdsourcing-can-diagnose-diseases-better-than-doctors/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/16/yc-startup-bets-crowdsourc...) > If I poll the human population about a physics problem, I'm going to get a better answer than a physicist? I think it was Newton who said that anyone could be as successful as him, but they just didn't think hard enough. But 10 smart physicists could probably think "as hard" as a single Newton. This means there is no need to chase the expert. This removes inaccuracies, since groups have more variance in opinion than individuals. It is harder for groups to be all wrong. Group intelligence benefits science. > Conspire? Undermine the wisdom? Wow... See it as game theory with possibly adversarial agents going against the group consensus. If there is no incentive to go against the grain, or if there is damage possible to your reputation (and thus energy), people will not disagree with top management or thought leaders. All errors trickle down into the group without filters. This is dangerous as it mimics group intelligence, but is really the opinion of a single individual inside a group of yes-men. This contributes to economic crashes and hype-y bubbles. Blood-letting is a good example of variant group behavior. We need people "insane" enough to try that. We need to be wrong many times, for someone to say: "this is not right." and help fix it. Blood-letting may have benefits though -- being a nearly 3000 year old practice it would be rare to be completely without merit and survive. > When it's wrong, somebody conspired, when it's right, oh, well, don't mention that it's the exact same process. You want to label a spam dataset. You can use one person for this, or a room with a hundred people. When the one person is wrong, it may be because he has a different/quirky opinion on what it means to be spam. When the whole room is wrong, you start to wonder if the e-mail was really ham to begin with. One person can only be wrong or right. A hundred people can (and preferably should) disagree, while still converging to a better solution than any individual in that group could have thought of. Groups remove arguments from authority.

ghaff 12y ago

As tessierashpool notes, it's not a statement that a random bunch of people will always give a better answer than an expert, especially if that expert knows the correct answer with high confidence. Rather, it's an observation that crowds who know something about the question being asked will often do better than experts who are also "guessing." It requires a particular set of circumstances and tends to be most associated with people independently guessing numbers about things they can hazard an intelligent guess about.

alexashka 12y ago
"It's an observation that crowds who know something about the question being asked will often do better than experts who are also 'guessing.'" Can you give some examples of this? I don't think that works at all. If you ask me and 100 strangers about programming, I'll do better than 100 strangers every time. Unless one of them is a better programmer than me and has the authority to convince the others that they should listen to him/her OR! they work together to solve the problem. In which case um yeah. So either way it boils down to 2 groups of experts, not the crowd. The 'particular set of circumstances' are not well defined in the article from what I can tell - which renders the whole thing worthless doesn't it? It's like saying it is going to rain. When? Well, under a particular set of circumstances it will. lol :) When it comes to guessing numbers - there are no experts, so who is the crowd's opinion better than? I still feel like I'm 5 and not getting it.
- ghaff 12y ago
  I'll give you one very specific example from data that I crunched myself. A friend of mine has run an Oscar contest for about 25 years. Everybody picks their choices in the usual manner. In addition, he has a score for "consensus"--which is a virtual contestant which predicts each category winner based on the most popular pick. For example, if 30 people picked Birdman and 20 picked Boyhood, consensus would pick Birdman. Here's the thing. A few people usually beat consensus in a given year. However, over the course of 25 years, no single person has a better average score than consensus and, in fact, not even a small panel of those who (retrospectively) were the best pickers do. As others have said, in contests like how many jellybeans are in a jar, the median or mean tends to do better than the vast majority of individuals as well.

compbio 12y ago

> If I have a pain in my lower right abdomen and I poll the human population, I'm going to get a better answer than a doctor? You could. It is why people prefer a second opinion even when dealing with an expert. There are programs where everyone can join and try to diagnose disease. See CrowdMed (https://crowdmed.com https://crowdmed.com) -- a YC company (http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/16/yc-startup-bets-crowdsourcing-can-diagnose-diseases-better-than-doctors/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/04/16/yc-startup-bets-crowdsourc...) > If I poll the human population about a physics problem, I'm going to get a better answer than a physicist? I think it was Newton who said that anyone could be as successful as him, but they just didn't think hard enough. But 10 smart physicists could probably think "as hard" as a single Newton. This means there is no need to chase the expert. This removes inaccuracies, since groups have more variance in opinion than individuals. It is harder for groups to be all wrong. Group intelligence benefits science. > Conspire? Undermine the wisdom? Wow... See it as game theory with possibly adversarial agents going against the group consensus. If there is no incentive to go against the grain, or if there is damage possible to your reputation (and thus energy), people will not disagree with top management or thought leaders. All errors trickle down into the group without filters. This is dangerous as it mimics group intelligence, but is really the opinion of a single individual inside a group of yes-men. This contributes to economic crashes and hype-y bubbles. Blood-letting is a good example of variant group behavior. We need people "insane" enough to try that. We need to be wrong many times, for someone to say: "this is not right." and help fix it. Blood-letting may have benefits though -- being a nearly 3000 year old practice it would be rare to be completely without merit and survive. > When it's wrong, somebody conspired, when it's right, oh, well, don't mention that it's the exact same process. You want to label a spam dataset. You can use one person for this, or a room with a hundred people. When the one person is wrong, it may be because he has a different/quirky opinion on what it means to be spam. When the whole room is wrong, you start to wonder if the e-mail was really ham to begin with. One person can only be wrong or right. A hundred people can (and preferably should) disagree, while still converging to a better solution than any individual in that group could have thought of. Groups remove arguments from authority.