The Wisdom of Crowds

Product Image: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
My rating: 5 out of 5

We all have had experience with crowds that weren’t very smart. Mobs are carried away in irrational behavior. Committees often generate little or no useful results. However, modern research has found that, given the right conditions, crowds can be very intelligent. They can actually be more intelligent than the smartest members of the crowd. This book describes the conditions necessary to tap into the wisdom of the crowd and describe many fascinating case studies and research findings. I believe it’s important that our society learns how to increasingly tap the mind of the many and lessen our reliance on so-called expert opinion and commentary.

Resources:

Yahoo Buzz Game

I’m interested in exploring ways groups can tap into their collective intelligence. One mechanism for doing this are trading markets like the stock market. Recently, there’s also been significant research activity in the area of prediction markets and their ability to predict trends or likelihood of future events.
Yahoo Research Labs is experimenting with a prediction […]