Another name for the "wisdom of crowds"

I don't have much patience for someone who critiques a book without reading it.

Unless he happens to know the algorithm that defines human intuition and intelligence, I don't think the "wisdom of crowds" is just another name for "the behavior of distributed algorithms." (That's after discounting marketing considerations.)

The blogger says: "Naively lauding the alleged "wisdom of crowds" obscures the critical issue, which is the design of the distributed algorithm --- i.e., the social organization of the crowd. What are its mechanisms for passing information?..."

Surowiecki believes there are some necessary conditions to have some wisdom from crowds: diversity, independence, and a particular kind of decentralization. He points out in the book that design of the crowd and their interaction is essential to wisdom of crowds. Yadda yadda.

The blogger says: "Now, as I said, I have not read Surowiecki's book. It is entirely possible that I'm being utterly unfair to him based on the yammerings of others."

Yes, you are being utterly unfair. No up arrow for you.

Fun at-home version of the guess-the-weight-of-the-bull experiment. Last Easter, we put a few hundred small chocolate eggs in a large jar. We had 14 people at the house, and we all guessed how many eggs were in the jar. The closest guess was off by about 8%, and the worst were more than 50% off. As a little test of the wisdom of our crowd, we averaged the guesses. Their average was 3% off the right answer.

"What are its mechanisms for passing information? For reaching consensus? Where are the possibilities for feedback loops?"

I didn't read the book as suggesting this was required. Surowecki champions a diverse set of people with diverse knowledge, consensus is reached when that knowledge combined tells us the crowd's opinion. Feedback loops are not considered. "The Wisdom of Crowds" applies more when people are acting in their own interests than collaborating towards a solution. Perhaps feedback loops are even what throws this system of crowd wisdom off (bubbles?).

"emergence"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence

The article is from 2004, but the idea goes back to Aristotle.