Intelligente grupper

Forleden, mens jeg klikkede mig vej rundt på Amazon.com, kom jeg tilfældigvis forbi bogen "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations" af James Surowiecki. Jeg har ikke selv læst den (endnu da - den står på min ønskeseddel), men anmeldelserne lyder lovende:

While our culture generally trusts experts and distrusts the wisdom of the masses, New Yorker business columnist Surowiecki argues that "under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them." To support this almost counterintuitive proposition, Surowiecki explores problems involving cognition (we're all trying to identify a correct answer), coordination (we need to synchronize our individual activities with others) and cooperation (we have to act together despite our self-interest). His rubric, then, covers a range of problems, including driving in traffic, competing on TV game shows, maximizing stock market performance, voting for political candidates, navigating busy sidewalks, tracking SARS and designing Internet search engines like Google. If four basic conditions are met, a crowd's "collective intelligence" will produce better outcomes than a small group of experts, Surowiecki says, even if members of the crowd don't know all the facts or choose, individually, to act irrationally. "Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions. The diversity brings in different information; independence keeps people from being swayed by a single opinion leader; people's errors balance each other out; and including all opinions guarantees that the results are "smarter" than if a single expert had been in charge.

Tænk på den.

Update:

Et afsnit fra en anden anmeldelse fik mig til at smile:

Still, it’s a thought-provoking, timely book: the TV studio audience of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire guesses correctly 91 percent of the time, compared to “experts” who guess only 65 percent correctly.

Denne holder kun hvor ideologi ikke virker ind. I Rusland, for eksempel, er publikum notorisk berygtet for at vildlede deltagerne ved at give dem forkerte svar. Mon ikke tre generationers venstreorienteret tilpasning af fakta til hvordan man gerne vil have dem til at være har en del af skylden - plus selvfølgelig misundelse mod dem der kan få det bedre end man selv har det.

Henrik