The Wisdom of Crowds
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Smart people often believe that the opinion of the crowd is always inferior to the opinion of the individual specialist. Philosophical giants such as Nietzsche thought that "Madness is the exception in individuals but the rule in groups". Henry David Thoreau lamented: "The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member but on the contrary degrades itself to a level with the lowest member." The motto of the great and the ordinary seems to be: Bet on the expert because crowds are generally stupid and often dangerous. Business columnist James Surowiecki’s new book The Wisdom of Crowds explains exactly why the conventional wisdom is wrong. The fact is that, under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably intelligent, and are often smarter than the smartest people in them. Groups don’t even need to be dominated by exceptionally intelligent people in order to be smart. Even if most of the people within a group are not especially well-informed or rational, it can still reach a collectively wise decision. Why? Because, as it turns out, if you ask a large enough group of diverse, independent people to make a prediction or estimate a probability, and then average those estimates, the errors each of them makes in coming up with an answer will cancel themselves out. Not any old crowd will do of course. For the crowd to be wise it has to satisfy four specific conditions, but once those conditions are met, its judgment is likely to be accurate.
Surowieki concentrates on three kinds of problems. The first are cognition problems (problems that are likely to have definitive answers, such as: "How many books will Amazon sell this month?"). The second are problems of coordination (problems requiring members of a group to figure out how to coordinate their behaviour with one another) and the third are problems of cooperation (getting self-interested, distrustful people to work together-- despite their selfishness). The brilliant first half of the book illustrates this theory with practical examples. The second half of the book essentially consists of case studies with each chapter talking about the way collective intelligence either flourishes or flounders. Much of this part deals with business topics such as corporations, markets and the dynamics of a stock-market bubble.
Surowieki has an engaging, direct style defending his surprising central thesis in entertaining ways by, for example, talking about laying bets on football games and political elections; traffic jams; Google; the Challenger explosion and the search for a missing submarine. The Wisdom of Crowds is an entertaining book making a serious point and by the end of the superb first half the reader has been made to accept that, while with most things, the average is mediocrity, when it comes to decision-making the average results in excellence. --Larry Brown
From Publishers Weekly
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. Surowiecki's style is pleasantly informal, a tactical disguise for what might otherwise be rather dense material. He offers a great introduction to applied behavioral economics and game theory.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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6 internautes sur 6 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
Format:Broché
James Surowiecki propose une approche et une analyse intéressantes de l'intelligence collective (dont l'archétype est Wikipedia) et des meilleures façons de la susciter et de l'exploiter : diversité, indépendance, décentralisation, mécanisme neutre de consolidation... Facile à lire, illustré d'exemples concrets, il fournit des idées, outils et méthodes pratiques pour la vie professionnelle.
Il présente toutefois le défaut de ne faire aucune analyse critique sur les limites de sa thèse, et mène un impressionnant et parfois pénible plaidoyer pour la doctrine américaine de libre concurrence, son économie de marché et sa démocratie. Un peu de recul et moins d'américano-centrisme aurait été souhaitable.
Il présente toutefois le défaut de ne faire aucune analyse critique sur les limites de sa thèse, et mène un impressionnant et parfois pénible plaidoyer pour la doctrine américaine de libre concurrence, son économie de marché et sa démocratie. Un peu de recul et moins d'américano-centrisme aurait été souhaitable.
8 internautes sur 10 ont trouvé ce commentaire utile
Format:Broché
Ce livre est plus journalistique que scientifique mais reste une lecture passionnante. Il explique quelques mécanismes pyschologiques qui permettent à un groupe ou à une foule de se comporter (parfois) de manière intelligente, coordonnée, conforme à l'intérêt du groupe, et de dépasser les capacités limitées et les intérêts égoïstes de ses membres.
Résumé du livre sur :
http://gusifang.blogspot.com/2006/05/livre-wisdom-of-crowds-jsurowiecki.html
Résumé du livre sur :
http://gusifang.blogspot.com/2006/05/livre-wisdom-of-crowds-jsurowiecki.html
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