Book Review- The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.”
The book's central thesis presents “Wisdom of Crowds” as a theory that assumes that the knowledge of a crowd results in better decision-making, innovation, and problem-solving than that of an individual. For the theory to work, a crowd needs to be large and diverse, and individuals within the crowd cannot be influenced by others.
The author depicts the four essential conditions that make up an intelligent or wise crowd:
a. Diversity of Opinion—Each person must bring private information: his/her interpretation or understanding of the problem space or a related problem space to the group.
b. Independence - People hold to their reasoning to some degree
c. Decentralisation- Individuals can specialise and draw on their local knowledge. Someone will be closest to a particular aspect of the problem space, which is what local knowledge means.
d. Aggregation- The means to synthesise the team's thoughts into a collective decision.
With boundless erudition and delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki attempts to explore fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, Ant biology, behavioural economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
This book was, well, disappointing, as all the pieces did not gel into a whole. Not only was the sum of the information not more than its parts, but I actually thought it was less. This book also had problems for me in a number of key areas that seemed to detract from the central train of thought.
However, my gut feeling is that, to appreciate this book, I may need to reorient myself to what Surowiecki is saying. Perhaps, an entirely new framing of my world may be required. The book might have reach my hands before time!! I shall re-attempt to read this book, maybe after 5-6 years.
c. Decentralisation- Individuals can specialise and draw on their local knowledge. Someone will be closest to a particular aspect of the problem space, which is what local knowledge means.
d. Aggregation- The means to synthesise the team's thoughts into a collective decision.
With boundless erudition and delightfully clear prose, Surowiecki attempts to explore fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, Ant biology, behavioural economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
This book was, well, disappointing, as all the pieces did not gel into a whole. Not only was the sum of the information not more than its parts, but I actually thought it was less. This book also had problems for me in a number of key areas that seemed to detract from the central train of thought.
However, my gut feeling is that, to appreciate this book, I may need to reorient myself to what Surowiecki is saying. Perhaps, an entirely new framing of my world may be required. The book might have reach my hands before time!! I shall re-attempt to read this book, maybe after 5-6 years.
Yes. Reading books is like having a conversation. We read and understand the thoughts of writers.
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