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The Stupidity of Crowds, Part I: The Wisdom of Crowds (raganwald.com)
12 points by cstejerean on Feb 17, 2008 | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



I'm not entirely certain what he's getting at here...

The bulk of this posting is exactly what Surowiecki describes as the contributing factors that lead crowds to be stupid. "The wisdom of crowds" only happens when the following are present:

- Diversity of opinion

- Independence

- Decentralization

- Aggregation

If any of these four factors are compromised, then there is a breakdown of the "wisdom". The blog post seems to discuss the second criteria above as causing crowds to be "dumb" which is something that Surowiecki states in his book. He also briefly touches upon the first point of diversity, but doesn't elaborate much upon it.




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