Mo' Better Decisions

The idea of a collective consciousness in comparison to a few experts being in charge - making the big moves/choices …and then determining which of the two groups would make the best decision overall has a surprising end result.  Human beings are not perfectly designed decision makers according to James Surgwiecki in his Introduction essay and in Ch. 4 of his 2005 book The Wisdom of Crowds.
 
Surgwiecki shares that the human intellect as a large group basically has good intuition and direction for resolving issues on a local level, as well as this large group has better odds at a more diverse, thoughtful outcome - in general.  The human population is described as “boundedly rational,” and on our own and in small groups we simply have less information than we would want - and we often have limited foresight to see into the future. All knowledge benefits from a collective intelligence, including financial stability, and lastly humans let their emotions affect their judgment while working in a small groups.
 
Yet despite these limitations, Surgwiecki writes, “When our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way, our collective intelligence is often excellent.  This intelligence, or what I'll call ‘the wisdom of crowds,’ is at work in the world in many different guises.”
 
Surgwiecki breaks down his analysis for readers by discussing three kinds of problems. The first are Cognition problems. These are problems that have or will have definitive solutions and some answers are better than others. An example given in this text is “Where is the best place to build this new public swimming pool?”  My example might be: Does social media play a role in the collective consciousness, and if so, how does it?
 
The second kind of problems are Coordination problems requiring members of a group (market, subway riders, college students looking for a party) to figure out how to coordinate their behavior with each other, knowing that everyone else is trying to do the same.  An example given in the text is: “How can you drive safely in heavy traffic?”  My example might be: What are safety measures in place for cyclists, bikers and drivers to share the road? 
 
The final problem Surgwiecki highlights is a cooperation problem. Cooperation problems involve the challenge of getting self-interested, distrustful people to work together, even when narrow self-interest would seem to dictate that no individual should take part.  Paying taxes seemed to be the most ironic example shared by Surgwiecki.  My example might be: How does one deal with a micro-managing supervisor that knows less than the worker does?
 
Conditions - conditions are needed, a necessity for a wise crowd according to Surgwiecki: diversity, independence, and a particular kind of decentralization are the conditions.  A wise group does not ask its members to change their thoughts.  It may use market prices, or voting systems and other mechanisms to aggregate – to produce – a collective of what everyone thinks.
 
“Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently possible,” said Surgwiecki.  In the end he assures readers the collective solutions produced the most accurate answers, the best resolutions and most interesting feedback - an unusual dichotomy.  
 
The author also restates the irony of this point better than I at the end of his introduction: “What's astonishing about this story is that the evidence that the group was relying on in this case amounted to almost nothing. It was really just tiny scraps of data. No one knew why the submarine sank; no one had any idea how fast it was traveling or how steeply it fell to the ocean floor. And yet even though no one in the group knew any of these things, the group as a whole knew them all.”
 
In Surgwiecki’s Ch. 4 of The Wisdom of Crowds. Putting the Pieces Together: The CIA, Linux, and the Art of Decentralization …the chapter discusses in more depth social networks, and the importance in allowing people to Connect and Coordinate with each other without a single person being in Charge. 
 
The author writes: “Most important, of Course, was the rise of the Internet-in some respeets, the most visible decentralized system in the world-and of Corollary technologies like peer-to'peer file sharing (exemplified by Napster), which offered a Clear demonstration of the possibilities (economie7 organizational, and more) that decentralization had to offer.”
 
Within  powerful organizations such as corporations and school systems, which do not fully reside in one central location, important decisions are made by individuals based on their own local and specific knowledge.  Therefore - Strengths of decentralization are – coordination of information and activities; the weaknesses are that systems have to communicate well in order for the information to be shared. 
 
 Aggregation is the key word for information gathering / analysis and general success in Ch. 4, because aggregation and decentralization create organization – yes, and aggregation is a form of centralization because of the collective judgment involved and reviewed. 
 
Anyway, the PAM program discussed in this chapter would have been an excellent example of casting a wide-net to pull in a diverse group of respondents – and therefore more knowledge if the government had had trust in aggregation.  The more knowledge part is the bottom line – yes, because more equals more, more diversity, independence and accuracy – and mo’ better knowledge from the wisdom of the crowds.