The Wisdom of Crowds
Ratings9
Average rating3.7
In this fascinating book, New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki explores a deceptively simple idea: Large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant — better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future.
Surowiecki ranges across fields as diverse as popular culture, psychology, ant biology, behavioral economics, artificial intelligence, military history, and politics to show how this simple idea offers important lessons for how we live our lives, select our leaders, run our companies, and think about our world.
The story is told of the first observations of this effect, through to anecdotes of the effect in modern economics and psychology. The book not heavy on statistics, and has prompted much research since its publication.
The title is an allusion to the famous phrase, the "madness of crowds".
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Diverse crowds make better decisions on aggregate than individuals or groups of similar experts on most topics. That's the main takeaway of the book illustrated through a number of examples. I like the idea, but some of the ideas focused on ended up not holding my interest for the time discussed.
Diverse crowds make better decisions on aggregate than individuals or groups of similar experts on most topics. That's the main takeaway of the book illustrated through a number of examples. I like the idea, but some of the ideas focused on ended up not holding my interest for the time discussed.
I didn't expect it to be as good!
Great wrap up on various case of crowds implicitly or explicitly deciding and effective factors on their optimal performance.
