Blurts & Spasms

For Surowiecki’s assertions to hold, you need to create an environment were everyone a) shares the same motivation (i.e. will benefit in the same way from the outcome); b) is informationally, socially and operationally separated from everyone else, while still receiving the information around their choice at the same time; and c) represents diverse, widely distributed perspectives and positions relative to both the effort and the outcome. In other words, pretty ideal conditions prior to aggregation. Throw in some advertising and marketing campaigns, and the wisdom is disrupted. Social media engagement where people are aware of each other’s input or communicate about the question? Won’t work. Homogenous group sample? Won’t work. Choice or question delivered to different folks at different times? Won’t work. Opportunity for different folks to benefit in different ways from the choice? Won’t work.

As you can see, it is pretty difficult to engineer all of these variables in a consistent way. Further, if the crowd involved knows it is being observed, that tends to change the outcome as well (a variation on the Observer effect). So in one sense, the “getting the best out of crowd wisdom” likely involves remaining an unseen observer of natural crowd behaviors where all of the above variables emerge on their own - rather that inserting oneself into the mix or trying to create ideal conditions.

My 2 cents.


From Quora post: https://www.quora.com/How-can-one-get-the-best-out-of-the-wisdom-of-the-crowd/answer/T-Collins-Logan