“Independence is important to intelligent decision making for two reasons. First, it keeps the mistakes that people make from becoming correlated. Errors in individual judgment won’t wreck the group’s collective judgment as long as those errors aren’t systematically pointing in the same direction. One of the quickest ways to make people’s judgments systematically biased is to make them dependent on each other for information.” WisdomGroupsJudgmentDecision Making Author:James Surowiecki
“The problem is that groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is the paradox of the wisdom of crowds.” PeopleProblemGroupsSmartIndependentCrowdsParadox Author:James Surowiecki
“Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.” PeopleSometimesGroupsCircumstancesSmartSmarter Author:James Surowiecki
“Auto repair, piloting, skiing, perhaps even management: these are skills that yield to application, hard work, and native talent. But forecasting an uncertain future and deciding the best course of action in the face of that future are much less likely to do so. And much of what we've seen so far suggests that a large group of diverse individuals will come up with better and more robust forecasts and make more intelligent decisions than even the most skilled "decision maker."” HardActionFacesCoursesIndividualDecisionGroupsTalentHard WorkSkillsIntelligentManagementCome UpNativeYieldMakersApplicationDiverseUncertainRobustSkiingForecastsDecision MakersLarge GroupsForecastingUncertain Future Author:James Surowiecki
“Bubbles and crashes are textbook examples of collective decision making gone wrong. In a bubble, all of the conditions that make groups intelligent - independence, diversity, private judgement-disappear.” DecisionGoneGroupsConditionsExampleDiversityIntelligentIndependenceDisappearJudgementCollectivesDecision MakingBubblesCrashTextbooks Author:James Surowiecki
“If small groups are included in the decision-making process, then they should be allowed to make decisions. If an organization sets up teams and then uses them for purely advisory purposes, it loses the true advantage that a team has: namely, collective wisdom.” IfsShouldUseWisdomPurposeProcessLosesDecisionGroupsTeamAdvantageOrganizationCollectivesDecision MakingSmall GroupsDecision Making ProcessAdvisoryCollective Wisdom Book:The Wisdom of Crowds Source: The Wisdom of Crowds
“Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.” PiecesWiseGroupsShareInformationBalanceMembersSmartIndependentCombination Author:James Surowiecki
“Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.” ThinkingWayPersonsGroupsSmartBest WayBeing Smart Author:James Surowiecki
“The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.” PeopleIfsMeanDoeTwoMatterFactsWisdomHandsDecisionGroupsDegreesDiversityMajorsSmartLeavingInsightExpertsCollectivesDiverseSmarterBetter OffBeing SmartCognitiveUninformedEntrustingCollective Wisdom Book:The Wisdom of Crowds Source: The Wisdom of Crowds
“One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.” PeopleDecisionPayAttentionSuccessfulGroupsKeysKey To Success Book:The Wisdom of Crowds Source: The Wisdom of Crowds
“The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.” PeopleMadeAbleGroupsPerspectiveIndependentIntelligenceDiverse Book:The Wisdom of Crowds Source: The Wisdom of Crowds
“The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.” PeopleLongMadeAbleGroupsPerspectiveIndependentIndependenceDiverseIrrationalRationalityBiasedImpartiality Book:The Wisdom of Crowds Source: The Wisdom of Crowds
“Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.” ThinkingWayPersonsDoeImportantProblemOrderAsksDecisionGroupsPositionProductsMembersDiversitySmartIntelligentIndependenceBest WayCompromiseCollectivesContestsConsensusDisagreementBeing SmartCognition Author:James Surowiecki
