Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
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Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#2The aggregation of many independent estimates can outperform the most accurate individual judgment. This centenarian finding, popularly known as the wisdom of crowds, has been applied to problems ranging from the diagnosis of cancer to financial forecasting. It is widely believed that social influence undermines collective wisdom by reducing the diversity of opinions within the crowd. Here, we show that if a large crowd is structured in small independent groups, deliberation and social influence within groups improve the crowd's collective accuracy. We asked a live crowd (N=5180) to respond to general-knowledge questions (e.g., what is the height of the Eiffel Tower?). Participants first answered individually, then deliberated and made consensus decisions in groups of five, and finally provided revised individual estimates. We found that averaging consensus decisions was substantially more accurate than aggregating the initial independent opinions. Remarkably, combining as few as four consensus choices outperformed the wisdom of thousands of individuals.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#3The aggregation of many independent estimates can outperform the most accurate individual judgment. This centenarian finding, popularly known as the wisdom of crowds, has been applied to problems ranging from the diagnosis of cancer to financial forecasting. It is widely believed that social influence undermines collective wisdom by reducing the diversity of opinions within the crowd. Here, we show that if a large cr…
wonder how that would compare to people providing a confidence to their guess and using a weighted average.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#4We intuitively do know this and mankind has used different variations of this concept throughout human civilization. Sortition has been used for more than 2000 years to come up with fair representation of the population in governance [0]. A more contemporary example would be the jury system in the US. But, nice to have experimental results on this concept.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#5I would say that this has been known for quite some time in philosophy, but I guess it's good to have some real-life verification for it. This article on Belief Merging and Judgement Aggregation[0] is a good entry point for the field, for anybody that is interested.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#6You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#7You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
Democracy isn't the best system at making decisions, nor was it ever supposed to be so. Its strong point was the capability of preventing certain kind of decisions from being made.
The main thing is that in most cases where large scale democracy applied, there doesn't likely exist the "best" objective outcome, so to speak. So it is not really about making the best choice.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#8You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
Democracy (as in, majoritocracy) is mainly a way to keep people from fighting each other (because they know they ll be outnumbered). Wisdom was not the primary goal (Aristotle and Plato considered it a terrible system - even most public offices were appointed by lot).
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#9You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
That would be direct democracy. No "democracy" on Earth is actually a direct democracy, but a representative democracy, which seems more in line to what this study proposes, no? A small group of elected officials to "debate" issues.
Re: Knowledge from small number of debates outperforms wisdom of large crowds (2017)
#10You can make a case that democracy is a grand application of “wisdom of large crowd”. But if that can easily and consistently outperformed then do we have better political system than democracy? What are the consequences of this?
That would be direct democracy . No "democracy" on Earth is actually a direct democracy, but a representative democracy, which seems more in line to what this study proposes, no? A small group of elected officials to "debate" issues.
And then every so often a referendum with only two polar-opposite options is presented to the electorate, reminding us why we have representative democracy instead of direct. I'm looking at you, Brexit... :)