Do Crowds of Average People Know More Than Experts?
I've had second thoughts four times over this recent news. It's about a public forum, "Your Voice in Europe," in which citizens (and other "stakeholders") are encouraged to discuss the potential uses and potential threats of RFID...
There's a theory gaining currency in America at least -- fueled by a bestselling book called The Wisdom of Crowds, that average people in groups will make better decisions more often than the experts, even when the average people have no specialized expertise in the matter at hand.
My first reaction to this public forum was negative mostly because of all the wild and whacky misconceptions some average people have about RFID. But I've changed my mind. I think most average people mostly get it and in the end the right decisions will be made. What do you think? [...please feel free to answer that whether you're an expert or not.]
posted by Dave at Friday, July 07, 2006
1 Comments:
As per the author of W of C, the quality of the answer provided by groups depends a great deal on the question. Groups do well in aggregating broad swaths of information for a single outcome. They do less well with highly technical and well defined analysis. As such, democracy is a pretty good system, but science is better handled by experts. As such, Buckley was right in saying "Cambridge is better led by the first one hundred names in the local phone book than the faculty of Harvard College".
Post a Comment
<< Home