What's so mysterious about it?
Should we be surprised that accurate perceptions can be discerned from the
median of guesses of a group of non-professional strangers? One of the earliest
of Surowiecki's examples is that of guessing the number of jelly beans in a glass
container. Tests have shown that though each guess may be off the mark, the average
of those guesses is often extremely close to the correct number. Is this a sign
of an amorphous cloud of wisdom that hovers above an ill-defined group waiting
to condense and be converted into a rainfall (well, maybe a drizzle) of accurate
information? I really don't know why we might think that.
Apparently
on game shows like "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" the audience, when
asked for help, very often knows the correct answer to the question presented
to it. But here there's probably no mystery at all. Rather than trusting the audience
to know the answer to any question, what a game-show contestant has to be able
to discern is which questions an audience might be expected to be able to answer,
and which not. If the contestant requests audience aid on a question of common
cultural knowledge, chances are good that the majority of audience members will
know the correct answer. If the contestant turns to the audience on a question
of professional expertise, the audience fails in its guesses, and the contestant
fails in his or her guess as to what can be expected of the audience.
And
perhaps we've become so atomized in our thinking that even the
mere suggestion of teamwork seems like a revolutionary idea.
Go to: Are
crowds really that smart?