The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few

✍️ James Surowiecki

Tags: james-surowiecki , science , lang-en

This book has two distinct parts and my rating is 3.5/5.

The first one where the author lays the fundamental concepts behind his wisdom of the crowds theory is worth 5 stars. In summary, to become wise, a crowd should comply with these four criteria:
- Diversity of opinion: Each person should have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
- Independence: People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.
- Decentralization: People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
- Aggregation: Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

The second part with examples and counter examples is harder to read hence I give it 2 stars. The examples are not that interesting (with the exception of decision making at NASA and how stock market bubbles form) and the author sometimes rambles a lot.

Another good point of the book is the rich ‘notes and references’ section.