Can a crowd of average people be smarter than experts? "Yes, but only if they are very diverse" is the latest academic resarch finding.
In fact, in the equations, it turns out that diversity is just as important as other measures, such as IQ, in helping people make good predictions about the future and good policy decisions.
And, if we look deeper, even the experts, it turns out, are experts partly because they are walking containers of many very diverse alternative mental models, which they apply to problems, thereby doing a sort of internal diverse-crowd activity.
A new book coming out January 15th is titled "The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies " by researcher Scott E. Page.
Scott Page is a Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science, And Economics at the University of Michigan. He is internationally known for his work on complex systems and his research has affected the discussion of affirmative action at the University of Michigan and the US Supreme Court.
Here is a direct link to the Book Website and his other writings on Diversity.
According to the Princeton Press, quoted at that book website,
In this landmark book, Scott Page redefines the way weunderstand ourselves in relation to each other. The Difference is about how we think in groups,about how our collective wisdom exceeds the sum of its parts. Why can teams ofpeople find better solutions than brilliant individuals working alone? And whyare the best group decisions and predictions those that draw upon the veryqualities that make each of us unique? The answers lie in diversity-not what welook like outside, but what we look like within, our distinct tools andabilities.
The Difference reveals that progress and innovation may depend less onlone thinkers with enormous IQs than on diverse people working together andcapitalizing on their individuality. Page shows how groups that display a rangeof perspectives outperform groups of like-minded experts. Diversity yieldssuperior outcomes, and Page proves it using his own cutting-edge research.Moving beyond the politics that cloud standard debates about diversity, heexplains why difference beats out homogeneity, whether you're talking aboutcitizens in a democracy or scientists in the laboratory. He examines practicalways to apply diversity's logic to a host of problems, and along the way offersfascinating and surprising examples, from the redesign of the Chicago"El" to the truth about where we store our ketchup.
Page changes the way we understand diversity--how to harnessits untapped potential, how to understand and avoid its traps, and how we canleverage our differences for the benefit of all.
Yesterday I went to a talk given by Professor Page, that went over chapters seven and eight of that book focusing on "cogintive diversity and predictive models."
He put his book in context and also had nice things to say about two other books currently on the market - "The Wisdom of Crowds " by James Surowiecki, and " Blink: The power of thinking without thinking " by Malcolm Gladwell.
I haven't had a chance to read The Difference yet, since it isn't out, and some of it may be more mathematical than some readers prefer - but it does look like required reading for anyone who wants to build a solid theoretical understanding of why "diversity" is a critical element of good social policy or even good corporate policy.
In fact, some corporations, such as Google or HP, already use internal group thinking and voting to predict whether products will be successful, or other "unknowables", with a success factor greater than the "experts".
The implications of this for democracy and social are profound. And, certainly, the scholars of the Baha'i Faith, centered on principles of "unity with diversity" and collaborative "consultation" should check this out this very important book that connects the science with the social principles.
I have many prior posts on the key problem of unity and diversity, seen as the core problem of any social organization (overcoming "silos"), or countries (Iraq today, or the USA and "e pluribus unum") or the mathematical or biological principles on which multicellular life is a good idea (specialization versus wholeness), or on the policies with respect to Information Technolgy centralization or decentralization, or on the general, scale-independent concept of "health" and "public health". The breakdown in unity and loss of social capital or social connectivity seems to be correlated, perhaps causally, with very substantial increases in morbidity and mortality. This whole question of how to be simultaneously independent individuals and part of a larger society that doesn't turn into a diversity-less "Borg" is fascinating, and central to protecting our social values.
e pluibus unum (US social unity)
Social Intelligence (Daniel Goleman's book)
Healing Through Unity Newsletter
technorati tags:Thedifference, difference, scottpage, scottepage, Michigan, socialpolicy, networking, crowds, wisdom, Bahai
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