When I saw the title “The Wisdome of Crowds,” I laughed aloud. My mental picture of crowds is a group of people standing around doing nothing while someone is being hurt: groupthink. I skeptically picked up the book, started skimming, and found the book fascinating. James Surowiecki begins by explaining a phenomenon where a group’s numerous answers to a question are averaged and are usually more accurate than any one person’s solution. For instance, a group is asked to judge the number of candies in a jar. The average of all the answers is usually almost perfect, even though no single person may have picked the correct answer. Another example is the popular game show “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” When the contestant asks the audience for help, the answer is correct 90 percent of the time. That success rate is much higher than calling one person for an answer.

What, then, about all the excruciating meetings where co-workers are supposed to come to a consensus, but seem to be going around in circles, instead? The author cites “group polarization” that can occur when a small group is discussing something. Rather than everyone moving towards a consensus, discussion can actually cause some people to dig in their heels and be more extreme and resistive than when they started the discussion. However, if groups can somehow avoid this, they may be very successful: “nonpolarized groups consistently make better decisions and come up with better answers than most of their members, and surprisingly often the group outperforms even its best member.”

Surowiecki contends “the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.” People offer individual solutions, which are aggregated, rather than acted upon separately. There are special formulas for this analysis, and it sounds like a fascinating book in itself.
So, for a crowd to be “wise,” it does not have to act like a single organism, but rather, a diversity of backgrounds somehow brings more success to the group. “ If you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you’re better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.” This is counterintuitive for our culture, which tends to place a great deal of trust on “experts.” Experts are like the rest of us, in that they frequently disagree with each other and they tend to overestimate the likelihood of their being right.

Crowds also seem to show a kind of cultural understanding. The author mentions fascinating studies such as the one that asked New Yorkers “If you had to meet someone but couldn’t get a hold of them to find the location, where would you go?” The majority said the information desk of Grand Central Station. The author also discusses the trust involved in “first come first served” seating, such as on subways. Graduate students approached seated subway riders and asked to have their seat. They were given the seat about half the time, but it took a lot of nerve to do the asking because the cultural “possession” rule is so ingrained. If you think about it, it really is amazing that groups and lines are so well behaved most of the time.

Testament to this concept, of course, is the Internet. Diversity of ideas, information, and opinion online is far superior than relying on one or two “experts” for advice. Suroweicki’s extensive research and storytelling abilities convinced me that the last election was probably not a total mistake, and that the “crowd” of voters hopefully made the right choice even though I vehemently disagreed with it. The idea that the collective wisdom is probably greater than my own renews my faith in democracy, and the power of the vote. Everyone has a part to play in this huge decision-making process of running our country, and it is truly inspiring.