"Finding the Scorpion submarine:

On May 22 1968 the US navy lost one of its submarines and wanted to find the wreckage, but the intelligence it had was not able to provide an area that was small enough to effectively search. John Craven a naval officer, decided to harness the wisdom of crowds.

He asked a wide group of individuals, drawn from diverse backgrounds ranging from mathematicians to salvage experts to guess the submarine’s location. The group’s average guess was just 220 yards from the location where the Scorpion was eventually found."

theconversation.com 02/09/2016

The Wisdom of the Crowd means I would like to ask whether it can be used as an effective tool to gain knowledge or not? — TheMadFool

Interesting topic. Are you asking this question as a type of "wisdom of the crowd" situation? Because otherwise, I would just want to see a whole bunch of trials using thousands of people answering a variety of questions and see how accurate it is. It does look interesting...and wikipedia has a couple examples where it pretty much worked as you describe.

My mind has some serious doubts it would actually work most of the time...but those are much more feelings, than any sort of evidence.

Also, if it does work, does it work in practical situations or just in the "guess how many jellybeans in the jar" situations?

He asked a wide group of individuals, drawn from diverse backgrounds ranging from mathematicians to salvage experts to guess the submarine’s location. The group’s average guess was just 220 yards from the location where the Scorpion was eventually found." — jgill

Well there is one more example (and somewhat practical no less) :smile: I would point out that this "wisdom of the crowd" is actually a crowd of knowledgeable and experienced experts...so I am not sure what exactly the rules of "crowd wisdom" are...but it is still an intriguing topic that seems to have some promising potential applications.

That's amazing! I wonder if they should do the same with other lost objects.

I would point out that this "wisdom of the crowd" is actually a crowd of knowledgeable and experienced experts — ZhouBoTong

Yes I was thinking about that but the point of the wisdom of the crowd, if there's any, is that expertise is, paradoxically, unnecessary. I have little clue as to the details on how a system for acquiring knowledge this way would look like. Do you have any ideas?

Lots of things can be found out by using the wisdom of the crowd. Even if the crowd consists only of one person other than you.

This happens provided that the crowd be expert on the topic. "where are my keys?" I would ask in dispair. My girlfreind would say, "Did you look in its usual place where you keep it? Did you check the toilet? Your larger intestines, your bank safety deposit box, your pockets, the cheeks of your mouth?"

Sure enough the keys would be in one of these places most often than not.

"What time is it?" Normally returns a very reliable answer from the crowd.

"Which way to the nearest post office?" Gets it right for me.

"Is the logical positivists' necrological form of governance imitation compatible with the Indian Communist Party's 1947 resolution on the choice between rice or buffalo?" usually directs me toward the post office, too.

Lots of things can be found out by using the wisdom of the crowd. Even if the crowd consists only of one person other than you.

This happens provided that the crowd be expert on the topic. "where are my keys?" I would ask in dispair. My girlfreind would say, "Did you look in its usual place where you keep it? Did you check the toilet? Your larger intestines, your bank safety deposit box, your pockets, the cheeks of your mouth?"

Sure enough the keys would be in one of these places most often than not.

"What time is it?" Normally returns a very reliable answer from the crowd.

"Which way to the nearest post office?" Gets it right for me.

"Is the logical positivists' necrological form of governance imitation compatible with the Indian Communist Party's 1947 resolution on the choice between rice or buffalo?" usually directs me toward the post office, too. — god must be atheist

What do you think is wrong with the idea of the wisdom of the crowd? If there is one.

What do you think is wrong with the idea of the wisdom of the crowd? If there is one. — TheMadFool

"If there is one." You mean, there is no crowd? Then what the (*#&@(! have I been dealing with up to now?

I want my money back.

Yes I was thinking about that but the point of the wisdom of the crowd, if there's any, is that expertise is, paradoxically, unnecessary. — TheMadFool

That was exactly what I was unsure about. Wouldn't the people answering at least have to understand the question? If I ask a 4 year old how far to the sun they might answer "bananas".

I have little clue as to the details on how a system for acquiring knowledge this way would look like. Do you have any ideas? — TheMadFool

Nothing to it, but to do it :grin: IF (big if) we can establish that this does work across the board, then we just need to start asking questions to large groups of people. The internet should make it pretty darn easy.

But I feel you had something a bit more specific in mind...what were you thinking?

Now that you have a working knowledge on what The Wisdom of the Crowd means I would like to ask whether it can be used as an effective tool to gain knowledge or not?

For instance suppose we don't know the distance to a star. We can ask a group of people to make a guess and the average would be close to, or even exactly, the actual distance of that star.

We wouldn't have to argue anymore about what the truth is. A group of people guessing at random would settle all debates once and for all. Perhaps I'm missing something. Comments... — TheMadFool

This actually how alot of software works. Since a computer can fail in a simulation perpetually and the only thing lost is electricity and the occasional electronic component, you can through astronomical trial and error in a simulation discover alot of amazing things. We are like monkeys, if you stick enough of us in a room with type writers, we will eventually produce shakespeare. Give us some fucking bananas damn it. just kidding.

Now that you have a working knowledge on what The Wisdom of the Crowd means I would like to ask whether it can be used as an effective tool to gain knowledge or not?

For instance suppose we don't know the distance to a star. We can ask a group of people to make a guess and the average would be close to, or even exactly, the actual distance of that star.

We wouldn't have to argue anymore about what the truth is. A group of people guessing at random would settle all debates once and for all. Perhaps I'm missing something. Comments... — TheMadFool

If you stick enough lawyers in a room and give them just a teeny tiny bit of authority and over just a short period of time that group of lawyers will each own 10 yachts a piece.

"If there is one." You mean, there is no crowd? Then what the (*#&@(! have I been dealing with up to now?

I want my money back. — god must be atheist

:rofl: I lost track of my thoughts.

I'm coming at this with a blank slate; fishing for sensible opinions on the matter.

I should've posted this in the math section.

fishing for sensible opinions on the matter. — TheMadFool

Well I probably am not the right man for that job :grimace:. I would think it is just a manner of phrasing as many significant questions as possible in a way that average joe's could offer a reasonable response (even questions like how far to the nearest star is beyond those that don't understand light years, for example). Additionally, the questions need to have a range of answers. Something like "which quantum physics idea shows the most promise?" would obviously be useless.

I think all of this would be fairly straightforward, if we committed to this idea of "crowd wisdom".

There is a book on the subject called "Superforecasting".

According to the author, wisdom of the crowd if one aggregates opinions or advice, tends to be very effective, not necessarily as a "miracle", but because even if no one person is an "expert" or "authority" on the subjects, each person could be providing bits of knowledge or information from a diversity of other sources.

(For example if an opinion on psychiatric medicine was asked, one person may have had a grandfather who was a licensed psychiatrist, another person may have studied to be psychiatrist before dropping out and pursuing another career, another person may have been quoting a peer-reviewed journal they read online, another person may be an avid reader who has read various published books on the subject, etc etc).

It seems the wisdom of the crowd is restricted to quantity. I'm not sure about it though. I think it fails in qualitative phenomena. For instance we wouldn't be able to arrive at the truth of whether god exists/not with a yes/no question. However, if one frames the question as: what is the percent likelihood of god existing? then it's theoretically possible to arrive at an "accurate" value.

↪christian2017I should've posted this in the math section. — TheMadFool

No, shouldn't have. (Also sprach das Crowd.)

It seems the wisdom of the crowd is restricted to quantity. I'm not sure about it though. I think it fails in qualitative phenomena. — TheMadFool

Karl Marx sprach: "All qualitative changes are preceded by quantitative changes." (Alle Qualitatsbesonderswerbgevernenscheissverwandlungen geschehen nach Quantitatsbesonderswerbgevernenscheissverwandlungen.")

We wouldn't have to argue anymore about what the truth is. A group of people guessing at random would settle all debates once and for all. Perhaps I'm missing something. Comments... — TheMadFool

"A group of people guessing at random" would require millions of guesses to get close to the correct answer. But a small group of experts, who are presumably already closer to the truth, could narrow down the possibilities just as well or better. There's nothing spooky about the WOC phenomenon. It's just mathematics, specifically statistics. Similar effects are used in computer calculations and communications. Wikipedia summarizes how WOC works as "noise cancelling", and notes that juries require a dozen opinions in order to get closer to truth than a single judge. Bayesian statistics make use of a similar phenomenon for increasing the accuracy of guessing. Unfortunately, whether the opinion is rendered by computer or crowds, we can still argue about such an abstract concept as "Truth". :smile:

Wisdom of Noise Cancelling : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

However, if one frames the question as: what is the percent likelihood of god existing? then it's theoretically possible to arrive at an "accurate" value. — TheMadFool

I agree with what you were saying about crowd knowledge only working in certain scenarios. However, since the question above will never be measurable, I would want to see crowd wisdom work in many scenarios where we then can measure the results (and it works every time) before I would believe the results of something like this. First, we should do like a thousand trials where the results can be analyzed...things like, "what is the diameter of the earth, sun, mars, jupiter, etc? What is the mass of those same things?" Since science can determine these answers, but less than 1% of the population actually knows the answers, I think this would be a good way to confirm the theory. And I am guessing (no clue for sure) that the more extreme and unknown the topic, the less accurate crowd knowledge will be (I bet crowd wisdom gets much closer to the diameter of earth than it does to the diameter of the milky way, which will be more flawed than the diameter of the universe).

I think we will learn that a group of "experts" has much more "crowd wisdom" than just some random sample of the population.

whether it can be used as an effective tool to gain knowledge or not? — TheMadFool

In "Black Swan, Impact of the highly improbable", Nassim Taleb writes about "mediocristan" versus "extremistan". An example of mediocristan is the average height of people. Adding one more person will not massively shift the existing average measured already. An example of extremistan is wealth. Adding Bill Gates will indeed massively shift the existing average measured already.

Mediocristan is typified by variables distributed along Gaussian bell curves, while in extremistan a variable is distributed is along a fat-tailed Mandelbrotian curve.

For example, the income of pop stars or football athletes lie in extremistan. Therefore, their average income means very little to nothing at all. According to Black-swan theory, the wisdom of the crowds is unlikely to work for variables in extremistan:

The theory was developed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb to explain:

[*] The disproportionate role of high-profile, hard-to-predict, and rare events that are beyond the realm of normal expectations in history, science, finance, and technology.

[*] The non-computability of the probability of the consequential rare events using scientific methods (owing to the very nature of small probabilities).

[*] The psychological biases that blind people, both individually and collectively, to uncertainty and to a rare event's massive role in historical affairs. — Wikipedia on Black Swan theory

Since the world has been rapidly shifting from mediocristan to extremistan, the wisdom of the crowds has increasingly become a less effective tool. It has become much more likely than in the past that the crowd collectively gets it completely wrong.