Everyday genius.(BackTalk)(Book Review)

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations By James Surowiecki Doubleday, 320 pages, $24.95

The wisdom of crowds" is a phrase that strikes most ears as oxymoronic, if not downright stupid. Stampeding bargain shoppers and soccer hooligans aren't exactly the epitome of careful reason.

The accuracy of James Surowiecki's book title rests, therefore, on the meaning of that central word "crowds." The crowds Surowiecki has in mind might better be called "the public"--the diverse aggregation of people who make society's most important decisions when operating collectively as consumers, voters, and economic and social agents.

Surowiecki begins his book with an anecdote about an English scientist, Francis Galton, who harbored the contempt for common opinion that prevails among many intellectuals. To illustrate popular stupidity, Galton asked the sponsors of a contest at a 1906 livestock exhibition to give him the list of entries that passing fairgoers had submitted to the "guess the weight of this ox" display. Galton was confident the figures would confirm his view of popular foolishness.

Doubtless there were many uninformed guesses on the list, but these tended to cancel each other out, and many of the estimates turned out to be extremely sage.

Galton was stunned to discover that the average of all the public guesses was only one pound off the exact weight of the ox. No professional expert had made a better calculation than the collective estimate of all the contestants.

The conclusion that Surowiecki draws from this story is reiterated throughout his book. His point isn't that expertise is illusory--though he demonstrates that the trait is vastly overrated--but that the coordinated opinions of intellectually diverse groups are more likely to hit the nail on the head than lone wisemen or committees composed of gurus. ...