Word: wisdoms
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BOOKS: The Wisdom of Crowds...
...random gathering of people turned out to be an unexpected collective genius at ox-weight appraisal. Starting with this anecdote, James Surowiecki, financial columnist for the New Yorker, builds a fascinating case, summed up in his title and subtitle: The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations (Doubleday; 296 pages...
...close to the middle as possible; 2) stay 2 to 3 body lengths away from your neighbor; 3) do not bump into any other starling; 4) if a hawk dives at you, get out of the way." The result is safety, and a magical, organic coherence of motion--unconscious "wisdom...
...adventures of an idea should be entertaining. The Wisdom of Crowds is a circus of oddments and behavioral studies--for example, of big-city pedestrian flow (an unconscious art form) and highway traffic snarls (caused by hiccups of human reaction time--"a single driver who's too ready to hit the brakes can slow down an entire highway"). Surowiecki describes a 1958 experiment in which a group of law students from New Haven, Conn., were asked to consider this scenario: You have to meet someone in New York City but don't know where to meet him or when...
...Darwin. But Surowiecki does not claim collective perfection, only the effectiveness of a diversity of individual intelligences--like those hundreds of scientists at labs all over the world who, without overall supervision but sharing their data, succeeded in isolating the SARS virus in only a matter of weeks. The Wisdom of Crowds is a subtly intelligent book that's fun to argue with: if it becomes a best seller, that will of course confirm the author's thesis...