How participation inequality blinds the wisdom of crowds and creates the opinions of the few   (Editor's note: This post is being re-published and highlighted due to its popularity.)  The wisdom of crowds theory as advanced by the New Yorker columnist James Surowiecki contends that the collective opinions of a group of people is often smarter than the opinion of a single member of the group, or for that matter, the opinion of an expert.  The central thesis is based on the fact that the diversity, independence, decentralization, disorganization, and aggregation of opinions make the entire group reach a smarter decision.  Corollary, when opinions are too homogeneous, too centralized, too divided, too imitative, and too emotional then the crowd usually fails to achieve its collective intelligence.  For instance, our judicial jury-based system is based on ... [ Read more ]