Crowds of humans can be very good at solving certain kinds of problems. If, for example, you wanted to guess how many bacteria live in Lake Erie, you’d be better off asking a random group of people and averaging the result than trying to answer the question alone.
But what if you could be your own crowd, by averaging your own guesses? Bizarrely, research suggests that this can actually work.
The wisdom of crowds operates by exploiting the diversity of views. It’s been used to improve economic forecasts, doctors’ decisions and weather predictions. But we still have a lot to learn about how and when it works. It can go wrong if the people involved are all biased in similar ways, or if one person’s choice influences others. It can work better if you ask people both what they think and what they expect the popular opinion to be, and look for discrepancies between two — a technique that draws out the knowledge of informed subgroups.
More here – Bloomberg
PS : It is hard enough to get people to think once so getting them to think twice is probably right out of the question.
