Representation in Self Portraiture This is a blog to keep track of my dissertation research and to help develop ideas in an organised manner.

Overview/Summary before I read the book
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wisdom_of_Crowds

The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations
published 2004
James Surowiecki

presents numerous case studies to support arguements

Surowiecki breaks down the advantages he sees in disorganized decisions into three main types
Cognition
   Thinking and information Processing
Coordination
Cooperation

 Not all crowds (groups) are wise.
Same as what I said, there needs to be some sort of standard to decide which crowd has the gratest influence and knowledge to determine something, still it would be a greater possibility of accuracy given there is more people and the result would be dependent upon the given value of the knowledge that is present, and always there could be additional facts presented after the fact which would change the overall meaning.
He gives 4 criteria

-diversity of opinion
-independence
-decentralisation
-aggregation

list of problems facing the wisdom of the crowd
-imitation, I can think of most easily, once we hear someone else's interpretation it is much easier to just accept that, it imposes itself on us rather than we can then have a unique point of view.

CRITICISM
The Wisdom of Crowds concept by definition requires a known truth or absolute in order to work; the lottery has no such previously existent absolute outcome.
 I can easily overcome this... it is a majority interpretation I am meaning for, not the average of what everyone is saying, the same concept still applies I feel. Tweaked slightly

FURTHER CRITICISMS...
However, Tammet points out the potential for problems in systems which have less well defined means of pooling knowledge: Subject matter experts can be overruled and even wrongly punished by less knowledgeable persons in systems like Wikipedia, citing a case of this on Wikipedia. Furthermore, Tammet mentions the assessment of the accuracy of Wikipedia as described in a study mentioned in Nature in 2005, outlining several flaws in the study's methodology which included that the study made no distinction between minor errors and large errors.

Simon Johnson www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk