"Collective Intelligence"

[Ariphaos]

No, we're not; I really shouldn't have mentioned Wikipedia so much in the OP, since the real issue I'm interested in is the underlying idea that an aggregate sample of the opinions of all Wikipedia editors, participants in a futures market, blog authors, or any other "crowd" or "market" can approximate the truth as well as a small number of experts, or predict the future better than a Magic 8-ball or entrail-gazing.

In an environment where the accuracy of a bit of knowledge can be and is tested (Wikipedia does a half-job here), yes. Currently, civilization acts as such a body and the scientific method, and scientific and educational communities act as just such a filter.

Wikipedia is the result of a few good ideas combined with a few failings in the current educational system. It only has half a filter, making it appear worthless to some.

You're right. Why the hell would I want a detailed and accurate source of information dealing with the real world when I can have an arbitrary one that has a multipage entries for pornstars, superheros, and that fucking "O RLY" owl?

Because someone brings up such a cultural reference and you just wanna know, damnit :-p

[Spacebeard]

No, we're not; I really shouldn't have mentioned Wikipedia so much in the OP, since the real issue I'm interested in is the underlying idea that an aggregate sample of the opinions of all Wikipedia editors, participants in a futures market, blog authors, or any other "crowd" or "market" can approximate the truth as well as a small number of experts, or predict the future better than a Magic 8-ball or entrail-gazing.

In an environment where the accuracy of a bit of knowledge can be and is tested (Wikipedia does a half-job here), yes. Currently, civilization acts as such a body and the scientific method, and scientific and educational communities act as just such a filter.

That's not what's happening in any of the most popular attempts to harness collective knowledge, because testing each individual opinion is a time-consuming process that requires the involvement of human editors, while aggregation services like Digg, del.icio.us, et al. pride themselves on operating entirely automatically and in real-time. The appeal of such projects is that they reduce the costs of paying a staff of writers and editors by harvesting raw input from random, anonymous denizens of the Internet, aggregating them, and hoping that from the average will emerge a gestalt intelligence, greater than the sum of its parts. Currently, these projects rely on the hope that their users will do fact-checking for them: Wikipedia relies on the hope that fabrications and vandalism will be deleted from its articles, Digg relies on the hope that its users won't push up shoddy or fraudulent articles, and so on. When they don't, the system fails. Garbage in, garbage out.

Of course, it's possible to improve some of these systems so that fact-checking is performed; Wikipedia, for instance, might be a very different kettle of fish if it disallowed anonymous edits, required a peer review of each new contribution and used a reputation system to rate users' knowledge of particular subject areas (i.e., if peer review finds your contribution to an article on phonetics accurate, then your reputation for knowledge of phonetics goes up and you're more likely to be chosen to review other contributions to that area). However, such a system would no longer operate in real-time, would rely on the contributions of known and accountable individuals rather than "the hive mind", and would so closely resemble the current academy that claims of "overturning authority" would become meaningless.

[Ariphaos]

Of course, it's possible to improve some of these systems so that fact-checking is performed; Wikipedia, for instance, might be a very different kettle of fish if it disallowed anonymous edits, required a peer review of each new contribution and used a reputation system to rate users' knowledge of particular subject areas (i.e., if peer review finds your contribution to an article on phonetics accurate, then your reputation for knowledge of phonetics goes up and you're more likely to be chosen to review other contributions to that area). However, such a system would no longer operate in real-time, would rely on the contributions of known and accountable individuals rather than "the hive mind", and would so closely resemble the current academy that claims of "overturning authority" would become meaningless.

I don't think a compromise is impossible.

Take Wikipedia as we have it now (the overall structure, not the articles). The talk pages remain universally editable, even by anonymous users.

Full Membership is restricted to those people who meet the following two criteria:
1: Can be shown to know the limits of their knowledge
2: Is willing to share up to said limits.

For normal members, we have several options.

1: One is to use a bottleneck forum of sorts to screen out undesirables.
2: Another is that non-full members get their edits placed in an approval queue.
3: Only accept certain number of 'member trainees' at a time, specifically sponsored by full members.

Or all three.

It would still be real-time, if less so than Wikipedia, but still fast enough to be meaningful.

[SWPIGWANG]

I'll take the possibility of error over ignorance. For internet time-scale info, wiki is almost indespensible as they never had the time to be actually studied.

As for other things, there is a reason why people should consult mutiple sources.....

[Darth Wong]

Back to the original subject, I have to think that the idiotic notion of democracy in science and similar "collective intelligence" stupidities are the result of our society's disenchantment with qualified experts. A combination of mistrust, fear, and poisoning of the well by artistic and religious types has led to people being simultaneously contemptuous and fearful of scientists and anyone else who has too much education to sound like a C student.

The old idea of trusting experts has been replaced with marginalizing experts and trusting "common knowledge".

[Surlethe]

I was talking with a friend today about the current lack of respect for highly educated people, and I remarked that perhaps some cheapening of education plays a role as well: everyone, from great students to failures, gets a high school diploma, and people, I think, tend to view all university diplomas as equal, regardless of whether it's a liberal arts degree or a hard sciences degree. And since most everyone has a uni diploma as well, he can say, "Well, I have as much school as he does", or, "Well, he only has three more years of school than I do." Of course, there's also the general idea that academia is somehow disconnected from the "real world" as well, which would also play into the disdain of highly educated men, since most doctors go on to teach.

[Spacebeard]

Of course, it's possible to improve some of these systems so that fact-checking is performed; Wikipedia, for instance, might be a very different kettle of fish if it disallowed anonymous edits, required a peer review of each new contribution and used a reputation system to rate users' knowledge of particular subject areas (i.e., if peer review finds your contribution to an article on phonetics accurate, then your reputation for knowledge of phonetics goes up and you're more likely to be chosen to review other contributions to that area). However, such a system would no longer operate in real-time, would rely on the contributions of known and accountable individuals rather than "the hive mind", and would so closely resemble the current academy that claims of "overturning authority" would become meaningless.

I don't think a compromise is impossible.

Take Wikipedia as we have it now (the overall structure, not the articles). The talk pages remain universally editable, even by anonymous users.

Full Membership is restricted to those people who meet the following two criteria:
1: Can be shown to know the limits of their knowledge
2: Is willing to share up to said limits.

For normal members, we have several options.

1: One is to use a bottleneck forum of sorts to screen out undesirables.
2: Another is that non-full members get their edits placed in an approval queue.
3: Only accept certain number of 'member trainees' at a time, specifically sponsored by full members.

That might work also. What our two speculative proposals have in common is that users would have to prove that they are qualified to submit edits and that they would be held accountable for any misdeeds. This is (ideally) how real-world academia and journalism work; it's the "authority" that fanboys think will be rendered obsolete, and it's completely opposite the vision of the "wisdom of the crowd", in which massive numbers of anonymous opinions are instantly and uncritically accepted and the hope is that the accurate input will outweigh the inaccurate input. And this reflects this same mentality that Surlethe and Darth Wong just mentioned, the one that disdains experts and treats truth as a matter of consensus.

[une]

I was talking with a friend today about the current lack of respect for highly educated people, and I remarked that perhaps some cheapening of education plays a role as well: everyone, from great students to failures, gets a high school diploma, and people, I think, tend to view all university diplomas as equal, regardless of whether it's a liberal arts degree or a hard sciences degree. And since most everyone has a uni diploma as well, he can say, "Well, I have as much school as he does", or, "Well, he only has three more years of school than I do." Of course, there's also the general idea that academia is somehow disconnected from the "real world" as well, which would also play into the disdain of highly educated men, since most doctors go on to teach.

I agree with you wholeheartedly.

A lot of people in this country view a degree as, "A little piece of paper companies need to see before they hire you. It doesnt really show what you know." That's an exact quote from my Sophomore year roommate. He was a computer science major.

My roommate from my Freshman year was a big believer in that kind of thinking as well. He told a friend of mine, who was majoring in engineering, that he could read a few books, attend a seminar or two and achieve the same level of knowledge as he could with a Bachelors in Engineering.

[Darth Wong]

My roommate from my Freshman year was a big believer in that kind of thinking as well. He told a friend of mine, who was majoring in engineering, that he could read a few books, attend a seminar or two and achieve the same level of knowledge as he could with a Bachelors in Engineering.

Gotta love that combination of ignorance and arrogance.

[lgot]

It is very interesting to those curious about use of Wikipedia, to read Bouvard and Pecuchet by Flaubert. He is mocking the use of enciclopedias but it is perfect analogy to today.

Wikipedia is very much a danger- as an administrador of a football site we had Serbs and Croats in great number and all the stupidy nationalism fights eventually end in our hands. Among the jewells was an article of Wikipedia saying croats puts their finger in the anus to say hello.
Last notice we had is that some area of the balkan history was closed until both side arrive in an understanding and I say, sit and wait.