Cass Sunstein on the Wisdom of Crowds

Chris F. Masse February 24th, 2007

The venerable and venerated, respectable and respected Cass Sunstein has a nice little Op’Ed at the Wash Post on the wisdom of crowds. (Via our Fabian John, who co-manages the 1st Tick forum —1st Tick being the name of a great order-entry software for real-money prediction markets and betting exchanges like TradeSports-InTrade and soon BetFair.)

Developing one of the most important ideas of the 20th century, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek attacked socialist planning on the grounds that no planner could possibly obtain the “dispersed bits” of information held by individual members of society. Hayek insisted that the knowledge of individuals, taken as a whole, is far greater than that of any commission or board, however diligent and expert. he magic of the system of prices and of economic markets is that they incorporate a great deal of diffuse knowledge.

HSX’s Alex Costakis (who five minutes ago was blaming ABC7 for not citing HSX) will be happy. The Hollywood Stock Exchange website is not linked once… BUT TWICE. Gee, mister Alex Costakis will feel the love this time.

Previous: Hollywood Stock Exchange’s Alex Costakis makes historical mistake, TOO.

Psstt… Our wisdom-of-crowds luminary Cass Sunstein lauds the open-source software in his book and his Op-Ed… but his group blog, The University of Chicago Law School Faculty Blog, uses a proprietary blogging technology, TypePad.

Do As I Say, Not As I Do.