Ignorant people misunderstands the concept of collective intelligence. The latest instance is Daniel Bô, who works for the advertising industry in Europe. In a commercial brochure bragging about his ethereal prowess and the suprême intelligence of his associates, Daniel Bô states that he and his associates constitute, just by virtue of numbers, a ‘collective intelligence’ machine. Nothing is more untrue, as James Surowiecki insisted many times on this:
It needs a way of summarizing people’s opinions into one collective verdict.
Sitting around with colleagues or e-mailing associates does not qualify. You need a specific mechanism to turn private judgments into a collective decision (e.g., a voting mechanism which permits abstention, a market mechanism, etc.).
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