The unwisdom of crowds, part three: questions and critique of the digg killer manifesto

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I have continued to think about the proposals of Marc Fawzi, expressed in his Unwisdom of Crowds article.

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In the previous entries, I presented and endorsed some of his conclusions, but here, I want to be critical, inspired by the insights of peer to peer theory. I’m hoping that Marc will address these questions.

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Concerning the tribal features of Web 2.0

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1.     While it may indeed appear that Web 2.0 recreates features of tribal society, this should not automatically be interpreted as regressive. One reason is that tribal societies do exhibit, because of their smallness (i.e. they do not exceed the Dunbar Number), features that we would today equate with direct democracy, i.e. the absence of an outside coercive apparatus. Since the internet/web infrastructure allows us to recreate cyber-collectives that can be modular and small, and allows for their coordination in non-coercive global microstructures, it is not surprising that these social features would re-appear. There is a difference between spontaneous behaviours which arise before complex planning behaviours were developed, and emergent spontaneous behaviour which integrates it. For example, the work at the P2P Foundation has been organic and non-planned (but of course, we had some broad vision of where we wanted to go), but I do not think this is in any way ‘regressive’.

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 Concerning the wisdom of crowds

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2. Marc Fawzi maintains that crowds exhibit either average or lowest-common denominator intelligence, but what about the cases where, and I believe that has been demonstrated in James Surowiecki’s book (and podcast), such wisdom does exceed individual intelligence. Obviously this would require a detailed look into the conditions for this to be the case.

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Concerning democracy

3. Classic democracy cannot be a model for peer groups, because it is based on delegation and loss of power to intermediaries (this may be necessary for the global or national polity, but not for peer groups). P2P-organized groups usually refuse the representational paradigm. They try to offset the loss of individual and group sovereignity to a collective individual (the nation, the corporation, the organization) which expropriates such power, by developing social and algorhythmic technologies which prevent such collective individual to arise. The problem, and here I agree with Marc, is that such solutions have their own problems, which often mean that, as with Google’s page ranking, a vicious feedback loop is created which strengthens popular pages ever more.

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P2P is about the broadest possible participation, so I certainly support technologies such as Digg, which allow anyone to post and rank; as Marc says, these processes can be augmented by mechanisms which allows excellence to be identified and strengthened. But crucially, it must come on top of the broad participation, not replace it. If such is the case, why would the number of tastemakers be limited, as Marc proposes, what is the rationale?

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To conclude, it is misleading to equate the need for a crowd-hierarchy structure, with the need for aclassic representational democracy; broad participation should be encouraged, but augmented, and not replaced by intermediation. The intermediation, which naturally occurs because of the Power Law, should not necessarily be delegative.

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4 Comments The unwisdom of crowds, part three: questions and critique of the digg killer manifesto

  1. Pingback: P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Why Digg Is A Poor Example Of “The Wisdom of Crowds”

  2. AvatarMichel

    Marc: anybody can post a comment at any time; however, to avoid blogspam, we do have an approval procedure, but it is just a formality for genuine comments.

  3. AvatarMarc

    I did see all the list of ideas the Foundation has been debating/working on in the area of P2P governance.

    I do believe there will be a lot of experimenting and trying new ideas, which will probably last for decades.

    However, I also believe in the current system we have in the real world despite its flaws.

    I truly believe that governance, while it can be experimented with whoever we like in Cyberspace, will eventually go back to the current.

    It’s hard to redefine governance in 10-50 years. It takes thousands of years to go from one model to another better model.

    In the meantime, the act of trying new ideas, thinking about them, debating then, experimenting with them is the only truth there is.

    I don’t believe that the truth is contained in any one idea, vision, ideology, religion, philosophy or set of results. I believe the truth is in the act of thinking, debating, cchallenging, and trying new things.

    Thank you for taking the time to make those counter arguments, to which my response is (again):

    I truly believe that governance, while it can be experimented with whoever we like in Cyberspace, will eventually go back to the current.

    Marc

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