A little while ago I listed a few of my favorite readings and videos about collective intelligence. But since then I have been extremely bothered by the fact that I forgot to include in the list some references to Scott Page’s work. In my opinion Scott is one of the most important references for anyone interested in subjects such as collective intelligence, epistemic democracy, crowdsourcing, prediction models,and group performance. For instance, his book “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies” is one of the best readings I’ve recently come across in the field.
It should not surprise anyone that some of the smartest people currently working on collective intelligence do not hesitate to cite Scott’s work over and over again in their writings.
As Scott highlights the importance of cognitive diversity for collective problem-solving (where diversity trumps ability), he ends up indirectly providing convincing arguments as to why – under certain conditions – citizens may outperform elected officials and experts. Scott’s work thus becomes compulsory reading for those working with citizen participation.
So I tried to compile a small list of freely available resources for those with an interest in any of the issues mentioned above:
- Virginia University Lecture
- UCSD Lecture
( more recent talk, which includes a great account on the role of diversity in the Netflix algorithm competition)
- Coursera lecture on the Diversity Prediction Theorem
- Articles
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DemocracySpot 