Masses are wise? Surowiecki fills his pages with unconvincing anecdotes. He has only a handful of real studies and he buries them randomly about the book. Worse, sometimes Surowiecki describes a study that would lead to easy, but instead it simply, he tells us what the results would he expected. And although the book’s constant advocacy of dissent, Surowiecki offers no evidence that his argument against cuts. Instead, every failure of a crowd simply helps prove his thesis, since it fails because it violates one of its vaugely rules specified requirements.

When are crowds wise? Surowiecki offers only untested speculation. He claims they need “diversity, independence and a particular kind of decentralization” (oddly, by decentralization Surowiecki seems aggregation means). Surowiecki defines each of these never particularly clear, but there are many examples. This makes them useless as predictors of intelligence that makes a lot of the basic Surowiecki probably no attempt to test them.

Why are masses wise? Surowiecki does not even bother to answer that, although the first half of the books of the subtitle. He considers the question briefly on page 10, just some empty sayings (crowds are “information minus error stop”) and wonder in amazement (“who. .. Did Together we can make so much sense”) before they finally conclusion “You could say it’s as if we have programmed to collectively smart.” receives notice

Perhaps these weaknesses, Surowiecki all this out of the way in the first 40% of the book. The remainder is dedicated to larger collections of anecdotes Surowiecki compares to case studies. But even they disappoint. While Surowiecki has many stories, some are particularly enlightening or even memorable. Surowiecki does little analysis of the stories and not pull out larger lessons. He assumes he is right and only stops to look down on those who disagree.

I am particularly disappointed because I expected the book to be good. I love Surowiecki’s weekly column in the _New Yorker_ and I suspect he’s right about a lot. But instead of a convincing argument, Surowiecki only stirs together anecdotes from his columns. The result is not surprising, mental confusion.

One of the book teaches (though not unique) is the wisdom of _dissent_. You can smart by collecting dissent, a large group and hold from the members to talk with each other (since people are usually, but afraid to guarantee against the grain) by some members of the group is not vocally agree (as they to force the other, better justify their positions), or by forcing them to try because of all sides (to keep them from prejudging the issue to justify). All

makes it ironic that Surowiecki book not because of a lack of dissent. Nothing goes against the grain, he does not justify his positions, and he has clearly prejudged the question. It seems he needs a lot of way to him.
Rating: 5.1

The book does cover a lot of ground in not very much space, and the pace of the argument is sometimes too fast. But through the line of argument is almost always clear, and the stories told Surowiecki are often unforgettable. The chapter on NASA’s mismanagement of the Columbia mission and the story of how a man named John Craven quoted collective wisdom to find a lost U-boat are particularly striking.

This is one of those books that I expect people will still talk about it and for years or even decades from now. There is also a book that I hope that a concrete impact on the way that people have to make decisions because the impact of Surowiecki argument are radical in the best way.
Rating: 5.5