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Crowd Wisdom
Product / Concepts
Aggregated judgement from many independent people often beats any single expert.
What It Means
When you average enough independent guesses, errors cancel out and the result converges on truth. This is how prediction markets, Wikipedia, and star ratings work.
Conditions That Make It Work
- Diversity — contributors bring different information and perspectives.
- Independence — opinions form without copying each other.
- Decentralisation — no central authority filters what counts.
- Aggregation — a mechanism that combines inputs fairly.
How to Use It in Products
- Ratings, reviews, and upvotes.
- Collaborative filtering ("people who liked X also liked Y").
- Open contributions with light moderation.
When It Fails
- Herding and bandwagons destroy independence.
- Small or homogeneous crowds produce biased answers.
- Gamed systems (review farms, brigading) break aggregation.
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