James Surowiecki Quotes

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other.

For a crowd to be smart, the people in it need to be not only diverse in their perspectives but also, relatively speaking, independent of each other. In other words, you need people to be thinking for themselves, rather than following the lead of those around them.

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.

Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.

In part because individual judgement is not accurate enough or consistent enough, cognitive diversity is essential to good decision making.

The problem is that groups are only smart when the people in them are as independent as possible. This is the paradox of the wisdom of crowds.

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

The individual is foolish; the multitude, for the moment is foolish, when they act without deliberation; but the species is wise, and when time is given to it, as a species it always acts right.

To get real diversity of thought, you need to find the people who genuinely hold different views and invite them into the conversation.

The best way to guarantee a steady stream of new ideas is to make sure that each person in your organization is as different as possible from the others. Under these conditions, and only these conditions, will people maintain varied perspectives and demonstrate their knowledge in different ways.

One key to successful group decisions is getting people to pay much less attention to what everyone else is saying.

Crowds of minds can be wise, but crowds of bodies just aren't.

Sometimes other people have better ideas.

I have always tried to do my job in a way that I have people give me different points of view.

What magical trick makes us intelligent? The trick is that there is no trick. The power of intelligence stems from our vast diversity, not from any single, perfect principle.

I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles.

Hollywood is so fixated on keeping it that way because it's generating the buzz, but that representation isn't right. I definitely feel like it's getting better - it's not only for blacks, but for people that are of all different skin colors. It is very important that black independent films get seen. We need to start getting used to black people. They exist. And they've been around for a long time. It's amazing that people still feel, "Oh my gosh, it's a black guy."

I'm really lucky to have the kind of people I've got around me. I've got such a great group of predominantly young people, but so diverse, and they bring different perspectives to the table. They will tell me exactly what's on their mind.

The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.

If you want to stay in for the long haul, and lead a life that is free from illusions either propagated by you or embraced by you, then I suggest you learn to recognize and avoid the symptoms of the zealot and the person who knows he is right. For the dissenter, the skeptical mentality is at least as important as any armor of principle.

The trouble with me is that for a long time I have just been an I person. All people belong to a We except me. Not to belong to a We makes you too lonesome.

A lot of people never use their initiative because no-one told them to.

I'm turned on by diversity. I'm turned on by things that are different. I like different animals, I like different ways of travel, and I like different people.