Preconditions of Collective Wisdom Within Agencies and the Move From Experts to the People and Databases

Abstract

When people join groups, their personal biases and cognitive biases can lead to extreme herd behaviour, group polarization, and groupthink. Social systems can evolve to better adapt to environmental pressures by developing specialized organizations with legitimate authority. Traditional public deliberation may be less efficient as individuals tend to conform their interpretations to match those of others, rather than their actions, and they may not be aware of alternative possibilities. Evolutionary changes require diversity and independent thinking to adapt based on new information. Regulators need to consider diverse and unshared information to avoid unintended consequences. The degree of collective intelligence is linked to an individual's social sensitivity and ability to think about the mental states of other individuals. Superforecasters, who are open-minded, diverse, and analytical with developed social abilities, can beat individual experts and prediction markets.