The Wisdom of Crowds

[andygates]

Here's an interesting article on the "wisdom of crowds" from biological evolution to Wikipedia.  It addresses the conceptual problems some people have with both - "that can't work, random changes mean we'd be piles of goo" and "that can't work, random edits mean every article would have penises in it" respectively.  Both clearly do work, on a macro scale; both clearly have problems when you zoom in (the panda's thumb and Ronnie Hazlehurst's obituary).

The reason they work, of course, is the existence of selection pressure.  Even if the edits are random, what is preserved is not; wikipedia users will revert or correct a garbage entry and bad biological mutations make you less likely to breed.  Because selection pressure is invisible and out of our control, people have trouble seeing it.  The author supports his argument with personal experience of constructing software for a reccomendation system where, "The system doesn't "know" that a movie is a science fiction movie, any more than natural selection "knows" why a particular mutation in the DNA increases the chance of an animal surviving to adulthood."  It doesn't need to know: selection pressure doesn't have to be teleological. 

Comments

[justoneway.livejournal.com]

This relates to one of those things I find myself saying to people repeatedly.

Perhaps it is because of the way we are taught but I have heard all sorts of people talk about biological selection as if good things are selected for. I find myself correcting them ad saying a better way of looking at it is that inadequate things are selected against.

The latter idea support the pottential for redundancy that is a major explanation for all those "but why do [things] have [stuff]" questions.

[andygates.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The former tends towards the teleological, "birds have wings to fly with" - I guess this is an artefact of our own design experience. We select for when designing; picking the best and dropping the rest, when the reality is closer to Devil-take-the-hindmost. Birds with crap wings die.

The idea that you can have form and function without foresighted purpose is a real head-bender for a lot of people.