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Web Geniuses Or Web Dimwits?
ScribeCity writes "The Washington Post has a provocative piece about online experiments at identifying experts. One wonders when someone will come up with a truly effective formula for measuring human intelligence — or take a stab at doing so — that exploits all the stuff people are publishing online." From the article: "This wisdom of the crowd could be outsmarted by what Michael Arrington, editor of the TechCrunch blog, recently dubbed the 'wisdom of the few.' Sites like PicksPal rely on input from the masses chiefly as a venue for auditioning prospective experts, on the theory that these virtuosos could provide even more accurate information and predictions than the crowd. 'If you figure out which ones did the best and get rid of the ones who have no idea, you'd do even better. Distill it down to the people who really know,' Arrington said."
One wonders when someone will come up with a truly effective formula for measuring human intelligence
It won't happen, not because it's not possible, but because some group or another will have a lower mean score, and the cries of racism, sexism, ageism, redbluestateism, culturalism, OSism, haircolorism, footsizeism, dicksizeism, or whateverism will drown out the truth.
You know... the way it is right now.
A sword cuts both ways, after all. I fear this tech.
Make a group based moderation system, where you moderate in groups.
Step1: Lets say Democrat/Republican. When a Rep mods something up, all other Reps see it modded up. If a Dem mods something down, no other Reps see it modded down.
Step2: Identify posters who say stuff that gets modded up past a certain point. Lets say you get a point for the top 10 posts of each day. Then the posters with the most points are dubbed experts in their field.
Its simple, and I'm suprised no one has done it before. It's like Digg in some ways, but vastly superior as groups don't bicker over what they declare as news, and it identifies experts.... maybe even political candidates.
God spoke to me.
I'm not an 'expert' in anything, yet I read far and wide enough to pick up lots of random & indepth tidbits that 'experts' have not heard about.
Ever heard the joke about the phd professor who studied more and more about less and less, until he knew everything about nothing? Yea, many people would consider that professor an expert.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Make sure you are browsing at -1, *those* people are the real experts ;)
You may joke, but these days anyone who questions the current pseudoscience-dogma-of-the-month tends to get modded -1 when they interject facts into the discussion, so you're not that far off.
Yes, but who decides which issues make the questionnaire?
The questionnaire's authors would in-effect be defining the criteria for election.
Maybe I vote for someone based upon whether or not they annoy the crap out of me.
That's my prerogative.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Let's say you have a pool of 10,000 prognosticators. You ask each one to pick the winner of 10 football games. The odds of getting all 10 correct are 1 in 2^10=1024. So out of the pool of 10,000 people, by random chance alone you're likely to get about 10,000/1024 = 10 people who pick all 10 games correctly. Are these people "geniuses"? No, they just got lucky during this particular trial. The odds of them getting game #11 correct are just 50-50.
BTW, this can be used as the basis of a scam against the "geniuses" if you can convince them that they have special powers as a result of the trial.
Moral of the story: Be very careful with statistics.
The most rabid believers in American Exceptionalism are the exact same people whose policies are destroying it.
If that chimp picked stocks that way, it would beat something like 80% of mutual fund managers (simply by virtue of not charging for his essentially random results).
(I know, I know, "but not my mutual fund!")
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
Isn't this just that same old thing, where for each sporting event, you send a mailer to 50% of the people picking one team, and 50% picking the other, and whoever wins, that 50% of your original audience gets split between the two possible winners in the next mailing? Eventually you end up with a small audience, but they're CONVINCED you have a flawless sports betting "system" and pay you to learn it.
Here, by pretending you're figuring out who the "experts" are, you're not diluting your audience with each round of guessing; instead, you're diluting your potential pool of "experts" (or systems), and eventually everyone decides that person X is always right, when really odds were that at least one person in a large pool of guessers would guess right 100% of the time.
Past performance is no guarantee of future performance, people.
This sounds like the old scam. Pick 1000 people. On day 1, send 500 of them a prediction that stock A will go up and send the other half a prediction that the stock will go down.
On day 2, the stock either went up or down. Either way, you made a correct prediction to 500 people. Split the 500 and send two more predictions on an all new stock.
Keep repeating this. On the fifth day, you'll have 75 people who have seen you make 5 perfect predictions in a row. Now ask each of them for $10,000 to invest in your next prediction...
Just because one person happens to have hit the mean each time doesn't mean he's got "the knack". Statistically, there's sure to be someone whose guesses approach the mean. But that doesn't mean that their next prediction is any more likely to be accurate.
Stick with the aggregated mass knowledge.
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
One thing you have to remember: Perception > Reality. Speaking intellegently and writing intellegently is usually enough to convince someone that you actually know what you're talking about, if you're audience is ignorant or naive. That makes for a lot of percieved experts in the field of technology. Take the example of an internet born initiative to ban dihydrogen oxide in some county California http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html. Read this. If you haven't already heard of this, well, dihydrogen oxide is water. See how easy it is to convince a bunch of soccer moms they need to ban water? (Or that apple needs to abandon hardware... hehe)
Similes are like metaphors
If they are posting stuff on the Internet and sound like an expert, they are most likely NOT an expert.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Moderation(negative or positive) depends mainly on its position in the discussion. If you manage to post near the beginning of the page, you will get moderated.
A Good Troll is better than a Bad Human.
Sure, but the picks may not be random. If you accept that someone can be right 80% of the time, then they can be wrong 80% of the time and hence right only 20% of the time. Ironically, a sports gambler who is right only 15% of the time is more valuable than one who is right 75% of the time. You simply hear his picks then do the opposite. It's the one who picks 50% who is informationally worthless.
...following the principles of Heisenburger's Uncertain Cat...
They have tried this before http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test and it was flawed.
"The theoretical basis for them was that illiterate persons were not sufficiently informed about the candidates and issues involved to be able to make a truly informed decision. In practice, however, the literacy requirement was often used to prevent those determined by the ruling class to be undesirable, such as the poor, racial and ethnic minorities, and other groups that it wished to see disenfranchised, from voting."
Never trust a system rife with potential for abuse not to be abused.
And how can you have one definitive correct answer to a question like "Where does candidate X stand on this issue?" - it is impossible. Have you seen how long current voting takes at some voting places? Hours long lines and that is with just having to prove who you are, and not how smart you are...
"But this one goes to 11!"
The Wall Street Journal has (had?) a "Dartboard" feature in which they did just this, then compared the picks to choices made by analysts. Depending on the time-frame you're looking at, just random choices seem to give the analysts a run for their money, as it were.
Dark Reflection
Okay, so an index beats darts and analysts.
Now, remind me, how does that contradict my claim that darts beat analysts (or rather the "experts" at mutual fund management)?
And where did I disparage index funds?
Oh right -- that face-saving victory you were looking for.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
It is much different than requiring eyesight on a driver's test, because it presumes a motive.
Remember that freedom is really about choice. My right to vote does not presume WHY I vote. I have the freedom to vote however I want. I could vote for someone because of their stance on an issue, or because they have great hair, or because they're a buddy of mine, or because I once dated their sister, or because I like their accent, or because they're in the same party I'm in, or because I think their last name sounds good in that lame rap song I wrote in high school.
The government cannot decide for me that I must vote based on their position on issues. To continue your analogy from before, this would be like the DMV requiring me to take a test on the locations of grocery stores in my area before I would be given a drivers' license, thus presuming that the reason I would want to drive is to go to the store. What if I only want a drivers' license so I can get into bars more easily, and never intend to drive? What if I only want to drive to my grandmother's house 8 hours away, and walk to the store? The state has no reason to decide WHY I would drive.
Freedom is about choice, and that means I can choose to vote for a stupid reason, even if it's a reason you disagree with.
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The word intelligences has to do with how peoples' brains are wired. Are you threatened by the knowledge that some dumb jock who thinks with his fists might have exceptionally well developed spatial and athletic skills that improves his odds of completing a difficult feat that no machine (or you) could readily do?