Evolution and the 'Wisdom of Crowds'

An anonymous reader writes "An essay by a developer of recommendation systems makes a case for why so many people have trouble grasping Darwin's theory of evolution. Downplaying its conflict with religion, the essay suggests that evolution is in a specific class of "equilibrium seeking" concepts that tend to be extremely counterintuitive to most people. The hypothesis is supported by the observation that so many people reject the notion that evolution-like systems such as Wikipedia, prediction markets, and recommendation systems can actually be effective. Particularly fascinating is the description of his surprisingly simple algorithm for competing in the Netflix prize contest."

Comments

Re:typo

[thegnu]

Do kids ever get polled on these things?

NAMBLA polls kids all the time.

*ducks*

Re:Religion vs Darwin vs Technology vs Society

[Starayo]

1) invent god(s)
2) market said gods
3) prophet
Fixed.

Re:Religion vs Darwin vs Technology vs Society

[Hognoxious]

One extra thing which I thought about was why the bloody hell would a God create us?

Have you ever drunk a lot of beer, woken up the next morning and gone through that special "I did what?" moment?