We generally have less information than we’d like. We have limited foresight into the future. Most of us lack the ability—and the desire—to make sophisticated cost-benefit calculations. Instead of insisting on finding the best possible decision, we will often accept one that seems good enough. And we often let emotion affect our judgment. Yet despite all these limitations, when our imperfect judgments are aggregated in the right way our collective intelligence is often excellent. This intelligence, or what I’ll call the wisdom of crowds,” is at work in the world in many different guises. It’s the reason the Internet search engine Google can scan a billion Web pages and find … Continue reading James Surowiecki