Blink and The Wisdom of Crowds

Slate 1/10/05
http://slate.msn.com/id/2111894/entry/2112064/
この2人の議論は面白い。
From: James Surowiecki
To: Malcolm Gladwell

But the notion that the judgments we make in a couple of seconds can be as good as or as reliable as those we reach after careful deliberation and assimilation of lots of information seems (to use a word you and I both like) counterintuitive. The longer and harder you think about something, we usually assume, the better you think about it. Blink suggests that this isn't always (or even often) the case.

This suggests that the real challenge is figuring out which problems can be solved by rapid cognition and which are better solved by a calculating, rational approach. So, the questions I'll start with are: First, is thin-slicing really how decisions get made in complex environments? And second, and more important, if it is, can we really count on it to reliably produce good decisions?

From: Malcolm Gladwell
To: James Surowiecki

The difference between a book discussion involving outsiders and a book discussion involving the writers themselves is a bit like the difference between Olympic wrestling and pro wrestling.

In The Wisdom of Crowds you make a series of observations about decision-making; the first (and, to my mind, most radical) one is that the collective wisdom of a crowd (even a crowd of laypeople) can be more accurate and more sophisticated than the individual decision of an expert. (略)
The first is that you are explicitly challenging what might be called the Standard Model of decision-making. We have an awful lot invested, as a culture, in the notion that the best results in complex environments come from centralizing authority in the hands of a single, highly expert, and deliberative individual. But that, you would argue, is wrong. We're actually better off decentralizing decision-making into the hands of the many—even if they are relatively nonexpert and even if their decision-making process is much less deliberate.
This is where, I think, you and I are on the same page, because Blink is also a critique of the Standard Model. One of the key arguments in my book is that human beings think in two very different ways. Sometimes we consciously and carefully gather all facts, trationally sort through them, and draw what we take to be a rational conclusion (the Standard Model). And sometimes we reach conclusions unconsciously—our mind quickly and silently sorts through the available information and draws an immediate judgment, which may be done so quickly and so far below the level of awareness that we may have no understanding of where our conclusions came from. I call this Rapid Cognition. I think the Rapid Cognition Model needs to be taken far more seriously—that it's smarter and more sophisticated and certainly more influential than we generally give it credit it for. So, like you, I'm arguing for a broadening of our understanding of what good decision-making looks like. The difference, though, is that my critique is not focused on the shortcomings of individual decision-making. It's focused on the shortcomings of deliberate decision-making.

Blink
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/umedamochio/20050109/p2
The Wisdom of Crowds
http://d.hatena.ne.jp/umedamochio/20050110/p7