Evolution and the wisdom of crowds
Ian | 26 October, 2007 | 16:07I just read an amazing article about a better way to explain or illustrate the concepts of evolution to people it may be unfamiliar to entitled “Evolution and the Wisdom of Crowds.” He uses the examples of Wikipedia, prediction markets, and the Netflix recommendation system to explain how evolution can produce things which seem intelligently designed, but don’t have to be.
Do yourself a favour and read the article.
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Not directly related but pertaining to crowds is how a crowd of people, especially in a panic-type situation, can be modelled as a basic particle model, where each person is a particle. Essentially people just “go with the flow” in panic situations, so viewed from above it looks like there’s a force acting on various particles in one direction.
How stupid.