Web Geniuses Or Web Dimwits? 164
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."
Or... (Score:5, Funny)
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(I know, I know, "but not my mutual fund!")
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(But, yes, mutual funds need to be picked very, very carefully.)
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Or, go to
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Now, do you want to keep trying to get a tiny face-saving victory, or actually learn something?
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Re:Or... (Score:5, Insightful)
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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.
Better indicator... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why didn't they test Slashdot? (Score:5, Funny)
Make sure you are browsing at -1, *those* people are the real experts
IANAL, but (Score:5, Funny)
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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.
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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.
You know, that used to be more true. Then Digg came along and took away all the morons. Go check out some of their flamebait stories (politics would be a good start). If you don't echo the group view, you will be modded into oblivion. However, statements like "Bush is teh stupid!" will actually get modded up. Mo
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Can I get my mod points now?
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Re:Why didn't they test Slashdot? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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Never happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Different "intelligences" (Score:5, Interesting)
My mother is a professor of education at a college in California and this is something that educators have been talking about for a long while. Google for "multiple intelligences" for a lot more information, but basically there's a theory that says that "intelligence" can be divided up into a number of categories and that people tend to excell in one or two of these areas, but few are outstanding in all of them.
The standard breakdown is something like:
Atheletes tend to excell at Spatial and Kinesthetic, while the stereotypical geek is strongest in Logical-mathematical and weakest in Interpersonal.
I'm not sure I completely agree that this is the end-all-be-all for understanding intelligence, but it does provide an interesting look into ways to classify people who might not be "book smart." For instance, a terrific ballerina might not have excellent Interpersonal or Linguistic intelligence, but she certainly has some special "intelligence" that allows her to excell in an area where I would certainly be an abject failure.I encourage anyone interested in this idea of multiple intelligences to poke around and do some research. Again, it may not be the final answer, but it provides an interesting framework for thinking about the topic.
Re:Different "intelligences" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Different "intelligences" (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem here isn't that intelligence tests don't let musicians score well. IQ tests measure what they measure just fine. The problem is the value system of people that want so badly for everyone to be "intelligent" that they have to change the definition of the word.
The correct response is to realize that intelligence simply isn't all that. (I know this point will be a tough sell on Slashdot, where intelligence is particularly valued.) It's perfectly ok not to be "intelligent", and play to your other strengths.
Identifying those strengths and weaknesses is important in being able to choose activities in which you'll be successful, or at the very least in being realistic about the extra hurdles you're going to face. There's a reason I didn't become a musician or an NBA star, and it wasn't lack of "intelligence". That, I manage just fine, but I'm sadly lacking in other talents that people value. However, the self-esteem-uber-alles crowd picked the word "intelligence" to glorify, rather than say "athleticism", which is why people are trying to force-fit abilities into names like "bodily-kinesthetic intelligence" instead of pounding the round peg into the square hole and trying to console me that I have "mental athleticism" or "cerebral coordination".
If you call his tail a leg, how many legs does a three-legged dog have?
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Re:Different "intelligences" (Score:4, Interesting)
Absolutely. Creativity and motivation have been shown to have as much of an effect on a person's success (however you want to define it) in many areas as intelligence. Having low or high intelligence has certain things that come along with it, but it's not the end-all and be-all of your life - it means certain things are more or less likely, but it doesn't make any absolute statements.
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Hint: Any answer you give will expose a bias.
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Great post BTW; I agree with you 100%. It's nice to know that I'm not the only politically incorrect individual in the world.
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What the IQ tests measure is Intellect (defined as "The faculty of reasoning and understanding objectively, esp. with regard to abstract or academic matters"). Both words come from the same Latin roo
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The seminal work on Multiple Intelligences, Frames of Mind by Howard Gardner, identifies intelligences by what a culture deems to be important or significant, not an abstract "how-much-do-you-know" or "how-well-can-you-think" sort of thing.
In societies and cultures where musicians are or were valued, the Musical Intelligence would be highly prized.
The upshot of the Multiple Intelligences model is this:
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Like monkey throwing darts (Score:2)
Linguistic intelligence
Logical-mathematical intelligence
Spatial intelligence
Bodily-Kinesthetic intelligence
Musical intelligence
Interpersonal intelligence
Intrapersonal intelligence
Naturalist intelligence
The problem with that breakdown is that it has as much data to support it as most of the stock market analyses one gets in spam. This pdf text [colorado.edu] shows one mathematical tool for debunking stuff like this "many intelligences" theory.
Of course, you can invent as many defin
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Intelligence, you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
-Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
Re:Never happen (Score:4, Insightful)
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No, I know, but these things are still a bit problematic. Let's say I come up with a theory where there are 4 intelligences and you come up with another where there are 4, but the 4 are different. Or let's say another guy comes up with 5. How do you know you're capturing all the different ways of being "intelligent". How do you know for sure that your groupings/divisions are the best? And finally, how do you compare a score on interpersonal skills to a score on a mathematical skill? I think these dec
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Eh.. that's too much work.
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Goodness is an easy one... Do the least harm possible... Or... in programming terms:
If (ActiveActionHarm) > (InactionHarm) Then
Do (ActiveAction)
Else
Do (Inaction)
At least... that's how I define it...
Nephilium
A man who doesn't drink is not, in my opinion, fully a man. -- Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, Russian author
Perverse Incentives (Score:3, Insightful)
A sword cuts both ways, after all. I fear this tech.
Re:Perverse Incentives (Score:4, Funny)
Ooh! Just like U.S. Federal Government! Good idea!
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The moral: there are always other considerations.
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Funny)
I wasn't aware that it was possible to be both of those
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Doesn't that just lead to group-think?
Part of why I read slashdot is for the (slightly) alternate viewpoints.
:o\ (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Or the fact that knowing where your knowledge ends make you more intelligent than someone who don't know that he doesn't know:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Unskilled+and+Unaw
Not a Bad Idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Or to put it another way, it all becomes a set of probabilities. If person X has guessed the outcome of something (say, a football game) correctly 80% of the time, then you're safer betting on his predictions than you are betting on expert Y who is only correct 30% of the time. If you aggregate the probabilities and successes, you should be able to develop a model with a high probability of being correct. You'll never be able to gain 100% accuracy, but that's just the nature of the Universe [wikipedia.org].
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Suppose we have everyone in the world guess the outcome of a 100 coin flips. Some fraction would be 100% correct. Repeat a few times. We've now winnowed down a pool of people who are excellent at guessing coin flips, right? It's safer to go with their guess than the guess of someone else, right?
The fact is, _someone_ was going to be mostly right. However, there's nothing special about that person, they just happened to get lucky. Their previous luck does not affect their current predictive powers, whi
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Except that you're trying to predict a random event that can't be predicted. When a good baseball team defeats a bad baseball team, there's nothing random about it. When one candidate is elected over another, the ans
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All you've really demonstrated is that it's possible to come up with false positives when determining expertise. This is not a surprising answer.
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Hmmm...seems like the outcome of a football game could be predicted correctly at least 50% of the time if the predictions were chosen at random.
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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.
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Selective decision-making is good with Engineering -- I don't want to launch a rocket on what most people think.
What is missing here is the "information dessemination." I think if a large group of people is made to understand the underlying facts, groups of people can make "wise" choices.
But that is the problem; having the time, initiative and coordination to get people to understand the situation. Into this gulf steps the "expert." The expert dige
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Rebs more than 231 seats: last trade 4 cents
Rebs between 217 and 231 seats: last trade 29 ce
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"There is a certain logic to this. How many times have "experts" told us screwy nonsense, and had lousy track records [dvorak.org], and yet the public at large retained them as experts? Sometimes, the untrained may be able to see things that the supposedly well-trained can't."
The problem is people have a carnal desire to feel superior to others, hence why people poke fun at others. And why kids get picked on in school and later in adult life in more subtle (and not so subtle) ways.
The fact is people
Apply the same filtering to government elections (Score:3, Interesting)
I've always said that elections should qualify each voter's ballot to make sure the decision is made by the people who are best equipped to decide. The first page of a voting ballot should be a questionnaire that asks simple unbiased questions that require the voter to demonstrate knowledge of who or what they are voting on. "What does candidate X say their stance is on abortion?" "When did you first hear about initiative I-456?" "Please specify which political party each candidate below belongs to", etc. The score a voter gets on their questionnaire would then be used as a "weight" factor when counting their ballot, so that people who know the candidates and the issues better get more of a say, which is clearly how things ought to be.
Re:Apply the same filtering to government election (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Bollocks. Let's say we have two questions that both are answered correctly by the same percentage of people. It's pretty much guaranteed that different groups of people get those questions wrong. By choosing the right questions you can weigh the elections, even if the chosen questions are "objective and factual"...
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"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
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1. What is the hexadecimal opcode for the IBM 360 "Jump" instruction?
I would be perfectly happy with the idea.
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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'
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It'd be nice to think you're selecting for interested, educated people without bias. I think i
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That's why I read at +5 and use friends (Score:4, Interesting)
2) If a person has a lot of insightful/informative posts, check their posting history
3) If they are consistently +3/4/5 informative/insightful, add them as a friend
4) add points to friend's posts so they start out +2.
OK, seriously, I don't do that but if I did, I'd see posts of "wise ones" and ignore posts from those that don't make the cut.
Possible logical fallacy (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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Notice also the similarity to the fallacy underlying the articles one sees occasionally, along the lines of "Man Wins Lottery Twice Agains
Blast! (Score:2)
You're as bad as the guy who takes issue with the statement, "We won't stop until all children are above average!"
You're as bad as the guy who worked at MegaHuge Hedge Fund in the late 90's. His boss walked into the office one day all excited about a new way to measure risk, called "Downside Risk Quotient." He asked the guy how often the stocks in their portfolio were below their mean price, or what their "Downside Risk" was. The guy foolishly answered, "50% of the time."
Obligatory Lazarus Long Quotes (Score:2)
Autocracy is based on the assumption that one man is wiser than a million men. Let's play that over again, too. Who decides?"
And...
"Always listen to experts. They'll tell you what can't be done, and why. Then do it."
a really wise man though (Score:2)
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At least attribute...
All from Lazarus Long, in the stories of Robert A. Heinlen...
Nephilium
The only religious opinion that I feel sure of is this: self-awareness is NOT just a bunch of amino acids bumping together! -- Jubal Harshaw in Stranger in a Strange Land
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Courtroom Whores (Score:2)
Besides:
"If you ask enought experts, you can confirm any opinion or theory."
Not sure who said it, but it's valid IMHO.
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Not sure who said it, but it's valid IMHO.
So how many experts did we go through to get that one?
Soko
Survivorship Bias (Score:2)
Nice scam (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Wisdom of the crowds (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Wisdom of the crowds (Score:4, Interesting)
Experts are great, and their knowledge is valuable. But in making certain kinds of decisions, it is better to tap into the Wisdom of Crowds.
Counting Jellybeans (Score:2)
I've had my doubts about the idea that if you take the average of all the guesses a crowd makes it comes out to be near correct. So last time I was at an event that had a "guess the number of jellybeans and win a prize" contest I asked the organizer for all the stubs at the end of the evening. I went home and punched all the guesses into a spreadsheet.
The mean was in the ballpark but not accurate enough to win the prize. When I took the median I got an answer that was as accurate as the best guess. So
It's all about presentation (Score:3, Insightful)
Finding internet experts on Slashdot? Try 4chan. (Score:2)
I thought Slashdot solved this problem already? (Score:3, Funny)
The Emperor (Score:2, Interesting)
Flipping a coin (Score:2)
the problem is the question, not the person (Score:2)
1) easily knowable answers, like who is the 10th president, or angelina jolies boyfriend
2) hard to know answers, like how may diff types of beetles live in california - with enough money, you could answer this, but it would take alot of work
3) unknowable answers, like what interest rates will be this year, or what the stock market will do tomorrow (obviously unaswerable, cause if you could, you would make gates look like a pauper), or what will happen in Iraq.
The
What? There are experts? (Score:2)
No, the cat does not "got my tongue." (Score:2, Funny)
Don't you mean Webiniuses and Webimwits?
Chance (Score:2)
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I served on a jury a few years ago. It was an eye-opening experience. The jury was housewives or people like me too stupid to get out of jury duty. As a group, the jury noticed everything going on during the trial and came to a fair decision very quickly.
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