Collective wisdom
Subtitle: principles and mechanisms
By: [edited by] Hélène Landemore, Jon Elster
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 409
ISBN-13: 9781107010338
Subjects: Social choice; POLITICAL SCIENCE / General; Group decision making
Description: "James Madison wrote, 'Had every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.' The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge this claim by asking whether many minds can be wiser than one"--

"James Madison wrote, ,źHad every Athenian citizen been a Socrates, every Athenian assembly would still have been a mob.,Ź The contributors to this volume discuss and for the most part challenge this claim by considering conditions under which many minds can be wiser than one. With backgrounds in economics, cognitive science, political science, law, and history, the authors consider information markets, the Internet, jury debates, democratic deliberation, and the use of diversity as mechanisms for improving collective decisions. At the same time, they consider voter irrationality and paradoxes of aggregation as possibly undermining the wisdom of groups. Implicitly or explicitly, the volume also offers guidance and warnings to institutional designers"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: 1. Collective wisdom: old and new He;l&#232;ne Landemore; 2. Prediction markets: trading uncertainty for collective wisdom Emile Servan-Schreiber; 3. Designing wisdom through the web: the passion of ranking Gloria Origgi; 4. Some microfoundations of collective wisdom Scott Page and Lu Hong; 5. What has collective wisdom to do with wisdom? Daniel Andler; 6. Legislation, planning, and deliberation John Ferejohn; 7. Epistemic democracy in classical athens: sophistication, diversity, and innovation Josiah Ober; 8. The optimal design of a constituent assembly Jon Elster; 9. Sanior pars and major pars in the contemporary aeropagus: medicine evaluation committees in France and the United States Philippe Urfalino; 10. Collective wisdom: lessons from the theory of judgment aggregation Christian List; 11. Democracy counts: should rulers be numerous? David Estlund; 12. Democratic reason: the mechanisms of collective intelligence in politics He;l&#232;ne Landemore; 13. Rational ignorance and beyond Gerry Mackie; 14. The myth of the rational voter and political theory Bryan Caplan; 15. Collective wisdom and institutional design Adrian Vermeule; 16. Reasoning as a social competence Dan Sperber and Hugo Mercier; 17. Conclusion Jon Elster.