The Hive Mind

Digital collectivism:

There is a lot of history to this topic, and varied disciplines have lots to say. Here is a quick pass at where I think the boundary between effective collective thought and nonsense lies: The collective is more likely to be smart when it isn't defining its own questions, when the goodness of an answer can be evaluated by a simple result (such as a single numeric value,) and when the information system which informs the collective is filtered by a quality control mechanism that relies on individuals to a high degree. Under those circumstances, a collective can be smarter than a person. Break any one of those conditions and the collective becomes unreliable or worse.

Meanwhile, an individual best achieves optimal stupidity on those rare occasions when one is both given substantial powers and insulated from the results of his or her actions.

If the above criteria have any merit, then there is an unfortunate convergence. The setup for the most stupid collective is also the setup for the most stupid individuals.

I think that some of what he says is good, but I think that the rush to "be the most meta" is a fad, and probably won't last too long. I think the fairly public recent backlash against wikipedia is a good example; the more people learn about various collectives on the internet the more people find fault with them. But he clearly has some very smart things to say, and I think, again, moderation is the best path - the hive mind is good in moderate doses.