Edmund Burke Quotes

The intelligence of the creature known as a crowd, is the square root of the number of people in it.

“The Wisdom of Crowds” suggests that if enough bumbling people act in concert, they’ll find their way to a less bumbling place.

Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.

Crowds of minds can be wise, but crowds of bodies just aren't.

When a species wants to tap the collective intelligence of a population, they don't take a poll; they don't take a vote. They form a real-time system.

Crowds are somewhat like the sphinx of ancient fable: It is necessary to arrive at a solution of the problems offered by their psychology or to resign ourselves to being devoured by them.

The crowd has a way of being right.

The 'wisdom of the crowds' is the most ridiculous statement I've heard in my life. Crowds are dumb.

Under the right circumstances, groups are remarkably smart - smarter even sometimes than the smartest people in them.

The reason is that in a group, individual errors on either side of the true figure cancel each other out.

For solving a surprisingly large and varied number of problems, crowds are smarter than individuals.

Muddle is the extra unknown personality in any committee.

The views of several individuals are assuredly preferable to one man, even as the power of a number of men is of course greater than the power of one man.

If in the first group of people who have gathered, unanimity is not achieved, new people shall be added, after which a group equal in number to the Greatest Name or fewer or greater shall be chosen from their midst by lots; whereupon the consultation shall be renewed; whatever is the result shall be obeyed. If the second time opinions again differ, repeat the process a third time. This time obey the majority vote.

A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.

One cannot be independent of the deep thinking of the people.

Democracy is based on the assumption that a million men are wiser than one man

I quite like the idea - just as an abstract idea - of 12 people's collective life experience and wisdom being this formidable thing. People say juries can be led - I think 12 people from different backgrounds, different races, different genders, different ages, it's hard to hoodwink.

How does nature amplify the intelligence of groups? It forms swarms.

The reason that fish form schools, birds form flocks, and bees form swarms is that they are smarter together than they would be apart. They don't take a vote; they don't take a poll: they form a system. They are all interactive and make a decision together in real time.

We developed a technology called artificial swarm intelligence, which is all about tapping the inherent knowledge, wisdom, intuition of groups.

In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated.

The smartest groups, then, are made up of people with diverse perspectives who are able to stay independent of each other. Independence doesn't imply rationality or impartiality, though. You can be biased and irrational, but as long as you're independent, you won't make the group any dumber.

No deliberation made by a single person will be successful; the nature of the work which a sovereign has to do is to be inferred from the consideration of both the visible and invisible causes. The clearance of doubts as to whatever is susceptible of two opinions, and the inference of the whole when only a part is seen is possible of decision only by ministers. Hence the king shall sit at deliberation with persons of wide intellect.

Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.