

How can the military or government employ the wisdom of crowds? - mslagh
http://www.securenation.org/how-can-the-military-and-others-employ-the-wisdom-of-crowds/

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jawngee
I'm pretty sure you need to prove the wisdom of the crowds first. Popular
opinion != wisdom.

In fact, I would go so far as to say wisdom typically is contrary to group
think.

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dminor
This is a topic that has been studied quite extensively. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_market> for more.

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endergen
America's Army comes to mind: They could learn strategies from players by
creating scenarios and levels that exist in real life and see if any highly
skilled players develop better strategies than they have had the time to
develop.

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dminor
I worked on a DARPA project to do exactly this called the Policy Analysis
Market. Ask me how well that turned out ;)

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rfreytag
If it was out of IXO and was associated with the Admiral than I can sure
guess. PAM was perhaps the project played up in the press as asking people to
predict terrorist actions (the press not reality)? I think the real nail was
TIA though not your project.

When IXO folded I was pretty far along in marketing to them. I got strong
advice to keep a low profile after that due to superficial similarities.

I think we probably have something to talk about if you have time for lunch.
Email is on my profile.

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elblanco
Not exactly the same thing, but several tools in the Government rely on
"crowd-sourcing" entity extraction and disambiguation vs. using an automated
approach -- Axis Pro, Palantir, etc.

You get high quality named entity tagging (since humans are doing it), but it
takes a lot longer than doing it by machine, and it has a couple of downsides
-- like scaling poorly, involving lots of staff doing entity tagging instead
of real work, a noticeable delay between incoming reports and being able to
use them (since they aren't tagged and those systems pretty much require
tagged documents to do anything useful with them), as well as people fighting
over the disambiguation of certain entities.

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eplanit
Those particular authoritative institutions are usually trying to control the
oh-so-wise crowd. In other words, you're asking how the authorities can use
the communications of the crowd against the crowd.

You're really eager to get new weapons into the hands of the Masters?

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steamer25
I think the OP's question was asked in innocence... They were probably looking
for something along the lines of a web-based registry where various agencies
could post their more vexing problems.

But yes government, with it's monopoly on force and tendency towards
regulation is fundamentally antithetical to the crowd. Government can achieve
certain efficiencies through uniformity but mandates don't really foster
innovation.

To more thoroughly answer the OP, government can work with the crowd to
'promote the general welfare' by limiting itself. Ideally, the more remote
levels of government should tolerate the experimentation and even the failings
of the more local levels. By "tolerate" I mean less regulation but also
withholding subsidies and bailouts. As Jefferson said,

"The policy of the American government is to leave their citizens free,
neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits."

The reason for this is twofold.

1) Government cannot create an incentive/bailout/subsidy without diminishing
other, more successful pursuits through a taking.

2) By propping up self-destructive behavior, government enables it to
perpetuate.

The experimentation of the more local levels of government and ultimately the
individual citizens that compose self-government _is_ the exercise of the
crowds. E.g., think of the unsolicited advancements the Wright brothers
brought to the military.

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wslh
How many people makes an Einstein? a Gauss? we can calculate the population at
that time, or better the total pupulation until that moment...

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louislouis
Create an electronic/internet based voting system? Let the crowds vote on
issues and bypass congress/lobbying/corruption :) If only....

