This link has been bookmarked by 72 people . It was first bookmarked on 02 Mar 2006, by Deng Jianguo.
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22 Dec 14
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06 Apr 11
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16 Feb 11
John SladeQ: Why are people so uncomfortable with Wikipedia? And Google? And, well, that whole blog thing?
A: Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale. -
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Both market economics and evolution are probabilistic systems, which are simply counterintuitive to our mammalian brains. The fact that a few smart humans figured this out and used that insight to build the foundations of our modern economy, from the stock market to Google, is just evidence that our mental software has evolved faster than our hardware.
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Probability-based systems are, to use Kevin Kelly's term, "out of control".
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The good thing about probabilistic systems is that they benefit from the wisdom of the crowd and as a result can scale nicely both in breadth and depth.
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But because they do this by sacrificing absolute certainty on the microscale, you need to take any single result with a grain of salt.
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The same is true for blogs, no single one of which is authoritative.
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02 Feb 11
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01 Jul 09
mar quiquote: Q: Why are people so uncomfortable with Wikipedia? And Google? And, well, that whole blog thing?
A: Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at theeconomics science blog media web2.0 Google internet article statistics psychology cultures search wikipedia emergence information technology business design web Class for:oviedo2008 imported
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21 Sep 08
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20 Sep 08
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emapeyWhen professionals--editors, academics, journalists--are running the show, we at least know that it's someone's job to look out for such things as accuracy. But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; the intelligence is sim
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21 Mar 08
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21 Oct 07
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Britannica's biggest errors are of omission, not commission. It's shallow in some categories and out of date in many others. And then there are the millions of entries that it simply doesn't--and can't, given its editorial process--have. But Wikipedia can scale to include those and many more. Today Wikipedia offers 860,000 articles in English - compared with Britannica's 80,000 and Encarta's 4,500. Tomorrow the gap will be far larger.
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11 Sep 07
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31 Jul 07
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When professionals--editors, academics, journalists--are running the show, we at least know that it's someone's job to look out for such things as accuracy. But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; the intelligence is simply emergent. These probabilistic systems aren't perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers. They're designed to scale, and to improve with size. And a little slop at the microscale is the price of such efficiency at the macroscale.
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Both market economics and evolution are probabilistic systems, which are simply counterintuitive to our mammalian brains.
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Wikipedia "should be the first source of information, not the last. It should be a site for information exploration, not the definitive source of facts."
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25 Jul 07
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25 Apr 07
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30 Jan 07
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Britannica's biggest errors are of omission, not commission
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01 Jan 07
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12 Nov 06
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28 Jul 06
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14 Jul 06
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18 May 06
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30 Apr 06
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But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; the intelligence is simply emergent. These probabilistic systems aren't perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers. They're designed to scale, and to improve with size. And a little slop at the microscale is the price of such efficiency at the macroscale. Â Â But how can that be right when it feels so wrong? Â Â There's the rub. This tradeoff is just hard for people to wrap their heads around. There's a reason why we're still debating Darwin. And why Jim Suroweicki's book on Adam Smith's invisible hand is still surprising (and still needed to be written) more than 200 years after the great Scotsman's death. Both market economics and evolution are probabilistic systems, which are simply counterintuitive to our mammalian brains.
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27 Mar 06
S JonesA nice summary of how the wisdom of crowds works i.e. why Wikis and blogging don't collapse under the weight of stupidity out there
economics probability tags tagging folksonomy social.software _delicious
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21 Jan 06
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Why are people so uncomfortable with Wikipedia? And Google? And, well, that whole blog thing? A: Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale.
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07 Jan 06
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29 Dec 05
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27 Dec 05
Marco MazzeiRisposte a molte domande sul web
blog blogs innovation internet wiki wikipedia web2.0 reference _blogit newsletter
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26 Dec 05
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25 Dec 05
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23 Dec 05
Mark SundstromNice summary.
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22 Dec 05
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Will RichardsonWhen professionals--editors, academics, journalists--are running the show, we at least know that it's someone's job to look out for such things as accuracy. But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge.
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21 Dec 05
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20 Dec 05
linkmessAbout probabilistic systems like market economics and evolution which are counterintuitive to our mammalian brains
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19 Dec 05
perfectlyGoodInk"Our brains aren't wired to think in terms of statistics and probability. We want to know whether an encyclopedia entry is right or wrong. We want to know that there's a wise hand (ideally human) guiding Google's results. We want to trust what we read."
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