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Friday, October 19, 2007

Evolution and Wisdom of Crowds

I found this article by way of Slashdot and I love the idea.
Evolution and Wisdom of Crowds: "Conventional wisdom says that the primary reason why so many people do not accept Darwin's theory of evolution is that they find it threatening to their religious beliefs. There is no question that religion is a big part of the reason behind the large number of people who reject evolution. But I am convinced that just as often, the cause and effect is reversed: people hold onto their fundamentalist religious beliefs because evolution by natural selection -- the strongest argument against an Old Testament-type creator -- is so counter-intuitive to so many."
This has the same flavor of the reason people find thinking out of the box to be unprofitable. The key ideas are both about starting at Knowledge point (A) and trying to get to Solution point (Z). Most people try to just barrel through the first step then the next BCD...until they find their solution. Instead taking a step back and asking what alphabet of solutions you could be dealing with lets you easily eliminate huge numbers of wrong steps. I will have to see if I can come up with an easy explanation that I can use this technique with in regards to Tomorrowish when I am explaining it to people.