false 68 286 284 true 6004790 read 2 true 169164 currently-reading 0 true 169163 to-read 0 false 2233768 have http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77859209 Two Regimes of Madness: Texts and Interviews 1975-1995 (Semiotext(e) / Foreign Agents) by Gilles Deleuze
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/77859191 The Legacy of Conquest: The Unbroken Past of the American West (Paperback) by Patricia Nelson Limerick
bookshelves: currently-reading
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20103573 Against the Day (Paperback) by Thomas Pynchon
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/37546530 to: The Teleology of the Modern Nation-state: Japan and China (Encounters With Asia) by Joshua A. Fogel
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/24680503 Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans (Hardcover) by Jean Pfaelzer
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20706693 to: Design and Crime (and Other Diatribes) by Hal Foster
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/13134858 to: Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge (Hardcover) by Cass R. Sunstein
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2...

Have you had your tonsils removed? Did you ever eat an order of freedom fries? Has your government ever invaded a country on the mistaken impression that it had weapons of mass destruction? If you answered yes, you may have fallen victim to one of the dozens of follies Cass Sunstein says can emerge in group decision-making. In his new book Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge, Sunstein explores how people can gather accurate information from groups, censuring traditional means of gathering information for their failures and viewing new methods—wikis, open source methods, prediction markets, and blogs—with cautious optimism. In the end, he comes to a few questionable conclusions, especially about blogs, but it’s a valuable read for people interested in the future of politics and business.

For a lesson in the flaws of group decision-making, take tonsillectomy. Sunstein cites a New England Journal of Medicine article exploring “bandwagon diseases,” in which doctors become convinced that certain symptoms ought to be interpreted and treated in a particular way. The tonsillectomy (and the ensuing ice cream diet) seems “to have been adopted initially based on weak information,” the article notes. And Sunstein thinks he’s found the culprit: “information cascades”—the effect, something like a vicious rumor, of a fact or factoid that makes its rounds and gains outsized influence over groups. If only doctors had all of the information available when the tonsil procedure was catching on, they might not have subjected so many children to possibly unnecessary surgery.

It’s the folly of group decision-making with partial information that drives Sunstein to look for new solutions. You might think that simply taking a vote could get all the information in the right place. This might have worked for medical researchers and tonsillectomy, but there’s a catch. Sunstein, a law professor at University of Chicago, turns to something called the Condorcet Jury Theorem, which states in part that in a jury, the probability that the right decision will be reached increases with the size of the jury, but only if the average juror is more likely than not to come up with the right decision on his or her own. If members of a jury are individually less than 50 percent likely get the right answer, then their deliberation magnifies the problem. Groups like these are wrong, Sunstein says, because of prejudices (freedom fries, anyone?), confusion, and incompetence.

Full review at link above.
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20104861 to: The Return of the Real: Art and Theory at the End of the Century (October Books) by Hal Foster
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20103897 Tokyo Underworld: The Fast Times and Hard Life of an American Gangster in Japan (Paperback) by Robert Whiting
]]> http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/20103874 The Chinese Western: An Anthology of Short Fiction from Today's China (Mass Market Paperback) by Zhu Hong
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