The Perfect Swarm: The Science of Complexity in Everyday Life

[Bill's]

This is our book discussion for Nov 2018.

[Kenneth]

This is my first time posting. I've been reading for a while, but never got into the comments.

The swarm intelligence, the invisible leader, and smart mobs were all interesting. Using a small percentage of a population to train the larger population a certain trait or action is pretty interesting as a manager. I like leading by example, and I've got methods for training people that definitely use this method, the more people that the trainee sees doing the process the right way, the more likely they are to emulate that and give you the correct result.

I'm not too interested in the safety portion with the crowd forces, I felt the arguments made were a little sanitized. I can't imagine preaching to my daughter "when you're trying to get out of a burning building, 60% of the time follow the crowd, 40% of the time look for something different from the crowd".

Consensus and politics was a fun read. I always wonder how good the political ad's really do, and it sounds like putting out more information would do worse than people just picking the name that they are most familiar with. I don't think that the methods will ever be applied to a democratic process, but maybe we could apply it to a scientific book reading group?.?. Just kidding.

Networks is the kind of engineering that I do every day, and the methods described I use all the time. Nodal analysis of electric circuits and logistics routes are what I apply these rules to, but networks of people and information follow the same rules. The synopsis of the chapter described several ways to use a network of people.

I'll read the rest of the book tonight, and finish out my thoughts on the book.

-Ken

[Kenneth]

Yep, finished it. It was good.

The last three chapters breezed by pretty easily. Decision rules to mathematically or statistically increase your chances of choosing the right answer, I definitely will try to apply some of these methods.

Pattern recognition and imagination, I like that it was recognized that imagination can be as much a science tool as an artistic tool. What is a hypothesis other than an imaginative but informed guess?

And if you only read one chapter in this book, it’s chapter 10, with kind of the for dummies notes on all the concepts covered in the book.

A good read, and hopefully a good first couple of posts in this group.

-Ken

[Vidya]

Just reading chapter 10 might not make sense without context though !

The critical mass of early adopters reminded me of the 'tipping point' as explained by Malcolm Gladwell.

I also did not know that in situations where there is a single answer the majority is almost always right ! The bigger the group the better.

Ideal voting and its non-existence was also new for me.

[Kenneth]

Vdy, I see what you mean about chapter 10. I should have said cliffs notes.

I'll need to check out 'tipping point'. I've read Gladwell's 'outliers'.