Comments on: Musing about collective intelligence

By: JP

JP — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:10:46 +0000

Gordon, this is just a classic implementation of Linus’s Law. Given enough eyeballs….
Too often we refuse to see the value of open inspection. As you say, P2P inspection could be an effective way of solving Shefaly’s verification problem.

By: Gordon Rae

Gordon Rae — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 20:23:17 +0000

@ Shefaly – Verification is found in the aggregation and comparison of the raw data to extract patterns and meanings from it. As your example of the blogosphere shows, the problems of deception and falsification arise when we are presented with interpretations, data to which somebody else has already attached their meanings.

@JP – might this be another context to apply your thoughts on Open Source ? The value that is created when we share raw data and allow others to generate their own interpretations of it.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:17:23 +0000

Thanks Paul, love the example.

By: PaulSweeney

PaulSweeney — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 12:06:10 +0000

Thought you might be interested in this: climate change scientists went back to the paintings of constable, and in particular to his notebooks, as he spent so much time outdoors drawing clouds. They were able to make estimates of percentage cloud cover in that time based on the observations.

By: JP

JP — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:55:31 +0000

Shefaly, the problem of verification is a critical one, and about to go ballistic. We’re going to have billions of devices connected to the internet, trillions of readings of various elements of information, all condensed to actionable levels. And all gameable, unless we get the verification right.

A subject of a different post, to follow soon.

By: JP

JP — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 22:53:24 +0000

Ray, happy to meet you and Aaron for a beer, ping me via jp@bt.com and we can arrange something. Is this Anfield Aaron, by the way? I don’t know that many Aarons…

By: Ray

Ray — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:32:35 +0000

hmm . Hello from Aaron and me in a Lyons bar ( to provide some meta data ;-) not sure I know what you are asserting so hopefully meet for a beer one day ….

By: Shefaly

Shefaly — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 07:09:57 +0000

@ JP

Where is the verification in this vast sea of data? At least in the blogosphere, many opinions are expressed, unhindered by data. And those also happen to be opinions that do not welcome debate and surprisingly, still find many readers.

By: JP

JP — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 22:17:20 +0000

Gregory, I think the magic is not in what the yogis and others may have discovered, and continue to discover. That is not new.
What is new is our ability to share what is discovered, learn from it, improve it, continue to learn from it.
There is no longer a holy of holies.
That is a key difference.

By: gregorylent

gregorylent — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 20:46:47 +0000

well, yeah, it is heading towards omniscience .. but the yogis already covered this, being is everywhere, inseparable from you/me/all. so your research is just another name for self-discovery, but taking the looong way around