A Quote by James Surowiecki

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromising. An intelligent group, especially when confronted with cognition problems, does not ask its members to modify their positions in order to let the group reach a decision everyone can be happy with. Instead…the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

James Surowiecki

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Act Ask Be Happy Because Best Best Way Cognition Collective Compromising Confronted Consensus Contest Decision Decisions Disagreement Diversity Does Each Everyone Group Happy Important Independence Independently Instead Intelligent Members Modify Order Person Positions Possible Problems Product Reach Smart Think Way

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James Surowiecki
American - Journalist
Born: April 30, 1967

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise.

James Surowiecki

Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as independently as possible.

James Surowiecki

My best business decision was to be independent as a musician and artist. My worst was compromising on certain aspects of a deal for the sake of other members of my group when I shouldn't have, because I was right in the end.

Ziggy Marley

Groups are only smart when there is a balance between the information that everyone in the group shares and the information that each of the members of the group holds privately. It's the combination of all those pieces of independent information, some of them right, some of the wrong, that keeps the group wise.

James Surowiecki

The fact that cognitive diversity matters does not mean that if you assemble a group of diverse but thoroughly uninformed people, their collective wisdom will be smarter than an expert's. But if you can assemble a diverse group of people who possess varying degrees of knowledge and insight, you're better off entrusting it with major decisions rather than leaving them in the hands of one or two people, no matter how smart those people are.

James Surowiecki

Any group or "collective," large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members. In a free society, the "rights" of any group are derived from the rights of its members through their voluntary individual choice and contractual agreement, and are merely the application of these individual rights to a specific undertaking... A group, as such, has no rights.

Ayn Rand

Often, we think that things are the way they are because of intelligent design - because somebody super-smart, or some group of academics, came up with the best system ever to do XYZ. Actually, things are often the way they are because of an accident of history.

Leila Janah

The modern tribalism of the left demands that each person choose a group and then agree with everything that group agrees with. And anybody who leaves that group is stoned to death.

Tucker Carlson

Belonging to a group can provide the child with a variety of resources that an individual friendship often cannot--a sense of collective participation, experience with organizational roles, and group support in the enterprise of growing up. Groups also pose for the child some of the most acute problems of social life--of inclusion and exclusion, conformity and independence.

Zick Rubin

Any group or "collective", large or small, is only a number of individuals. A group can have no rights other than the rights of its individual members.

Ayn Rand

Any group, any group that can't work with all other groups, if they are genuinely interested in solving the problems of the Negro collectively why, I don't think that that group is really sincerely motivated toward reaching a solution.

Malcolm X

In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumour that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by the group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other group can say.

C. S. Lewis

A functional team must make the collective results of the group more important to each individual than individual members' goals.

Patrick Lencioni

Thinking of ourselves as members of 'this group' or 'that group,' I think that's a recipe for division.

Wendy Long

I think it's incredibly important that we think about diversity in the context of the White House press corps, because it's important that the group of people there is representative of the diversity that we see throughout the country.

Kristen Welker

We understand that ISIS is a group that's growing in its governance of territory. It's not just Iraq and Syria. They are now a predominant group in Libya. They are beginning to pop up in Afghanistan. They are increasingly involved now in attacks in Yemen. They have Jordan in their sights. This group needs to be confronted with serious proposals.

Marco Rubio

A Quote by James Surowiecki

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