The Top Pickers vs. the Pack – washingtonpost.com

An article in today’s Washington Post titled “The Top Pickers vs. the Pack” compares the wisom of crowds phenomenom with a more thoughtful approach of finding expertise or genius from the crowd. To me, this shows a brilliant approach to democratizing punditry.

I particularly enjoyed learning about Marketocracy and their combination of performance analysis of virtual mutual funds created by users and the social networking aspect of asking other users to rate the stock-picker’s analysis. The difference between being right and knowing why you are right is the difference between being smart and being wise, or cognitive and metacognitive. Metacognition is much more powerful and useful to the rest of us.

is less interested in fame or celebrity than those who strive to be seen as wise. Most of today’s most noted pundits are born more out of their ambitions than any true measure of greatness, let alone wisdom. We would all benefit if thought leaders were more wise, more metacognitive and more demographically chosen.