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Why first past the post doesn't work
Crowdsourcing works on the premise that a reward and a challenge are posted, people respond, vote for the best ideas and the "best" idea wins. This is not a new idea. Venture capitalists have for years spoken of the need to hit a "ten-bagger" on one of their deals to pay for the 9 that did not make it. Anyone in the idea business realizes that if you have an idea, chances are a bunch of people have it, and so execution is king.
These are but three examples of the competitive notion of "first past the post" wins, or winner takes all.
Not being content to do this at the personal level, corporations compete in this manner but at group scale.
Any of these market mechanisms may well result in the best idea, though because of gaming of the selection mechanism this is by no means guaranteed.
Consider, though, the immense waste of resources this represents and wonder with me how the ninety percent of wasted productive capacity may have been used were it not sacrificed to the market.
Perhaps we need competition to get us out of bed in the morning, to bring out the best within us. Even so is it not better to "fail early and fail often", as is often quipped in the start up business. We need to know we are failing as early as possible and redirect our efforts in line with our talents toward the problem that most deserves our attention.
Failing individually is less wasteful than failing as a team. While professional sports embrace a variety of talent and this produces a satisfying and viscerally random struggle, if the goal is to play hockey at the highest level we would want to get to the all star or Olympic team as quickly as possible. Also note that the team that wins the Superbowl, World Cup or Stanley Cup is not made up of the best players in the tournament. If we are looking for drama, this inefficiency is acceptable, even beneficial. When we are looking for a cure for cancer this is not acceptable.
Suppose we came up with a mechanism to get the top players onto one team to conquer the challenge at hand. For easy math lets assume that we still end up with ten percent of our starting population on the winning team. We have an optimized team but still have ninety percent of the population unaccounted for. What are these people doing?
To follow our example some of them may be working on the number two priority disease. Some may be doing theatre, others coaching and so on. The same system that allows people to fail quickly,as individuals will also select them for the opportunity that best fits their skills and talents.
This mechanism should also be able to produce the NHL, as it is, for the reasons it is valuable.
This is *net.
These are but three examples of the competitive notion of "first past the post" wins, or winner takes all.
Not being content to do this at the personal level, corporations compete in this manner but at group scale.
Any of these market mechanisms may well result in the best idea, though because of gaming of the selection mechanism this is by no means guaranteed.
Consider, though, the immense waste of resources this represents and wonder with me how the ninety percent of wasted productive capacity may have been used were it not sacrificed to the market.
Perhaps we need competition to get us out of bed in the morning, to bring out the best within us. Even so is it not better to "fail early and fail often", as is often quipped in the start up business. We need to know we are failing as early as possible and redirect our efforts in line with our talents toward the problem that most deserves our attention.
Failing individually is less wasteful than failing as a team. While professional sports embrace a variety of talent and this produces a satisfying and viscerally random struggle, if the goal is to play hockey at the highest level we would want to get to the all star or Olympic team as quickly as possible. Also note that the team that wins the Superbowl, World Cup or Stanley Cup is not made up of the best players in the tournament. If we are looking for drama, this inefficiency is acceptable, even beneficial. When we are looking for a cure for cancer this is not acceptable.
Suppose we came up with a mechanism to get the top players onto one team to conquer the challenge at hand. For easy math lets assume that we still end up with ten percent of our starting population on the winning team. We have an optimized team but still have ninety percent of the population unaccounted for. What are these people doing?
To follow our example some of them may be working on the number two priority disease. Some may be doing theatre, others coaching and so on. The same system that allows people to fail quickly,as individuals will also select them for the opportunity that best fits their skills and talents.
This mechanism should also be able to produce the NHL, as it is, for the reasons it is valuable.
This is *net.
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