Are people smarter than computers?

Question

Yahoo! Answers is testing a theory that us, Yahoo! Answerers, outperform computers when it comes to solving complex human problems. All the Yahoo! Save the Planet questions are being processed to determine whether or not real solutions can be derrived by all of our ramblings. At any rate, I'm composing a term paper for my grad school organizational management course, 15 pages and due Sunday, and I want to work this theory into my paper. If you have any info, theory names, links, anything that I could read about how communities of blabberers are efficient at solving complex problems, it would be much appreciated! Thanks, Allen.

Deadline extended to Sunday! Post-final reprieve.

The theory is not based upon the ability of computers to compute against the ability of a programmer to program, but the ability of a group of people that is suffciently large to find solutions to an question that is complex. The idea is that idiots like us can use our random ability to spurt out what we want to say, and of those spurts come up with brilliant solutions. Computers are not as good with the whole random, half-baked thoughts like we are.

Answer 1

I like it. Good luck.

Answer 2

I don't know of any links but I manage a froup of graphic artists and I have always used brainstorming among the group to solve problems. It has always worked for me.
Plus I think that the computer has made me smarter. I have access to information on almost any subject at tip of my fingers.

I agree with what another answerer Bolan wrote.
I myself have always been good at reconizing patterns it is how one learns and gets smarter. Develops commin sence. It can make you great at antisapating an outcome to a situation. Interesting question.

Answer 3

In an economy driven by ideas, nothing is more important than thinking. But why do we think the way we do? James Bailey thinks he knows. "Show me how someone does math," he says, "and I'll tell you how they think."




"We've got to generate a new sense of reality," Bailey says, "to embrace a set of different operating instructions. The problem is, we learn slowly, and we forget very poorly. People don't have a delete key."

The first revolution that left its mark on our minds was geometry. It was driven, Bailey says, by the search for a sense of place: "People in the ancient world wanted to know where they were in relation to the universe. The math they developed to identify place was geometry."

The second revolution was driven by technology -- the clock and the printing press. Clocks inspired people to think about pace, not place. Printing presses made it easier to work with text and numbers. As a result, physics displaced geometry as the defining way to think about the world. "That's been the driving force of science ever since," says Bailey. "To characterize reality with numbers and equations."

The third revolution is rooted in biology and self-organizing systems -- the search for a sense of pattern. Bailey got his first glimpse of this new way of thinking more than a decade ago, when he heard a presentation by Danny Hillis, the founder of Thinking Machines Corporation. Hillis was describing his 64,000-microprocessor Connection Machine, one of the world's first massively parallel computers. Bailey left a comfortable job at Digital Equipment Corporation to become the young company's marketing director.

He immediately confronted two mind-bending realities. The first involved Hillis's machine, which fundamentally changed the logic of computing. It not only accelerated computation, it also processed data in a new way, looking for patterns and learning. In short, it made itself smarter. The second involved experiments with "cellular automata" -- bits of information that operate according to a few simple rules. Inside one of Hillis's computers, the cellular automata began to organize themselves and patterns began to emerge. In short, they acted as if they were alive.

"The response from our work at Thinking Machines was the same response Galileo got," remembers Bailey. "People refused to look through his telescope. They didn't believe that truth could come from a glass tube. What Thinking Machines was doing was inventing a new intellectual telescope. And people were refusing to look through it."

Answer 4

Yes,because we Play with it,and smart ones do the programming in it,so we are smarter then computer,because we are master not computer.

Answer 5

No computer so far built has the capacity to replace human stupidity.

Answer 6

i strongly belive humans are smarter than computers becouse a human had to invent it and make sure all the glitches are fixed etc.

Answer 7

due sunday? uhh, weird?

and yes, they can. but it takes longer, and it depends on the strength of the computer.

Answer 8

We made them. Not the other way around.

Answer 9

Not everyone, but the persons who created them

Answer 10

Duh, people invented computers.

Do all people know more facts than a computer can spit out - no.