Comments on Building Peace: Wise Men or the Crowd?

I just finished a fascinating book on Crowdsourcing by the guy who coined the term that talks to a number of the points you bring up. While you talk about foreign policy, I see chilling examples in (our) military culture. Some comments that may be pertinent:

- In the Industrial Age, hierarchies were constructed to allow decisions to be made by those who presumably had access to the most information. With the rise of the internet, much of the information is now decentralized - yet the hierarchy remains and doesn't always make the use of all available information

- Jeff Howe cites research in which a diverse group will outperform a group of "Mensa" members every time. Diversity trumps almost everything else when it comes to problem-solving.

- Preserving diversity and independence is key. If you take a group of people and stifle their tendency to suggest unconventional ideas, or educate them all the same way and expose them to the same information, you reduce diversity.

I could go on, but the point is, our governmental and military organizations charged with making some of our most important decisions may not be the best qualified to do so. So how can we foster an environment where the Wise Men and the Crowd can coexist, without the crowd being lost in the din?