Diversity and independence

Diversity and independence are important because the best collective decisions are the product of disagreement and contest, not consensus or compromise. 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, it figures out how to use mechanisms - like market prices, or intelligent voting systems - to agreegate and produce collective judgments that represent not what any one person in the group thinks but rather, in some sense, what they all think. Paradoxically, the best way for a group to be smart is for each person in it to think and act as indenpendely as possible. ((SUROWIECKI, 2005, p. XIX-XX).
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SUROWIECKI, James. The wisdom of crowds. New York: Anchor Books, 2005.