Traditional &quot;Wisdom of crowds&quot; are polls that take averages, which end up being fairly impressive.  Swarms are real-time dynamics systems that converge on local maxima. It takes a little thinking to appreciate the difference, but it&#x27;s profound. Swarms blow away traditional methods because they foster a real-time emergent intelligence, while polls just take a snap shot of group opinion. They&#x27;re very different.