# Using crowdsourced non-experts to perform optimizations In theory, humans are really good at optimization if you get our incentives right There was a lot of hype around this idea in the mid 2000’s with [[Foldit]] but it turns to This approach seems to work well for [[Problems where it is easy to know whether an answer is correct but hard to get to that answer]] Amazon’s mechanical turk platform has become almost synonymous with doing this. <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Using+crowdsourced+non-experts+to+perform+optimizations) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/Using+crowdsourced+non-experts+to+perform+optimizations)