The “wisdom of the crowd” is one of the oldest and prettiest ideas in social science: Ask enough people, average their answers, and the random errors cancel out. Underlies Aristotlean philosophy, Galton and the Ox, and these days, Prediction Markets.
Beautiful, magical when it works, but sometimes… completely wrong! 🧵
Example: “Is Chicago the capital of Illinois?”
If you run a poll, most people say yes. And they’re very confident. More polling won’t save you either: you’ll just estimate the wrong answer more precisely!
