I decided to express my opinion on the “collective wisdom” in a separate post.
A discussion of the book “The Wisdom of the Crowd,” which gave birth to this post of mine, can be read
hereDefinition of concepts
Alas, I did not find the definition of the word “wisdom” in my own philosophical dictionary. Wikipedia (read - "collective wisdom") gives the following definition:
Wisdom is the ability to competently apply knowledge. Big, deep mind, based on life experience. The ability to find solutions to various problems, including life problems, based on our own and others' experience, sometimes avoiding direct logical operations and understanding the ontology of what is happening.
In the question under discussion, the first part of the quotation can be omitted - it indicates the individuality of the wise, and it is implied that the majority in the question before the crowd does not understand. It remains about the following:
Wisdom is the ability to find solutions to various problems, including life problems, relying on our own and other people's experience, sometimes avoiding direct logical operations.
Differences of wisdom from intuition, in this case, are not entirely clear ...
Your humble servant made this definition for himself:
Wisdom is a combination of a developed intellectually mnestic sphere with a pronounced intuition and a great deal of actual experience (better, one’s own).In turn, the postulate of the "wisdom of the crowd" is formulated as follows:
If you collect a large enough group of people who do not understand the question, the totality of their answers to the question asked, being averaged, will give a truer result than the expert’s opinion.Why "the wisdom of the crowd" does not exist
The overwhelming number of those who do not know do not know the correct answer, answering at random → The general probability of an error in the answer is higher, the correct answers (the voices of those who know) are less → With averaging, the correct answer is lost.
Expert one, he has the knowledge, experience and ability to analyze. His answer is also the same - the probability of error is lower (experience, intellect, knowledge and intuition of the expert).
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Exceptions
Exceptions are all questions (studies) in which the answers fall on a uniaxial coordinate system - for example, if given a range of numerical values and one of the values somewhere in the middle is true.
A great example is the
"experiment" with nuts . We estimate the approximate range, intuitively choose the acceptable middle - we give the answer. Or otherwise - we build an approximate volumetric model, based on the fact that the nuts are layered, we count the layers and the number of nuts - we give the answer.
In any case, for such a "study" (the number of nuts in a bowl), everyone will determine for themselves the range - this will differ little from different people. Naturally, the maximum number of answers will fall into the center of this range, which, as it is easy to understand, is as close as possible to the correct answer.
Attention, the question is: are
there many questions in science (or simply in life), the answers to which fall on the uniaxial coordinate system?Practice
For me personally, for some reason, where questions come up more often, the solution of which is more like shooting in a shooting range. This is already a biaxial system - the correct answer lies in the center of a certain circular target and an expert can ONLY get to this center, the crowd shoots at the periphery (assuming that it is aiming at the center), averages and we get a bagel. More precisely - a hole from a donut at the place where the correct answer lies and where, with an incomparably higher probability, our
shooting instructor will get
an expre.
And besides biaxial, there are also three-axis systems in which the correct answer lies in a certain point in the three-dimensional space of logic / knowledge / practical_action (the very experimental part, the nut example of which is so unsuccessful).
I want to finish with a quote:
Wisdom is the knowledge of what the Purpose of Creation is and what is the role of man in it.
Rabbi Bunim
ps: Not being very familiar with statistics (only in the framework of statistical analysis when writing my own PhD thesis), maybe I missed something, or I am not right at all. Ready for dialogue, I will be glad to your opinions.