The Wisdom of Asking Many People, Not One
Launch library · evergreen read
A single expert opinion can be wrong in ways that are hard to detect from the outside. Ask a wide, varied group of ordinary people the same question, though, and their individual errors often cancel each other out, leaving something closer to an accurate answer.
This is the basic idea behind what is sometimes called the wisdom of crowds: that a large, diverse group, answering independently, can outperform any single specialist on certain kinds of questions, particularly ones involving estimation or judgement.
The condition that matters most is independence. A crowd only stays wise if its members are not simply repeating each other's opinions. Ask many people the same question, but let each answer alone, and the resulting spread of views often holds more truth than any one voice could offer.
This is why a wide, ordinary sample of opinion can sometimes tell you more than a single respected authority, at least for questions with a knowable right answer waiting somewhere in the average. It is a reminder that expertise and breadth solve different kinds of problems.