The wisdom of the crowd

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Picture of elghinnfaer33 achievements

+9 1. elghinnfaer commented 10 years ago

I guessed 850 beans, anyone else want to share their guess and average them as we go ? -grin-
Picture of mwak48 achievements

+25 2. mwak commented 10 years ago

Your mission today : ask 10000 people for lottery numbers.
Picture of Burimi59 achievements

+2 3. Burimi commented 10 years ago

When two people say that you're drunk! Hold on to a tree
Picture of cosminb37 achievements

+8 4. cosminb commented 10 years ago

Well, it's just one experiment, we shouldn't draw conclusions based on only one. What show is this clip from?
Picture of MrJaKoSe31 achievements

+2 5. MrJaKoSe commented 10 years ago

Well 1 guy guesses 1million and this experiment would fail...
Picture of joeman74 achievements

+1 6. joeman commented 10 years ago

In the multitude of counselors, there is safety.
Picture of Gorf35 achievements

+4 7. Gorf commented 10 years ago

#5 you're missing the point. For every 1 person who genuinely thinks there are 1 million in there, you'd get 225 or so people who would guess there are 100 in there.

If you got a large enough sample, you would indeed get 226 idiots - one with the overinflated guess and 225 inadequate guesses.
Picture of schlafanzyk35 achievements

+2 8. schlafanzyk commented 10 years ago

#7 and you're missing the point of his comment. This is a flawed experiment. You cannot possibly scale up to compensate for infinity or randomness. That's why the masses are in fact not wise and just seem to be, and also why #2 wouldn't work at all - even if you asked enough people that chances are one of them would actually be right. You cannot average out complete ignorance, you need a minimum amount of knowledge in every participant.

#5 is right. The success of this is highly selective and still very random. It relies on mathematical/logical education and experience more than group size, which is just a moderating or refining factor. The task also has to be a very basic one, scaled up for effect. It is however much more likely to be right than any random individual guess. But in 99% of the cases, you would still be much better off asking an expert of that particular field (in this case probably a savant) than asking 99 random people and averaging them. Not only are you more likely to get a good answer that way, it is also MUCH more efficient.

Science and democracy would not exist today if a few people did not decide to resist and fight the wisdom/ignorance of the masses.
Remember that this also works for propaganda, myths and totally incorrect facts, as long as they resonate with either our individual experience, intuition or primal instincts.
That's why modern democracy was "invented" in America and had to spread back to Europe, Asia and Africa, and not the other way around. It is almost impossible for a few wise people with knowledge and a progressive idea to change an opposing system. It had to be a new place and it still took several, brutal wars to succeed. It's also why today, democracy works even better in places that got another "fresh start" after WW2 compared to the now old U.S. system, which has turned into a corporate-ruled democracy play.

Like pretty much everything else, this is a double-edged sword. And it has to in order to be even remotely scientific.
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+2 9. ughlah commented 10 years ago

Well, I guessed the radius would be at least 20 beans, so estimated one layer to be around 1200 with 4 radius's height, which would be around 5000.