The 'Wisdom of the Crowd' paradigm

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* On the Wisdom of the Crowd: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_of_the_crowd

* STORY 'How AI [Artificial Intelligence] Can Help Us Harness Our 'Collective Intelligence''-
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20 ... telligence

* RELATED to STORY: Even without AI TECH, basic mathematical functions e.g., averaging alone can go a long way in of algorithms - whose purposes would to glean valuable insights (which might have otherwise been overlooked).

P.S. On the lighter side: The topic title of this discussion thread 'The Wisdom of the Crowd Paradigm' sounds-like the name of an episode for the TV series 'The Big Bang Theory!'

I've never understood how "the wisdom of the crowd" can be impressively accurate in some situations, yet in others it fails to cope with "vaguely plausible bull****" over and over and over again. I'd swear our political systems are rigged to stop us aggregating our way to a sensible decision.

The Wisdom of the crowd is limited to the abilities of the members of the crowd and the quality of the connection between them.

If enough members are capable and enough of them contribute their capabilities, good things will result.

If few members are capable and/or few capable members contribute, sub-par things will result.

That makes a lot of sense to me! So a society that wanted to use "the crowd" to come to good descisions would:
-Make sure literally everyone is educated or trained to meet their full potential, with critical thinking skills top priority
-Have lots of opportunity for direct democracy, with everyone involved in community decision-making as a matter of course.

Instead of which, policy direction gets decided for a whole nation in one go, every 4 to 5 years, by two or more competing teams of professional liars leading their brainwashed rent-a-mobs around by the nose. We've got a ways to go yet... still, not entirely hopeless. Before their latest troubles, I know places like Porto Alegre in Brazil were experimenting with "democracy from the bottom up" with surprisingly good results.

I actually have a different hunch on that - that the vaguely plausible BS serves Darwinian purposes that have little nothing to do with truth but they do have something to do with changes of power, wealth, status, mating opportunities, etc..