Quote from: K-Dog on Aug 22, 2024, 08:52 AMGalton undoubtedly thought that the average guess of the group would be way off the mark. After all, mix a few very smart people with some mediocre people and a lot of dumb people, and it seems like you'd end up with a dumb answer. But Galton was wrong — the crowd guessed 1,197 pounds, after it had been slaughtered and dressed the ox weighed 1,198 pounds. In other words, the crowd's judgment was essentially perfect.... Galton wrote later: 'The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgment than might have been expected.' That was, to say the least, an understatement.
Two points. One, the crowds estimate wasn't nearly perfect, only one common central metric of a given distribution was.The average. A common statisticians story about averages, the "average" American has one breast and one testicle. Now...how many average Americans might you find?
Second, the cow estimates were of an unknown, but ultimately absolute and known empirical value. Just get a scale. How tall is person X? How far away is England from NYC? Applying the idea of value of a group's estimate of an empirical value to that of the trustworthiness of a democratic judgement? Not the same thing. At its core...we are talking about a popularity contest. Like we did in high school...for the homecoming king and queen.
There is no empirical quantity of goodness or badness in democratic judgement. There is popularity, feelings, motivated self interest, and just good ol' self deception. Oh..sure...someone will vote for someone because they claim to be a "good" person. You know, like all the fine upstanding white christian nationalists who support convicted sexual predators and felons in democratic representations....those being the kind of people that represent what they CLAIM they support...good Christian values...just ignore the felony convictions part. Makes perfect sense. But it isn't within a country mile of an empirical value.
As for employment in the future? Seems reasonable empirical. Depends on how one views the value of economics of course, it is a social science, and not a natural or physical one for a reason. It is based on herd think...my favorite economic speech ever, typical PhD in economics, and a masters in statistics, and within the first 20 words his caveat for his upcoming solution he was going to reveal after 15 minutes of talking, was "now, with the underlying assumption that we are dealing with rational actors...".
Gotta love that one. This example comes from the last century, and I've never forgotten how I damn near burst into laughing on the spot.