To clarify here, I don’t feel like I’m significantly smarter than most people, but I feel like people have a hard time doing any sort of thinking about stuff. Especially when it comes to verifying “facts.”

  • FlickOfTheBean@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    There’s an old proverb I like about this: a person is smart but people are dumb.

    People en masse tend to be dumber than they are apart. I think you’re comparing yourself to the faceless masses. It’s much more humbling to try comparing yourself to someone you respect (but don’t do it as a “I’m not as good as them” thing, only do it as a “goals to maybe achieve one day” thing to avoid accidentally trashing your self esteem)

    • JanEckhoff@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      “The IQ of a mob is the IQ of its dumbest member divided by the number of mobsters.” (attributed to Terry Pratchett)

    • masquenox@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      a person is smart but people are dumb.

      Whoever says that pretty much qualifies as dumb in my book.

      Collective deision-making is superior.

      • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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        11 months ago

        It depends. Group psychology like mass delusion is well known. Collective decision making works in specific circumstances where the majority have some idea about what the problem is.

        • masquenox@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Collective decision making works in specific circumstances where the majority have some idea about what the problem is.

          So you’re saying that the only obstacle to effective collective decision-making is the withholdiing of relevant information?

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
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            11 months ago

            I think you meant “the ability to learn” because you’re not getting better answers from groups of non-physicists about the geometries of black holes than from individual experts regardless of how much information you give them

            • masquenox@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              individual experts

              Sooooo… are you suggesting that individual physicists would be better off working in isolation? That must be what you are suggesting… since nothing that I have said suggested anything about groups of people making collective decisions about matters that are completely arbitrary.

      • piecat@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Just linking to an article about collective decision making isn’t really that helpful without quoting the article for your points.

        So that article you posted talks about animal behavior, and that an economic view on collective decision making is a good approach for animal behavior.

        As motivated in the Introduction, our review has focused primarily on an economic view on collective decision-making. The economic view is a staple of behavioural ecology, and motivates the tools of optimal decision theory for the study of animal behaviour.

        Nowhere did they make the conclusion that collecting decision making is superior, especially in the context of humans.