I am reading “The Wisdom of the Crowds” by James Surowiecki. I still think hope this is a good book and I am still looking forward to reading to the end. But isn’t it a wasted opportunity of making the point by starting of the book with the example of the West England Stock Poultry Exhibition crowd? The crowd correctly weight-judged (when calculating the mean) a fat ox. Although the example is descriptive and has some entertainment value. If estimating the weight of a fat ox had something to do with wisdom we should replace every scientist, journalist, and knowledgeable person with a scale.
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