majority – Harmonia Philosophica

Expert decisions…

Photo by **Spiros Kakos** from **Pexels**

Does a mass on a mammogram indicate breast cancer? Will Serbia be a member of the EU by 2025? Will there be more floods in Germany in five years’ time? The diagnoses and predictions made by doctors, scientists, and experts often have far-reaching consequences. And in many cases, it is only years later that it is possible to say which expert made the right call most often.

An interdisciplinary research team from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries has developed a simple new method that can be used to identify the best decision-makers from a group of experts without having to know whether their decisions — past or present — are correct or incorrect. “Providing that at least half of all decisions made within the group are correct — which is typically the case in expert groups — and that each person has made about 20 yes/no decisions, this method has proved to work very well,” says Max Wolf, researcher at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries and co-author of the study.

The method was developed on the basis of insights into collective intelligence. It rests on a simple assumption: Those individuals in a group of experts who make decisions that are most similar to the decisions of others also make the best decisions. For yes/no decisions, this assumption is easily confirmed by means of mathematical modeling. To test whether the method also works in real groups, the researchers analyzed published predictions and diagnoses made by various groups in different fields. (1)

Great method. Which also seems to work.

But should we trust it?

Be aware of the things which work.

Decisions of most people tend to be correct. But from when do “most of the people” reach the correct decision on any of the great philosophical questions? The truth is never revealed to the many. For even if that seems so now, at the end you will see that the path was wrong.

We strive for live.

We are afraid of death.

And yet…

What is life?

What is death?

Trust not the many but the one man standing aside the crowd silent.

It is there that you will find the truth screaming…

Consumers. Products. The curse of the “majority”. One. Many. People lost…

Research demonstrates how consumer product reviews published on the internet could be analyzed through data mining techniques and allow designers to find ways to improve a given product or even add features that had not occurred to the manufacturer. (1)

Our world is based on what the majority wants.

Our world is based on what the majority thinks.

Our world is doomed.

Because somewhere at a shadowy corner, there lies a wise man. Dark and clouded. Silent. Waiting for people to pay attention. Somewhere in a dusty corner of a great library lies a small book. Full of wisdom. But full of dirt and torn away by time. Waiting for someone to pay attention. Somewhere in the depths of our souls there lies the memory of One. Waiting for someone to pay attention. Lost we are in worshiping the Many. Doomed to be part of them…

We are all gay. And black. And women. And…

When some years ago his enemies wanted to hurt the image of Comandante Marcos, they spread the rumor that he is gay. The answer from the leader of the Zapatistas was not something like “Subcomandante has laid half of Mexico” but a rather surprising answer which make his movement even more popular.

“Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.

Marcos is all the exploited, marginalised, oppressed minorities resisting and saying ‘Enough’. He is every minority who is now beginning to speak and every majority that must shut up and listen. He is every untolerated group searching for a way to speak. Everything that makes power and the good consciences of those in power uncomfortable – this is Marcos”. (1)

Be with the minority. Never be proud when you are with the majority. Be nervous when you are with the majority. Almost never has it decided correctly about something critical…

Look again where you belong. Look again where you stand. Are you afraid?

Human made climate, global warming and “peer review” and a tool for the stupid majorities.

More and more scientists who write in peer reviewed journals believe that global warming is human made. (1)

Well, disregard for now the “Winter, cold, global warming, CERN, extreme cold…” article I wrote some days ago and the fact that CERN has a different opinion.

Focus on the “peer review” process. Few understand its true meaning.

A system where others judge what you write as right and wrong will converge to the opinion of the MAJORITY with mathematical accuracy. Because… the majority is what decides what is right and deserves to be published.

Sounds cyclical and tautological. And it is.