James Surowieki impressed the hell out of me when he wrote The Wisdom of Crowds. I thought it was very insightful, and enjoyable to read, and made a genuine contribution to the average person’s understanding of how decision-making really works.

One of the key insights he had was that collective decision-making–incorporating the views of large masses of people–often produces better results than the judgment of experts. I am not going to dive deeply into the argument and evidence, but one example is easy enough to get right away.

His thesis is that society is able to get along from day to day because people exercise a kind of rationality as a group that allows them (or us, rather) to handle three kinds of problems. Surowiecki defines the first as cognition problems: questions that have ”definitive” or factual solutions. If you ask a group of people to estimate how many jelly beans are in a jar, for example, the average of their answers is likely to be much more accurate than any given individual’s guess. This seems counterintuitive, but there is a considerable body of experimental evidence to support it.

The crowd is better than any one person, even if they have excellent technique.

During COVID, though, Suroweiki went all “experts are always right” on us, and fear made him stupid. It’s like he forgot everything he ever learned, either due to fear or out of responding to his particular “crowd,” who worship credentials. Who knows why, but it was obvious that his own judgment left him.

This struck me once again upon seeing this:

In my town 7 teens were shot, 4 killed and 3 committed suicide while schools were closed. I think NYT and MSNBC are partly responsible for that

— Tiberius Gracchus (@Tiberiu33385979) February 21, 2023

On the facts, he is just wrong. “Experts” put COVID patients in nursing rooms, stuffed ventilators down people’s throats, and lied constantly about everything. That was Maher’s point. Worse, the lies have led to skepticism about all vaccines, and children will be dying for years or decades to come because everybody has lost faith in the public health establishment.

Because we all know they are liars. Even Surowieki knows they are liars, even if he won’t admit it. I could get him tied up in knots about masks alone in something like 3 questions.

He just doesn’t care, it seems. Because the plebs should submit to the Elite.

Remember The Atlantic’s “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice?” Or the reverence for Andrew Cuomo? Or the constantly changing advice and requirements? Or the “children will do just fine being out of school?” Time and again the experts were wrong, but Suroweiki’s response is that it is we who were killing people.

Tell that to the nursing home patients that Cuomo’s policies killed–if you could. At least look their family members in the eyes and explain that “experts” know better.

All you need to know is that Florida–which has an older and sicker population than New York–got about the same results following wildly different policies. And in some ways more importantly, people actually WANTED to live by Florida’s rules because their overall quality of life matters to them. Florida has people flocking there, while New York and California bled residents.

At base, the entire argument from the Elite about everything these days is “do what we say because we said it,” essentially treating everybody like a recalcitrant 4-year-old. And they catastrophize every deviance from their commands.

Think a 12-year-old shouldn’t be on Grindr? You are a bigot! You are literally killing children! Trust the experts!

Skeptical that masks work? Forget the actual science, the CDC says to do it or you are killing grandma.

Think that natural immunity is better than a vaccine? You are killing everybody who is vaxxed (explain that one!).

It’s like there’s something in the rarified air that once-intelligent people are breathing. They seem to have lost their mind.

But no, they have lost respect for your autonomy. For your right to make decisions.

And hence, they are a real threat to democracy.