A friend just told me about an experiment where they went into various classrooms and asked all the students to estimate how many jelly beans were in a large jar. The average of the guesses were consistently more accurate than the guess of the student deemed the smartest in the class.

And this of course illustrates the general principle of conservatives who think that it is wrong for the government to make nanny state type decisions even if those doing it are more expert than the general public.

The problem is that the experimental results would sometimes reverse if the subject matter changed. For instance if the class was asked to pick the best chess move in a particular situation it would be rare for the majority's pick to be right if it disagreed with the pick of the best chess player.

It seems to me that both sides are wrong in that liberals think almost everything is a chess problem and that conservatives think almost everything is a jelly bean problem. I would think people should try to recognize the difference and form their opinions accordingly.

The really, really obvious flaw in the methodology here is that the "student deemed the smartest"probably isn't much more of an expert in the field of jellybean guessing than an average joe.

It would be better to show an example of crowd wisdom outguessing someone who really is an expert in a field. Like if crowds could forecast the weather better then a weatherman.

How is this not a zombie Reagan thread?

How much expertise is needed to be a weatherman? Gimme a week of intensive training and I'll be crushing that job. Ditto pharmacist.

Are you saying that some people can't tell when a jelly bean problem is actually a chess problem instead of a jelly bean problem?

Only conservitves would think they have a problem when they could afford a jar full of jelly beans.

Example of a major government policy that is a jelly bean problem?

woman's pay

You can't let the public vote on some things. If you put things like public executions(no appeal)for murderers and rapists, segregation, $50 minimum wage, no sales tax on the ballot they would probably all pass in most states. Sometimes people in power do know better.

I don't follow. Don't both the masses and the expert agree here: it should be equal?

I don't think he's saying it has to be a vote by the public. I think he's saying the free market can figure out jelly bean problems.

Not necessarily. Why should man who's doing the same title and has the same responsibility in a job as a woman get paid the same amount if she's better at it?

How the masses vote with their dollars, not necessarily their publicly stated thoughts. Basically I'm equating jelly beans to "let the market decide" situations even if the analogy isn't perfect.

The govt is not actually checking to see if it is really truly equal work. Republicans think the market is.

The market has an awful track record for social justice.

I think your friend listened to this 15-min segment of Radiolab on NPR this weekend. The topic was emergence and the guest was James Surowiecki, author of The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.

Tennis: equal pay in the majors. It is not unusual for the men's champion to be on the court more than 3 times as long as the women's champion. Also during the early rounds the women are playing to empty stands.

Unless Bouchard or Sharapova are playing.

Its pretty obvious those aren't jelly bean problems.

In jelly beans problems and in chess problems there is an objectively correct answer. It's not always the case in politics: for a lot of issues the correct answer depends on how much you value liberty vs security, prosperity vs equality, etc... Politics are often about finding a compromise between people who disagree on the "correct" answer because they value things differently.

I seem to remember this coming up before. The length of time they play is relevant only insofar as it influences how many ad-breaks there are (and the fact that women play less is basically an accident of history - one woman fainted one time and bingo, fewer sets for women). They aren't getting paid by the point. Viewership figures are relevant, though.

But all this is by-the-by. You can't formulate policy by pointing to extreme minority cases like this. Gap deniers like to bring up fashion models too, and they are irrelevant for much the same reason.

I would hope people concerned with equal pay are smart enough to ignore things like tennis, basically. Maybe we can wring our hands over viewers valuing male sporting endeavour more or something, but you can hardly legislate for that.

Some people think just about everything is a jellybean problem.

So if I spend a week estimating jelly bean counts in various volumes, do you think I do better than the average or not?

Deciding which are jelly bean problems is a jelly bean problem, that's why we believe democracy is the least worst option (and why AC wants to offer a choice of sets of rules).

The problem with the woman's pay type example is that liberals believe the problems are institutional and that the market can find local optimal market solutions that include institutional biases. Liberals want to kick the system away from those local optima (and being honest, we want to do that even if its also a global optima, we like to argue it isn't but often we are just making that up).

Note: also not very convinced about the wisdom of crowds, it seems like a bit of a fad where a small true point is hyped beyond reason. I'm still going to bet on an expert against the average in nearly everything including estimating jelly beans. I still don't think experts should decide a lot of things but that's mostly for a different reason.

This. No student in a random classroom is going to be an expert at guessing jelly bean counts. Give me an actual expert - some sort of spatial mathematician - and Ill take his answer over the class's average any day.

Like how public markets can price securities more accurately than expert analysts?