This reminds me of a thought experiment where perfect averages skew towards one extreme when you eliminate one radical. It makes mathematical sense. Apparently, a village can come extremely close to guessing the weight of an ox by taking all of their guesses and averaging them, even if some indivuals are radically under or over. But change the scope and you may change the median’s accuracy (or sanity, as the articles metaphor) Lock the village in a room with no clocks or windows and wait until 6 am, just before any hint of sunlight, then show them the sky and take their guesses. The radicals that guess ‘midnight’ won’t change, but the ones who would have said ‘noon’ will, so your average would slide to ever more inaccurately early. Just a thought model though, I’ve never read this precise test being done.
I’m not certain that that would be wrong. From the observations they have access to, they have no way of telling the difference between different points in the night.
If they can see the moon, however, this changes. Similarly, if they can wait an hour and see what changes. Similarly if they can see the stars, and know roughly what month it is. Because it’s not just the most extreme people who’ll update their beliefs.
(By the way; the averaging thing only works if the individuals don’t communicate about their guesses, which means that this isn’t in any way an accurate representation of the behaviour described in this article!)
This reminds me of a thought experiment where perfect averages skew towards one extreme when you eliminate one radical. It makes mathematical sense. Apparently, a village can come extremely close to guessing the weight of an ox by taking all of their guesses and averaging them, even if some indivuals are radically under or over. But change the scope and you may change the median’s accuracy (or sanity, as the articles metaphor) Lock the village in a room with no clocks or windows and wait until 6 am, just before any hint of sunlight, then show them the sky and take their guesses. The radicals that guess ‘midnight’ won’t change, but the ones who would have said ‘noon’ will, so your average would slide to ever more inaccurately early. Just a thought model though, I’ve never read this precise test being done.
I’m not certain that that would be wrong. From the observations they have access to, they have no way of telling the difference between different points in the night.
If they can see the moon, however, this changes. Similarly, if they can wait an hour and see what changes. Similarly if they can see the stars, and know roughly what month it is. Because it’s not just the most extreme people who’ll update their beliefs.
(By the way; the averaging thing only works if the individuals don’t communicate about their guesses, which means that this isn’t in any way an accurate representation of the behaviour described in this article!)