Have you noticed that on a difficult question, the majority is not correct ?

Question

To shadowrench,

Terrific. Thanks.

Answer 1

Thats why you take these answers like a grain of salt

Answer 2

This can be true for a variety of reasons. The biggest perhaps is that the general population simply doesn't have the education or expertise to properly weigh in on difficult questions. Also, a lot of people make decisions based on their beliefs, dogmas, desires, feelings, etc. rather than by using rational thought. Politicians are experts at exploiting these flaws, and use populism and demagoguery to sway the public their way. Admittedly, it's partly our fault, because in a poorly (i.e. government-) educated society, democracy is often more of a popularity contest than a meritocracy, and those with the best demagoguery skills are the ones who get elected (and re-elected, ad infinitum).

Answer 3

Hey ffantasizing, I think some people just get on here to answer questions for the points whether it be 1, 2 or 10 points, or they just understand the question differently than those who know exactly what it's asking, sometimes I think I know what the question is asking but when I read the rest of the question it turns out to be something completely different than the actual question, sometimes the difficult questions are just hard to understand because the person asking the question uses such confusing vocabulary it's hard to understand. I hope this isn't confusing, happy holidays ffantasizing.

Answer 4

Think of it as a statistic.

I'll give you two variables, both from 1 to 100. One is "Difficulty" and the other is "Likelihood of correctness"

as 'Difficulty' goes up, then likelihood must come down, so that it always adds up to 100.

e.g:
Difficulty: 25
Likelihood: 75%
e.g 2:
Difficulty: 80
Likelihood: 20%

Naturally, things that question opinion and are impossible to tell if correct will always be a difficulty of X meaning that Likelihood of Correctness must also be X (Where X is the unknown variable).

Answer 5

Yeah it would be nice if some people would try to answer at least some questions seriously every once in a while. I try unless I get really bored than sarcasm kicks in and forget about it. You might get a half babble out of me after 3 a.m.

Answer 6

Yes, I've noticed that. Much of the time it looks like the person didn't really read the question correctly. Or, if they did, they didn't understand it. Much of the time the answers don't even address the question, but go off on some kind of unrelated tangent...