What’s a good “crowd”?
How do people know they can trust themselves collectively?
Democracy in the US won’t work if the mass can’t think/vote reasonably or behave as “adults”.
If we just use words like “respect” each other – well it’s a good quality but not enough.
I think of some key elements:
a) a crowd needs to be able to deduce correctly – like 1+2=3. Given “1” and “2”, they know those two add up to 3.
b) a crowd needs to be able to double check the facts – like they can verify “1” is “1”, so that misinformation won’t cause much harm.
c) a crowd needs to be able to correct itself. If somehow 1+2 = 10 is the mainstream idea, the crowd can find out they were wrong and make it 1+2=3 in a timely manner.
d) in many more cases, it’s not a deterministic problem. There is no one correct answer, but probably a rang of answers like 1.5-2.5. In this case, people who say 2 don’t need to correct people who say it’s 1.5 or 2.5. Or there is no right or wrong, but just a preference between 1-10. In that case, people needs to recognize the fact that there is a distribution, and a “10” shouldn’t kick a “1” out of the crowd, or vice versa.