When the majority is wrong

From Encyc

When the majority is wrong is a concept that is used to describe that, with regards to many specialised fields, what the majority of people in the world think is correct is actually wrong. This concept is used to explain why, in certain very important topics, a project that encourages the viewpoints of the majority as opposed to the viewpoints of the experts, such as Wikipedia, is presenting false and misleading information that seeks to stupefy people. This criticism of Wikipedia has been pushed the most ardently by Larry Sanger. The criticism is also applied to a number of other "majority rules" projects, including the internet as a whole, and was used as a concept many times to discourage the existence of the internet itself and then of internet search engines. It has also been used to discourage a number of other popularity = knowledge concepts.

When the majority is right

What the majority thinks is usually right. On most simple, easy to understand topics, which do not require any expertise to understand, what the majority thinks is correct. Although there are rare instances where a simple topic is actually presented falsely by the majority, these are rare and can usually be easily accounted for. This is why a project such as Wikipedia excels in creating excellent articles on South Park, The Simpsons, on virtually any celebrity, actor or musician (with a few notable exceptions) and why, with regards to popular culture, it creates an excellent sample of knowledge.

Broad examples of when the majority is wrong

The majority can be wrong for a number of broad reasons. These can include:

  • The topic is too complex for the majority to understand and has not been adequately simplified.
  • The topic is highly controversial, with multiple alternative viewpoints as to what really happened.
  • The topic is political (including racial/gender/religion/nation/sexual preference lines) and you will believe either what the majority thinks or what that line that you represent thinks.
  • There are secrets associated with the topic and the government and its secret service agency has deliberately lied about it.

Specific examples of when the majority is wrong

Too complex - serial comma

The majority of people, as a whole, do not understand how to use grammar properly. People misuse semicolons, commas, punctuation, capitalisation and a variety of other grammar tools. Such is the misuse that Wikipedia has sought to present what the majority of ill-informed people have said is what a serial comma is, when in actual fact it disagrees with what all of the grammar authorities state.

Grammar is not ambiguous; rather it is a set of rules. The serial comma is an example of those rules and it is not controversial at all. Rather, it is misused by a number of people who prefer to use grammar incorrectly.

This is an example of something which is too complex for most people to understand.

Controversial and secrets associated - Port Arthur massacre

In actual fact, what the majority of people think, per the Google test, is that the Port Arthur massacre did not happen in the way that it is officially described and that Martin Bryant either was not guilty at all, was not the gunman, or was not the lone gunman. However, because of various suppression orders, it is difficult to get what Wikipedia describes as "reliable sources" to verify this - only people's opinions, logical trains of thought, statements, photographic and video evidence and official legal documents.

In this case, what Wikipedia has presented has also been a result of a cabal, primarily by Wikipedia administrator Robert Merkel and later by Wikipedia administrator Thebainer, with several others assisting, who have deliberately lied about this issue so as to change truth on the issue, hoping that people will eventually accept the official story, or worse, their version of events. It has worked to some extent too, which is very dangerous.

Too complex and political - black hole and worm hole theory

Both black holes and worm holes are theories, not fact, and both are based on theories presented in 1916 by Albert Einstein. In spite of this, the majority of people think that black holes are proven fact whilst worm holes are science fiction. In actual fact, Stephen Hawking has theoretically proven that worm holes not only can exist but that they can be man made and be able to be sustained, whilst black holes have never been theoretically proven to be possible, because they disagree with the laws of physics. Stephen Hawking has suggested ways that black holes could one day be proven to be theoretically possible, and that they could be an explanation for certain astronomical phenomena, but he has stated that, to this point in time we cannot say that they exist or that they could theoretically exist. Whilst both are theories and neither have been proven in any real sense, worm holes, not black holes, have been proven to be theoretically possible.

From 1916-1957 and possibly until 1967, it was normal for students to be taught worm hole theory (although they did not have a name until 1957), and after the concept of a black hole was invented in 1967, that theory too was taught to students. At some point between 1967 and today, teachers the world over decided to teach black holes as if they were fact, at least when first teaching black hole theory to students, usually at junior high school level (for most people, this is as far as they go with regards to learning about black holes).

The motivation for why this happened is speculative. It had been suggested that the reason was that worm hole theory was disproven, but this is actually not true. It has also been suggested that black hole theory was proven, but again this is not true.

A probable reason for this is because of the work done by Albert Einstein in collaboration with the US government from 1937 until his death in 1955 in trying to find a gateway for a possible worm hole that he theorised existed in the Bermuda triangle that Einstein theorised was responsible for the missing ships, planes and other mysterious circumstances of the area. The 18 year-long work was meant to prove through physical experiments whether worm holes existed, whether one existed in the Bermuda triangle, and where it led to. This work was officially ended with Einstein's death in 1955.

Why this is relevant is because, if worm holes were proven to exist in a real sense, then we would have a valid reason to believe that aliens could visit earth (which it has been proven that they could not do through space travel, as they would be too far away and could not travel fast enough).

In the wake of the Roswell incident and various other UFO incidents, the US government had a vested interest in telling the people that there was no theoretical way for aliens to visit earth, thus rubbishing worm hole theory and encouraging black hole theory as an alternative. Encouraging teachers to teach black hole theory as if it were fact whilst simultaneously pretending that worm hole theory was farcical was a way to avoid such an issue.

We can speculate as to whether there really is a worm hole in the Bermuda triangle or where it leads to, or indeed whether the US government did actually find out where it leads to. We can speculate as to whether they ever did prove absolutely that worm holes do exist in a practical sense.

Worm holes have been proven to exist in a theoretical sense by Albert Einstein, and his bridge that links the two points, called the Einstein-Rosen bridge, has been theoretically proven by Stephen Hawking to be able to be man made and sustainable, as shown in science fiction shows including Star Trek.

In an ideal world, students would be taught about both worm hole and black hole theory at the same time, at a basic level, in high school, and taught about both as theory, not as fact. Political reasons are the probable driving force as to why the majority has the wrong idea about this topic.

How to counter this kind of problem

There are simple ways to counter this kind of problem that have been used by historians throughout history when dealing with bias. These include:

  • Have the project written by experts on the topics only (as all real encyclopaedias are, but not Wikipedia).
  • All articles are to be owned, by either 1 person or, in some cases, a few people, with others assisting with minor fixes.
  • Details about who the author is, in terms of their qualifications and any possible bias, be listed in some way next to the article, so that the truth and especially the bias can be accounted for.
  • Acknowledge all authors and their contributions.
  • Do not accept majority thoughts on specialised areas.

Regarding Wikipedia specifically

This is one of many reasons why Wikipedia can never be successful as a reference work. Their pillars, the foundation of their entire site, revolves around what the majority think, not what experts think. Even if they were to accept the concept of experts, too much damage has been done, too many false things presented as fact, and the majority of users to the site would be angry that what the majority says would be undone. They might argue that they have every right to disagree with Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking about issues that were the foundation of their work, when they are two of the greatest geniuses of their time periods, because the majority disagree with them.

Wikipedia can still be incredibly useful, in spite of this. They are fantastic with regards to finding out about anything to do with popular culture, including South Park, Spongebob Squarepants, Red Dwarf, or what a celebrity is doing. Even with regards to their hopelessly inaccurate work, they can be useful as a starting point, just the same.

What people should be doing when using Wikipedia, for anything other than the most obvious facts, to check the references that Wikipedia uses, and also to at a bare minimum do a Google search and find out if other sites agree with Wikipedia. If you find that the references used in the Wikipedia article completely disagree with what Wikipedia says (as was the case with the Port Arthur massacre article) or that what the majority of the hits in Google completely disagree with what Wikipedia says (as is the case with the Port Arthur massacre), then you know not to regard the Wikipedia article too highly. Beyond that, though, you also should be taking things with a "grain of salt", especially with controversial things. What Wikipedia says might be true, and it is probably at least close to true; but just because something is written by multiple people doesn't make it accurate. Check things out thoroughly. Find what you would consider to be an expert on the topic, and read what they have to say. If it is an issue with multiple competing viewpoints, then check out viewpoints from experts representing all, or at least a sample, of the viewpoints. In some cases, you might find that Wikipedia does all of that anyway. However, thanks to Wikipedia's theoretically impossible NPOV rule, you will probably find that only 1 of these viewpoints is represented or that alternatively the article represents a mixture of several viewpoints, which is false overall no matter how you look at it. You also might well find that Wikipedia is presenting the view of a cabal, which is not the view of any experts on the topic at all.

It is important to note that popularity doesn't equal truth. In the words of Stephen Colbert, it can equal "truthiness"; but it cannot represent truth. 1 + 1 = 2, even if most people think that it equals 3. Pay attention to the experts on the topic, not on 15 year old school children or the brainwashed masses.