The Wisdom of Morons and The Revenge of Idiots

Furor moronicus? A while ago people were always jabbering about something called "the wisdom of crowds" which was, I suppose, the notion that, as the Random House review of the book of the same name says " large groups of people are smarter than an elite few, no matter how brilliant—better at solving problems, fostering innovation, coming to wise decisions, even predicting the future."

Imagine my relief at finding out that this principle only applies to how pedestrians navigate on a crowded sidewalk. So saith the Economist which never seems to follow the wisdom of crowds, because as we know, the wisdom of crowds if there is in fact such a dubious proposition, is currently stuck at the level of fourteen year old girls with smartphones drooling over Justin Bieber: "OMG Justin he's so hot LOLOLOLOLXOXOXOX BFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and other gems of crowd wisdom.

In my view there is nothing worse than a bad idea that won't go away.

When you gather together great numbers of stupid, ignorant, uneducated, unlettered and mentally defective dopes, all you have is lots of stupid people making stupid decisions based on bad information. The whole is less than the sum of its parts. And we know exactly who to blame, and that is Al Gore because he invented the internet.

Image courtesy of Plognark.