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Ronfar's avatar

"The IQ of a mob is equal to the average IQ of the people in the mob divided by the number of people in the mob." - My father, quoting something he once heard somewhere

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Philon's avatar

It is hard to distinguish between the influence of formal organizations and that of mobs in determining social outcomes. A certain policy that formally was instituted by a hierarchically organized body—the national government—may, in fact, have been put in place only because it was the consensus of a mob. In the first instance, the relevant mob will likely be the citizens as a whole (the voters, if the nation is a democracy); but this mob consensus may have been formed under the influence of another mob consensus—that of some global elite. Because of these different levels of influence on outcomes, the process of collective decision-making is hard to grasp as a whole; and it is unclear whether society is now relying more on mob decision-making than in the past.

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