# kaal:claim:3782217-009

**Claim.** Condorcet's Jury Theorem cuts both ways: larger groups of slightly stupid people, defined as being wrong slightly more than half the time, are worse than smaller groups of stupid people, so the idiocy of the mob is the counterbalance to the wisdom of the crowd.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** argued

**Holds when.**

- average member correct less than half the time

**Source quote.**

> larger groups of slightly stupid people are worse than smaller groups of stupid people. The idiocy of the mob is the counterbalance to the wisdom of the crowd.

**From.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, *The Importance of History In Decentralization* (2021), Condorcet's Jury Theorem, page 4

**Cite as.** Craig Calcaterra, Wulf A. Kaal, The Importance of History In Decentralization (2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3782217

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `358779557d8e7dcd101720ca0fad90b9146d24f1c7c03909eb431fcf1fb7e103` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Calcaterra%20and%20Kaal%20-%202021%20-%20The%20Importance%20of%20History%20In%20Decentralization.pdf

**Failure mode.** idiocy-of-the-mob  (family: governance-participation-collapse)

**Topics.** governance-design

**Keywords.** condorcet, wisdom-of-the-crowd, voting, aggregation-failure

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.