More thoughts re: the wisdom of the crowds: I suppose the wisdom of the crowds works best when each crowd member is in some sense an “unbiased estimator” of the quantity to be estimated. For example, suppose we ask a crowd to estimate the weight of a large object, but only a few “experts” in the crowd know that the object is hollow inside. In this case, the estimate of a randomly chosen expert could beat the average estimate of the rest of the crowd. I’m not sure how to translate this into a more general-purpose recommendation though.
More thoughts re: the wisdom of the crowds: I suppose the wisdom of the crowds works best when each crowd member is in some sense an “unbiased estimator” of the quantity to be estimated. For example, suppose we ask a crowd to estimate the weight of a large object, but only a few “experts” in the crowd know that the object is hollow inside. In this case, the estimate of a randomly chosen expert could beat the average estimate of the rest of the crowd. I’m not sure how to translate this into a more general-purpose recommendation though.