When I wasn’t much younger, I also tended to believe that much of what I read had large elements of truth. But only in the last 5 years or so, do I realize just how full of shit so many people are. What really helped me to grok this was understanding the mechanism by which this happened: people don’t think they’re lying, they twist facts to make it conform to their view of the world which is that it revolves around their belief system, which typically includes that they are a really important person and that any of their own failures are other people’s fault.

I really loved your “Wisdom of Crowds” when I read it so many years ago. It inspired me on several projects. The concept is true is so many ways, but not as universally as I had thought. I didn’t take into account the above mentioned issues, now amplified by social media. I wonder under what conditions your concepts would be more true in a social media environment. A platform with a more “thoughtful” demographic (like Medium)? A system to rate people based off quality of their responses relative to a selected profile (eg entertainment vs thoughtfulness) …if this is even possible. Etc.

I largely don’t listen to anything anybody says on social media anymore. Or the “news”. I’ve learned it’s 95% noise. I don’t even bother to try. I just entertain people with live music and do my job which is cybersecurity architecture and management - where my job is largely to cut through people’s bullshit and hold them accountable for the decisions they make, and throw auditors at them and fire them when necessary for being lazy and managing optics over substance. (The cybersecurity technology itself is easy compared with the human factor - that most people can’t see or just don’t believe)