3. TIL that 170 people were able to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar accura...

TIL that 170 people were able to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar accurate to .1% when their answers were averaged. Out of 4520 beans, the average guess was 4524. The phenomena is known as wisdom of the crowd.

Wow, I actually found this to be quite fascinating!

I could be way off base here... but I think this is essentially a strong demonstration of multi-core, cluster processing, turned towards fuzzy-mathematical problems, resulting in amplified computing power, and surprisingly accurate results (utilizing a biological computing platform)!

In other words...

the human brain is a naturally occurring computer.

In addition, the human brain may very well be the absolutely MOST POWERFUL computing device in the KNOWN universe, mechanical or biological. (At least on our planet.)

Thus... what this experiment does, is essentially take a problem of fuzzy-logic mathematics, that requires the computer-platform (the human brain in this case) to find a solution that is as CLOSE as possible to the actual precise value...

BUT... in finding this value/solution, we don't need the computer's solution to be absolutely, fully precise. Obviously the closer the better... but an imprecision is acceptable.

SO... this experiment essentially treats each individual human brain as a distinct computing-core, working to solve this fuzzy-logic problem.

You've got 170 computing "cores" (people), each working individually to find the solution, in a fuzzy-mathematics kind of way, without connecting to each other directly.

In the end...

the final solution produced by this computing platform (by averaging the calculations/estimates of all 170 computing "cores" working independently on the same problem), is only 4 items off, out of 4524.

Astonishing! And pretty interesting.

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