Feb 184 min read
They Built a Religion While We Slept
In 1906, the British scientist Francis Galton visited a livestock fair in Plymouth. A competition was underway: 800 people, ranging from expert butchers to laypeople with no knowledge of cattle, were asked to guess the weight of an exhibited ox. Galton, a skeptic regarding the intelligence of the masses, collected the guesses afterward. He expected the average to be wildly off the mark. Individual guesses varied tremendously; some thought the ox weighed far too little, others