THE MAJORITY IS ALWAYS WRONG

Sir,
 
A Norwegian poet and playwright extraordinaire of the late 19th century once said; “The majority is always wrong; and the minority is rarely right.” He is supposed to have reworded the same statement as; “A minority may be right but the majority is always wrong.”  I don’t know which version was uttered first or if these were utterances at all. It’s just fascinating how one person comes to the conclusion that most people are wrong to the point of delusion (he never said ‘delusion’, but I saw an opportunity for a rhyme and I took it). If you thought those were the only two instances where the poet was critical of the knowledge of the majority, or lack thereof, then you thought wrong because he would also include this in his important play, An Enemy of the People.

Dr. Stockmann is portrayed as struggling against the tyranny of the majority about the contamination of the city’s drainage system. Imagine public opinion so arrogant it corrects the opinion of an expert in their field. The people of the town antagonise Stockmann to the point of lashing out. He utters in frustration; “The majority is never right. Never, I tell you! That’s one of these lies in society that no free and intelligent man can help rebelling against. Who are the people that make up the biggest proportion of the population—the intelligent ones or the fools?”

Prove

Is it possible to prove the majority’s ineptitude? I do not know, but let us try. If you were to ask a friend (if you’re without friends, shotsi asikhulumi nawe) to carry out a thought experiment where you provide the following premise. You say to them, listen, imagine I come to you with this coin (then you produce a coin) and I tell you that this is a fair coin i.e. there is a 50 per cent chance of getting either heads or tails. Now, imagine I spin this coin and it lands on tails 99 times in sequence and I ask you, what is the probability that it lands on heads on the 100th spin? How would you respond? Your friend will probably answer, “50 per cent, of course.” They will reason that the outcome of a spin is an independent event (occurs without affecting the next outcome); and that the coin is fair, so the probability of the coin landing on heads is 50 per cent every time. This, of course, is a logical conclusion, but what is more likely; that a fair coin lands 99 tails in a row, or that the coin isn’t fair at all and is loaded to land on tails on every spin? The latter, right?

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