Q: Is the earth flat?
Yes: 10%
No: 90%
Yes: 3%
No: 97%
Yes: 10% - 3% = 7%
No: 90% - 97% = -7%
The earth is flat, I guess ;)
Q. Is the earth flat?
Yes: 0.1%
No: 99.9%
Yes: 10%
No: 90%
Conclusion: the earth is not flat.
Not sure where you're getting the "10% believe the earth is flat" from, but if that's just your guess then it's pretty reasonable for people to say they think 10% of people will respond yes to the question.
It's not about what exactly the percentage flat-Earther would be (be it 1% or 0.1%), it's about which question has more "no" percentage.
And it should be Q2 because
Normal people will answer "No" to both questions.
Flat-Earther will answer "Yes" to the first question. Most of them would, however, answer "No" for the second, because they're well aware they are the minority on this topic (think "wake up sheeple!").
Or did you interpret the question as suggested by bena in his sibling answer, ie as an estimate for the answer distribution (that would then have to be averaged) instead of a choice of the most popular answer (as was done in the wiki article)?
That does seem realistic considering how often the topic pf flat-earthers comes up in discussions on social media, despite it being an extremely niche view.
Doesn't seem realistic to me.
I'm not sure, that "yes" imply that the asked person believes that Earth is flat. I probably would be confused if someone asked me such a dumb question (why?), and I answer "yes" to make situation to be obscure not just for me.
I think OKCupid got numbers like this for the question, or something like "is the Earth bigger than the Sun". To which I attribute to the smartass constant -- or rather that dumb questions elicit dumb responses.
But, interestingly, there may be a symmetry between people who overestimate the amount of creationists and creationists who underestimate their numbers.
So maybe that technique is actually valid. It spots an asymmetry in people who think the majority is wrong on something.
It could just as easily be crazy answers from crazy people.
* each side believes that those who disagree are wrong, not just mistaken in their remembrance of a fact.
* each side is well-informed about which view is more popular
The fact that everyone is willing to stick to their answer despite everyone knowing what "most people" think means that an answer's being surprisingly popular doesn't bear either way on its being right. The test is ideal for simple questions of fact which are not disputed.
As you said, knowingly going against the consensus does not an expert make.
The correct answer to the second question is "No". That is what most people would say. So technically, if we saw Yes:0, No:100, that would just mean everyone knows what they popular choice is.
What they want to ask is "How many people would say the answer is "No"?" Then if the answers are far afield, we can say whether or not an answer is surprisingly popular.
So in the article and with your example, the second question isn't actually a reflection of the proportions of the first. They're kind of disconnected.
Still, the article says this:
Because of the relatively high margin of 10%, there can
be high confidence that the [surprisingly popular answer
is correct]
One, I'm sure that nowhere near 10% of an educated population believes in flat-earthism.
Two, I think this technique is certain to yield the correct answer quite a bit more often than it will yield an incorrect one. Since it claims to achieve "high confidence" and not "absolute confidence" I think it would still be a pretty valuable metric in many instances.
Guess this technique may also detect facts that are involved in common conspiracy.