inner-crowd

If you guess twice and average your guesses, you are often closer to the truth than either guess alone — as if a small crowd lived inside your head.

The trick works because each guess carries some accident in it (mood, the moment, what came to mind first), and accidents partly cancel when averaged. It works better the more the guesses are strangers to each other — waiting weeks helps, and deliberately arguing against your first answer (dialectical bootstrapping) helps the same afternoon. But the inner crowd has a floor: it can cancel only your accidents, never your lean. Whatever you always get wrong the same way, every member of the inner crowd gets wrong with you. Measured: a second guess from yourself is worth about a tenth of a second opinion from someone else; after three weeks, about a third (Vul & Pashler 2008).