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For one thing, Mr. Keen says, “history has proven that the crowd is not often very wise,” embracing unwise ideas like “slavery, infanticide, George W. Bush’s war in Iraq, Britney Spears.” The crowd created the tech bubble of the 1990s, just as it created the disastrous Tulipmania that swept the Netherlands in the 17th century.

Newsflash: the crowd hasn't embraced Britney Spears. She has some fans. Other people take a mild interest in what she's up to, but America never took Brit to its bosom.

And if the crowd embraced the tech boom of the 1990s was it necessarily "wrong" to do so? People may not have gotten off when they should have, but they recognized what was going on at the time.

As I understand it, the loonier theories about the end of the business cycle were rarely the work of ordinary men and women. They were concocted by the very sort of journalistic and academic gatekeepers that Keen favors.

I think the thesis is that over time majorities tend to get it right more often than wrong, and that holds up.

Of course, there is no divine right of crowds, but one can go broke underestimating the intelligence of the collective intelligence of the public.

Situations where a whole culture may be wrong about something are another matter altogether.

Priesthoods, experts, and intellectuals don't come out looking any better than ordinary people in such cases.

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Of course, there is no divine right of crowds, but one can go broke underestimating the intelligence of the collective intelligence of the public.

But you can bet that any time a room of monkeys starts typing, there will be typographical mistakes.

I meant to say "Of course, there is no divine right of crowds, but one can go broke underestimating the collective intelligence of the public."