Are you smarter than the average person answering this question? Yes  61% 44 No  39% 28 72 votes total

This poll (of the Lake Wobegon effect) can be interpreted in two ways:

1. Respondents suffer from “Illusory superiority, a that causes people to overestimate their positive qualities and abilities and to underestimate their negative qualities, relative to others.” The question and results (>50% cannot be smarter!) are obviously incompatible with reality, which is why it’s called illusory!
2. Respondents failed to coordinate their answers (yes/no) to arrive at a 50/50 balance. Although many people may feel that they are smart, most of them are unwilling to say that they are smartER when they are in a group of peers. Respondents who were thinking that way would be interested in voting 50/50, but they had to choose yes or no. The fact that results are not 50/50 indicates that respondents were NOT all pursuing it (e.g, 16 people thought they were smarter), or that they failed to coordinate — an easy problem to solve if you could look at the results before voting.

Bottom Line: It’s important to remember that none of is is smarter than all of us, and that we are probably dumber than average on MANY things (learning opportunity!). Further, we should keep in mind that information and coordination problems make it hard to turn even the best intentions into good results (read Hayek!)