[xelxebar]

Perhaps it could be more helpful to think of the caricatures as "spherical cow" models the author is using when trying to isolate and illustrate a particular social (?) dynamic.

Of course real-world models will be much more nuanced, but the really interesting bit is that you don't need all that nuance to produce the particular pathology outlined in the article. Specifically, selecting on "who is most right most of the time?" can end up causing your city to be covered in lava, missing a store break-in, or what-not.

There are even more levels to explore with this idea. For example, should you always ignore the heuristics and go for the earest, honest experts? Maybe. In the volcano example, the cost of a false negative is so high that you probably are okay with the incurred costs of false positives by the experts.

However, in the case of the Futurist, the false-positives incurred for a non-rock opinion might end up netting you less karma points or whatever. It's somewhat fun doing a re-read trying to evaluate the cost-benefit tradeoff yourself in each case!