[antithesis]

He isn't being very fair: where the goal at first was to be as right as possible, it later became "to piss off as few of the 300 guests as possible". I'm not sure what exact procedure he had in mind for businesses, but in a situation where "votes eliminate the interesting edges, leaving only the boring residue that no one hated enough to vote off the island" applies, you're just not talking about the wisdom of crowds anymore, this wasn't possible in his earlier examples either. An important factor to the wisdom of crowds, and a key difference between his earlier examples and his later examples, is that people vote independently, without even talking about what they're going to vote.

For demonstrational purposes, I will now take his holiday meal situation and apply actual wisdom of crowds to them. This isn't a very usual situation, but this is about properly applying the wisdom of crowds.

Instead of people stating what they dislike, people may nominate a meal, and afterwards, everyone votes for the meal they want to go with. Like in the Wants to be a Millionaire examples, people cannot talk in this process - they cannot state what they dislike. Instead, the fact that some people can't take spicy food will show in the results, but beside that, every individual will pick a meal that isn't boring, and the end result will be just that. "Allergic to garlic" and "doesn’t eat anything green" are rather specific complaints and were not taken into account, so let's count those 3 people as unsatisfied, but the success here is that most people will in fact be satisfied with the meal.

[smartbear]

You can't use your technique for meals because everyone will suggest a different meal, and then you have no basis for a decision. That technique works when you're voting on one variable which has one CORRECT value which you're trying to seek. Creative work is not that.