Peter Thiel: There is no wisdom of crowds

September 30, 2025

Thiel suggests that the antithesis of his book Zero To One is Malcolm Gladwell’s The Wisdom of Crowds.

“If you have to give credit to Malcolm Gladwell, the way the argument actually works in the wisdom of crowds is if you have a crowd of people and they independently make a judgement, you can average it out and you’ll get to a pretty good idea.”

The classic example is asking a group of people to independently guess how many marbles are in a bag—the average answer will be pretty good.

“But the problem is that in most cases, the decisions don’t end up getting made individually.” Thiel explains. “People are influenced by one another. And when you have a crowd dynamic in which people are drawing conclusions because they’re looking toward one another, that is where the crowd is untruth.”

Thiel believes imitation is a deep part of human nature:

“Kids learn language by copying their parents. It’s how culture is transmitted in our society. But it’s also how very many things go wrong.”

Thiel believes you need to go against the crowd if you want to accomplish something truly great. He points out that many of the most successful entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley seem to be suffering from a mild form of Aspergers.