I was going through the playlist of an online course on Social Network Analysis offered by the Indian Institute of Technology (Madras), when I came across the claim that "when a lot of people get together and start discussing and debating conflicting ideas, true knowledge is known to emerge"-- and thus implying that Wikipedia, as such a platform, would in general have accurate information. Here is the link to the video.
But the video just claims that and moves on, focusing more on selection, Social influence, similarity measure etc. So it does not tell us "why" this is true (theoretically) or what is the empirical evidence behind this claim (practically).
One possibility that comes to my mind is Robert Aumann's theorem claiming the impossibility of two perfect Bayesian thinkers "agreeing to disagree" -- famous in Economics, which is my home field. But I have no idea how this may connect to social network analysis, or if Aumann's theorem has anything to do with it at all or not.
I would want to know, theoretically why is the video's claim true, or true atleast approximately (any mathematical theorem or maybe reference to some reading material) and if possible, any empirical evidence to back it up.
