If it's popular to believe in something, is it real?

Sometimes. The psychology of "crowd thinking" is a little more complex than that. Sir Francis Galton (who was huge in his contributions to our understanding of statistics) was at a county fair in the late 1800s. There was a contest where people could guess the weight of a cow. The closest guess won. After the contest Galton took the ticket stubs which were just going to be thrown away and examined them. He found most people were way off. People made really stupid guesses like 100lbs and 50,000lbs and even the winner was almost 100lbs off. When he averaged all the tickets together he found the answer came within 5lbs of the actual weight.

There are times when this works and times when it doesn t. Assessing something that can be empirically measured tends to be very accurate. Groups assessing opinions of how great something is tends to be emotionally driven and ends up so-so as we can see on IMDb and youtube. Groups dealing with things that are unknown tends to be unreliable. That is to say, there could very well be elves but the fact that a majority of people believe in elves can t be trusted.

Anyway, that s a very simplistic summary of this material but I hope I gave you the gist of it.

The popularity of a belief only speaks to the belief being ordinary or extraordinary, or in other terms reasonable or unreasonable. A belief held by a large majority would be seen as ordinary and reasonable as opposed to a belief asserted by a tiny minority which would be seen as extraordinary or unreasonable. Truth, and reality are not determined by popularity, in fact history has shown us the popular notion quite often is not an accurate reflection of truth or reality.

In Galileo's time, the popular notion among the scientist of the day was a geocentric universe, It would be another 100 years before sufficient evidence to invalidate that notion was discovered.

In the last 100 years the Big Bang was the popular notion among scientists, it has only been in the last two decades that sufficient observations and evidence has been discovered to recognize the Big Bang is probably wrong. It will likely take a few more decades before it is finally consigned to sciences dust bin of flawed theories.

Since the turn of the Century the Darwinian notion of Common Descent was the popular notion among scientist. Within the last 30 years sufficient evidence has been discovered to recognize the neo-darwinian model does not work, and only in this decade we have seen peer reviewed scientific papers explicitly stating the Neo_darwinian model is false.

That is how science works and advances. An assertion becomes popular and even unquestionable, only to have a small minority introduce evidence that challenges the assertion. As the old guard dies off and the next generation advances these minority 'extraordinary claims' until they ultimately become the popular notion. It is the mavericks, the minority view with the extraordinary and unreasonable claims that inch science forward to new discoveries and greater understanding.

SURE!

You can believe that my own recipe *Spicy Hot Beer Sauce* is great

to simmer beef in for a Taco Salad, without ever having tasted it .... and that'll sho 'nuff make it real !!!

Having been in Iceland, I can tell you, they do sincerely express belief in elves.

Why would anyone in the modern world believe something most of us think is a fairy tale? Because they were taught that as Children, and it is reinforced daily by others around them.

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It doesn't make it real. But maybe it makes it socially unacceptable to belittle the belief.

Well, Santa's little helpers have to live somewhere.

Real truth has never been decided by majority vote.

Objective reality exists independent of the the perceptions or beliefs of any sentient being.

Nope. Reality is not a democracy :P

no....evidence is an indicator of something being real......old books are evidence for old books.....