I think there may be some signaling issues to be considered here. We all presumably self-identify to some degree as rationalists, and want to validate Less Wrong as a rationalist community. The more rational a community is, the closer to zero the average guess ought to come. So by guessing zero, lowering the average, you contribute to a signal that Less Wrong is a rational sort of place, and validate your own participation. This could be avoided by not revealing the average guess, but then we’ve gone away from interesting sociological experiment and into forum games.
I think there may be some signaling issues to be considered here. We all presumably self-identify to some degree as rationalists, and want to validate Less Wrong as a rationalist community. The more rational a community is, the closer to zero the average guess ought to come. So by guessing zero, lowering the average, you contribute to a signal that Less Wrong is a rational sort of place, and validate your own participation. This could be avoided by not revealing the average guess, but then we’ve gone away from interesting sociological experiment and into forum games.
Or rationalists on LessWrong could conspire to vote “100”, thus winning and defeating a dogmatic traditional rationalist who voted “0″.