Breaking the herd effect, the key is to break the group beliefs
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public number “Chaotic University (ID: hundun-university), author Li Shanyou.
Among the obstacles of rational thinking, the deepest bone marrow, which is difficult to break, is the herd effect. The key to breaking the herd effect is to break the group belief.
Rational thinking is not perfect
Cognitive upgrading has four levels, followed by perceptual thinking, rational thinking, logic, and philosophy. The first upgrade, from perceptual thinking to rational thinking, we present a tool called a multi-thinking model that uses such a model to break the boundaries of perceptual experience.
However, is rational thinking without defects?
The answer is no.
This is a serious problem. Because of the structural defects of the human brain, our rational thinking also has structural defects. The example of artificial intelligence AlphaGo can fully explain this point. It beats the famous Go player Ke Jie with a big score, relying on huge storage capacity – the chess path of thousands of players of this level record. Humans cannot have such memory, of course no one can beat AlphaGo.
But this is nothing remarkable. It is like an adult and a child competing for brain power. Adults will win, but they have no essential difference in brain capacity and brain structure.
The most terrifying thing is the artificial intelligence that defeats AlphaGo – AlphaGo Zero. Its mode is not to remember all the moves, but to tell the rules of Go, after it competes with itself, it produces some rules of the game. In other words, it does not remember the formula, but develops the formula itself. In just a few months, it will be able to beat AlphaGo 100:0.
The above example is the best proof of the flaws in human thinking. The best thoughts of all mankind add up, and they are still locked in a black box. AlphaGo Zero does not have this congenital confinement, so it is better to go out of the chess path than the human collective thinking.
The human mind is problematic. The problem is that you use the thinking model to distort the outside world. When you use your eyes to get information from the outside world, you say that you are seeing is believing, and then use your innate thinking structure to organize all the pieces of empirical information and formKnowledge and judgment. But the problem is that you don’t know that this is a distorted conclusion. In order to protect your own survival, you will say that others are wrong and that you are right. This is the most serious problem.
All human arguments and even wars are essentially because their respective models of thinking are different from the outside world, and you are paranoid that what I see is the truth. Therefore, from a large scale, our rational barriers are more threatening than perceptual obstacles.
Stanovic has a book called “Beyond IQ.” At the beginning of this book, I asked a question, why do smart people do stupid things? There are two reasons that are most important:
First, everyone looks at the world with a shallow thinking model;
Second, your thinking model is polluted. The second one here is more toxic. Imagine if you analyze the problem and see the world’s thinking model is toxic and polluted, can you draw the correct conclusion?
In the obstacles of rational thinking, the most in-depth, unbreakable, is the herd effect. The herd effect is the phenomenon in which individuals change their thoughts, judgments, and actions in order to be consistent with the surrounding groups. There is a saying in Worldview: We usually think that our beliefs are supported by facts and evidence, but in reality the facts and evidence are surprisingly small. Most of our beliefs, you believe it, simply because people around you believe it.
This passage may make you uncomfortable. Everyone will be an independent thinker, but this book tells us that most of the beliefs that are formed by independent thinking are yours when you were young. Parents and teachers have been educated. You have to think independently, and there is almost no evidence to support them.
Back to life, you ask yourself, if you believe in the truth around you, do you think it must be right? Most people will think that it is impossible for me to be right and they are all wrong! If you insist on different opinions from the group, you will be suppressed by the people around you: Isn’t everyone worse than you? Do you know more than experts? Why are you not gregarious?
How is the herding effect produced? This is going back to the jungle era where our ancestors were. At that time, human beings were very weak. In order to better cope with the harsh natural environment, it was necessary to form a group. Only when the groups gathered together could they provide the security sense that the individual needed. Until now, although humans no longer have to face the threat of the natural environment, the need for this sense of security has been preserved. In the contemporary era, the herd effect caused by the security needs has brought all kinds of evil consequences. A typical case is the Ponzi scheme such as P2P.
As early as 1997, a national economy called Albania collapsed and fell into turmoil, which was caused by a Ponzi scheme. The monthly interest return is 30%, and 50% of the nation’s adults are involved in this scam.The more people do this, the more people believe its authenticity, and finally 50% of the country’s funds are invested in the Ponzi scheme, and the five largest fraud companies have only $49 million in assets. The debt generated is equivalent to twice the GDP.
In contrast to the domestic, similar fraud has occurred. Before e-rental, the total investment was 900,000, and the registered users of Qianbao exceeded 200 million, with a total turnover of more than 50 billion. Investors who have been defrauded of property, you ask him why, most of them say that because their friends voted, they voted. After all, they think that if others do, most people are doing it, that is right, the typical herd effect.
There is a saying in “A Brief History of Thinking” that the truth, the vast majority of people believe is called truth. The herd effect is like a black hole. You can’t escape. The center of this black hole is group belief. The more beliefs there are, the more people you attract, and then continue to strengthen this group belief. In the end, it is like a black hole. With a so-called rational belief, everyone is trapped in an irrational madness.
Especially in China, we Chinese people prefer to hold groups and like to believe in collective beliefs, but if we do not break the herding effect, it is very harmful to improve our ability to innovate. Imagine if most people fall into the herd effect and you can jump out of the crowd and think in a higher dimension. Isn’t that the entry point for your innovation?
Three traps for the group
If you study the herding effect from a disciplinary perspective, this discipline is called group psychology. It studies the psychology that occurs when most individuals get together, which is different from the psychology that occurs when individuals are alone. In the book “The Ugly”, the author gives some very instructive conclusions about group psychology.
1. Groups are not smart
We think it’s “three smugglers, the top one is Zhuge Liang”, but the author gives the opposite view – the group is not wise. Once a person becomes a member of the group, his intelligence will drop greatly. What is a member of the group? There is no individual identity, no independence, and the belief of the group becomes the individual’s belief. Under such a background, your intelligence will be greatly reduced.
“The superposition of groups is just a stupid superposition, and most people constitute a ignorant group.” We will say that the whole world will be smarter than Voltaire, but the truth is probably the other way around: Voltaire is smarter than the whole world.