Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reform (or to pause and reflect).
Mark Twain
More than just a clever quip, this quote is profoundly relevant in an age where consensus is everything. There are two dangers: one is to always question the majority, the other is to never question the majority. In the first case, you err on the side of caution. That is, you have already cast your doubts, you have expressed your skepticism.
After this point, it is up to you to correct for your excess skepticism by taking into consideration any new evidence. If you insist on remaining skeptical despite convincing arguments to the contrary then you are not involved in the act of thinking and this kind of discussion does not concern you. If you do change your mind when you’re presented with the appropriate evidence and congratulations, your default skepticism has served you well. That is why to be skeptical, in a preemptive way, is an intelligent strategy given that you are honest with yourself.
But the Insidious trap that Mark Twain warns against is when you find yourself on the side of majority, that is, you are not skeptical of the dominant narrative. The folly of this position is that you have fallen prey to groupthink or The Madness of Crowds. As Gustave Le Bon wrote in “The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind” – the group is incapable of critical thinking. Only the individual is capable of thinking critically.
If there is an error in the position taken by the crowd or the majority, it cannot be corrected by the crowd. The crowd is only interested in confirmation bias and categorical black-or-white positions. The individual in the crowd is more interested in vanity than truth, he only wants to make sure that he is not the oddball or the black sheep.
The thinking, if you can even call it that, is “if everyone is wrong then so be it, I will be wrong as well, for it is better to be wrong together than to be right alone.” The individual who challenges the group narrative thereby takes a social risk and a psychological one (it’s mentally taxing to be scapegoated or excluded). But what does he gain? The truth, more often than not, and integrity.
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