This also matches my observation about society, collective, the hive-mind,
and leads me to the following formula:
CONTRARIANS on average
< MAINSTREAM on average
< nuanced takes of intelligent informed people
< MAINSTREAM consilience (mainstream converging on the same conclusion via different routes (methods, data)
< nuanced takes of intelligent informed people CONSILIENCE
< experts’ consilience
< rare genius in his field (paradigm shift) (only when confirmed then by experts)
It’s easy to be a contrarian. Just have contrary opinion,
The world works the way it works. That way works. It’s a tautology
Improving upon it is NOT trivial
You don’t spurt out of the womb, observe a couple things over 15-20 years of your life, and then magically have “ideas” how to FIX the world.
You’re not better than our modern world. You inherit structures and systems of profound sophistication and usefulness
Therefore,
Therefore on average, contrarians are more wrong than mainstream
Being a true, brilliant contrarian, a VISIONARY, is the top of the list, and is as rare as a diamond
An average contrarian is even worse than average mainstream truism
Indeed, mainstream on average is NOT a high bar
The mass can gleefully believe a ton of nonsense
And that nonsense self-reinforces through repetition
And the very fact of the mass being behind it, giving it false credibility
However, again, like previously mentioned,
The belief can’t be SO dysfunctional so as to ruin the functioning of the system
Of course, often there are wiser, deeper guardrails embedded in the system, to prevent mass ignorance, delusion, tyranny of the mass, from taking over and destroying everything
Next we have nuanced takes of intelligent informed people
This can be contrarian, but doesn’t have to be
It can simply be a more nuanced perspective, that nevertheless more or less aligns with the mainstream, only slightly improving upon it
Or it could be correcting the greatest delusions of the mainstream at the time
Obviously a single thinking person will typically get better outcomes than a single unthinking person, or million of unthinking drones
…but NOT EVEN THAT is always true — as again — the mass is potentially inheriting existing wisdom, even if without comprehension
Which again, takes more than one informed, intelligent contrarian to transcend. Paradigms are shifted by geniuses, visionaries
Next we have mainstream CONSILIENCE
When mainstream converges at similar conclusion through different paths, based on different data and sources, different methods and methodologies, different cohorts… that is VERY powerful
This is because errors get auto-corrected
While probabilities of correctness raise each time a different source corroborated a perspective
E.g. if people of different social backgrounds, different careers, different cultures, different countries maybe, different education, different life choices, different temperaments , different ways of thinking, different perspectives and points of view, different INCENTIVES…
when tend to converge on certain conviction — that is a VERY strong evidence in favour of the conclusion
This is still “mainstream”, for it really is a belief espoused by the masses
It’s just that now it’s differentiated from the MAINSTREAM DELUSIONS,
which are the converse: the cases when mainstream converged on a conclusion but via the SAME SOURCE, same perspective, same single funnel
for instance, when a certain paradigm becomes too strong, and embeds itself right near the source — it starts colouring all the data and processes that come in touch with it — drastically reducing the plurality, diversity, decentralisation, informational checks and balances
I believe mainstream consilience is drastically underrated
I place it over “nuanced takes of intelligent informed people”
Because single intelligent person can only know so much, and think so much
The decentralised knowledge tested by countless individuals across space and time is comically oversized, vs one smart informed person
Those folk tend to overrate their precious contrarian and common-sense and original takes, vs the “dumb masses”
Masses are dumb indeed,
But when there’s consilience of the masses, it becomes extremely powerful
…of course, consilience of intelligent people, is just an improvement of the consilience of the masses
Just like nuanced views of informed intelligent people are an improvement over un-nuanced views of dumb masses
And then, of course experts’ consilience beats that, BY DEFINITION,
Just like experts ALWAYS beat non-experts,
…PROVIDED this really is a domain where such thing as EXPERTISE even exists, which is not given
Expertise easily becomes corrupted, for it’s so valuable
Expertise is born out of DEMONSTRABLE superiority of understanding, often demonstrated in practice
That’s by DEFINITION superior to both masses and mere intelligent individuals and merely powerful individuals who nevertheless lack that knowledge — which is the leverage
But that in and of itself is so desirable thus, that this enterprise of expertise quickly becomes corrupted, so that it can continue to wield it’s power
Then, of course, once it became corrupted — it’s no longer expertise — which ought to be neatly proven
But there’s some lag, some hysteresis, before it does get proven
But the bottom line is,
EXPERTS’ CONSILIENCE will of course outperform consilience of a bunch of intelligent individuals,
Finally, there’s the rare genius that transcends the mainstream, transcends the paradigm, and transcends (social) consilience too
It’s extremely rare
It’s Einstein-level stuff
And when it DOES happen — it will quite likely quickly be vindicated, in this day and age
And if it’s not vindicated… then perhaps it just wasn’t so brilliant, after all
I believe it will be vindicated — because of the VERY structure I described
In a healthy hierarchy like that — experts will wield considerable power
And considerable understanding
They’re incentives will align with corroborating the paradigm shift. It’s literally their life’s purpose, if those are true experts indeed
From there, it will be adopted by intelligent people, who actually understand experts to be fucking experts.
+the consilience among intelligent, informed people will reinforce it
And then it will go downstream, to the mainstream indeed
Which, preferably, will prove it via consilience — as given belief, method, development — will prove itself in various different places, in various different ways
Until eventually, hopefully, it even becomes completely mainstream — like understanding that earth is round