On My Mind: Collective Intelligence
I know I'm not the only one who has noticed the phenomenon where, if you take a large number of smart individuals and put them in a group, they can make some very stupid decisions. It's almost as if the IQ of a collective drops a solid 10-20 points over the members themselves, a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. Far less; arguably quite often less than any single individual of the group.
Religion and politics especially are two such topics where people can be individually entirely agreeable but then support some ideas that would leave you flabbergasted. I, myself, distanced myself from some individuals I'd known for a long time when I found out that they seemingly uncharacteristically support Trump, for example, purely due to the influence of their family or their previous partisan affiliation.
Why does this come about? My very simple hypothesis is that it comes down to a greatest common divisor within the group; So as not to exclude anyone from the group, said group discusses and bonds over topics understandable by the slowest of its members. Regardless of how intelligent people may individually be, put into a group that they feel compelled to fit into, they will bring themselves down to the level of a matter well below them, in order to conform and keep their standing with the collective.
Given that the group will have intelligence less than that of any individual influential member with power proportional to the number of members, it can then be seen why bureaucracy can "sticky up" the system; there may be more members, but they will progress slower. This goes for both philosophical progress, as well as more tangible phenomenon such as businesses.
It's a stupid herd mentality, and one that may well take a concious and concerted effort to distance oneself from, but at the end of the end of they day it will undoubtedly benefit you as a person to stop slowing your own progress to the pace of the slowest person you're associated with. Better yet, it will benefit you to break free of that need to conform and follow the herd entirely.
Question everything you know rationally, be skeptical, and be open to new answers should they become apparent. Hold yourself and noone else accountable for your beliefs; no dogma, no familial pressure, no tradition, no partisan influence. Be your own person.
We usually do not think of it in that way, but you raise some interesting and valid points.
And you support that idea by pointing out the truth that, in religion and politics, herd mentality often dominates. I've lived in 6 countries now, and one thing I've seen is how a certain idea can become a predominant meme in a culture / society.
However, the minute one moves OUT of that society, it becomes clear that the idea is not the absolute truth, just an idea that took hold and grew and captured the mind-set of the people. But for various reasons, the people cling to it as truth, even past the point where the idea begins to have an insidious effect on the society.
It's difficult to overcome such powerful "thought control," but it can be done.
Think for yourself, and realize your own truth.