It's not about the force of authority, but the willingness to defer authority to prevent having to be responsible for the consequences of our own decisions. If

It's not about the force of authority, but the willingness to defer authority to prevent having to be responsible for the consequences of our own decisions. If we go with popular consensus, we absolve ourselves of the guilt if anything goes wrong. "Going with the crowd" is a survival instinct. This isn't controversial. It's observable with both humans, and in the natural world (flocks of birds, schools of fish, herds of whatever, etc...).