4 ms·

That experiment makes me uncomfortable.

Verdex 6y ago
I mean a little bit yeah. But problem solving through peer pressure is a real thing and it's totally legitimate. You do get some weird artifacts (because it functions via a weird distributed statistical function) and it can be exploited. Some countries that get low amounts of sunlight due to latitude eat fish for breakfast. Apparently the nutrients in fish help you biologically deal with not having enough sunlight. And this results in statistically better health outcome vs other countries at the same latitude that don't eat fish as much. Did eating fish start because people were running double blind 30 year dietician studies? Nope, it's just what other people were doing. Think about it this way. Some problems are really hard to actually understand. And if you screw up you'll die (so you can't exactly learn the lesson even if the lesson was obvious). Culture and social cohesion is important because other people have learned (maybe unconsciously) a fatal lesson by watching others fail to learn that lesson. It can be life or death for you to pick up on that lesson. It's also important that people question why we do things. Because otherwise we can end up all standing up when a bell rings for no reason. But both methods are necessary. Even if we end up doing some stupid things for a while as we sort out reality. EDIT: I'm actually mostly unaffected by peer pressure. It sounds impressive because I'm extremely unlikely to do something stupid like stand up when a bell rings. Additionally, I can go off and learn things like type theory, lambda calculus, most programming languages like it's easy. But the catch is that type theory is only easy compared to trying to understand social interaction logically. People often all agree about something that makes absolutely no sense to me ... and they're right (well, I've looked into this a lot and technically they're not right, but it works out and they get good outcomes, which is almost always close enough ... I think what happens is when their wrongness catches up to them they switch strategies or something, but I'm not sure). It often feels like living with a bunch of aliens who have psychic powers. So, while it's easy to setup social experiments that make peer pressure look stupid, I'm not about to discount it's incredible usefulness.
saagarjha 6y ago
Perhaps it'll make you feel better that there's a good reason we do it: when everyone else is doing something, it's often a good idea to follow them. We all love to hear the one time someone does something contrarian and it turns out well, but in general if you have no prior knowledge picking the thing that other people is doing is a good strategy because they may know a reason you don't. A slightly better thing to do, of course, is ask why they're doing something.

I mean a little bit yeah. But problem solving through peer pressure is a real thing and it's totally legitimate. You do get some weird artifacts (because it functions via a weird distributed statistical function) and it can be exploited. Some countries that get low amounts of sunlight due to latitude eat fish for breakfast. Apparently the nutrients in fish help you biologically deal with not having enough sunlight. And this results in statistically better health outcome vs other countries at the same latitude that don't eat fish as much. Did eating fish start because people were running double blind 30 year dietician studies? Nope, it's just what other people were doing. Think about it this way. Some problems are really hard to actually understand. And if you screw up you'll die (so you can't exactly learn the lesson even if the lesson was obvious). Culture and social cohesion is important because other people have learned (maybe unconsciously) a fatal lesson by watching others fail to learn that lesson. It can be life or death for you to pick up on that lesson. It's also important that people question why we do things. Because otherwise we can end up all standing up when a bell rings for no reason. But both methods are necessary. Even if we end up doing some stupid things for a while as we sort out reality. EDIT: I'm actually mostly unaffected by peer pressure. It sounds impressive because I'm extremely unlikely to do something stupid like stand up when a bell rings. Additionally, I can go off and learn things like type theory, lambda calculus, most programming languages like it's easy. But the catch is that type theory is only easy compared to trying to understand social interaction logically. People often all agree about something that makes absolutely no sense to me ... and they're right (well, I've looked into this a lot and technically they're not right, but it works out and they get good outcomes, which is almost always close enough ... I think what happens is when their wrongness catches up to them they switch strategies or something, but I'm not sure). It often feels like living with a bunch of aliens who have psychic powers. So, while it's easy to setup social experiments that make peer pressure look stupid, I'm not about to discount it's incredible usefulness.

saagarjha 6y ago

Perhaps it'll make you feel better that there's a good reason we do it: when everyone else is doing something, it's often a good idea to follow them. We all love to hear the one time someone does something contrarian and it turns out well, but in general if you have no prior knowledge picking the thing that other people is doing is a good strategy because they may know a reason you don't. A slightly better thing to do, of course, is ask why they're doing something.