In democracy, we are utilized to believing that the top threat to freedom is power. The king, dictator, party, official, state apparatus – past has provided us with adequate evidence to think so. But there is another power, much little sinister, which we should fear. He doesn't come at night, he doesn't break down the door, he doesn't take anyone for questioning. It works slow but effectively until 1 day we surrender completely to it. He starts speaking with our voice, and we halt distinguishing him from our own. This power is the opinion of the majority.
As citizens become more and more equal, they cease to see natural authority in another people (and throughout the full social strata). At the same time, however, religion in mass is growing, and public opinion begins to include planet rule. As Tocqueville wrote, the opinion gains more importance in democratic society than anywhere else. And no 1 is peculiarly amazed due to the fact that it sounds like progress.
Alexis de Tocqueville, who observed this mechanics in 19th-century America, noticed something that present resounds alarmingly fresh: man is incapable to independently verify all the truths upon which he rests his regular life. There's neither time nor tools. He must accept many facts and opinions that others have come to or that have been widely accepted. It's not just for convenience – it's the human condition and life expectancy that forces it to do so.
Dependence on others' cognition is not yet conformism. no of us are self-testing the effects of the antibiotic, the distance of the Earth from the Sun, or the strength of the bridge on which it is passing. We gotta trust individual else's knowledge. The problem begins when, from a reasonable assumption, “others may know more than I do” we go to a completely different one: “If most people think so, most people are most likely right.”
Tocqueville saw this paradox. In an age of equality, people no longer believe unconditionally in individual authority, due to the fact that they do not see in another man individual of nature standing higher. The same fact of similarity, however, gives them large assurance in the public. The view shared by thousands or millions begins to take on a burden that a single man does not have.
A 100 years later Solomon Asch showed experimentally 1 of the mechanisms that could be behind specified submission to the majority opinion. In his research, people were able to join the group's unanimous incorrect consequence even erstwhile the right answer could be seen with their own eyes. Not everyone and not always – but frequently adequate to show that the unanimity of the environment can weaken the assurance of its own judgment.
Importantly, the participants in the experiments did not always believe that most of them were right. any just didn't want to go against the group. Conformism does not gotta mean taking over another people’s beliefs. Sometimes it's adequate that we halt saying our own words, reasoning that if everyone sees something differently, possibly it's our eyesight that's wrong.
The force of public opinion is evidently not a fresh invention. It was created much earlier than the media and the Internet. As 1 nobleman said in the fresh trendy series “1670”, which (raised by a wave of popularity and possibly social pressure) I watched respective episodes: “Always, as I gotta do something, I ask myself 1 very crucial question: what will people say?”. Although the action takes place respective centuries ago, everyone feels this gag perfectly, precisely due to the fact that the mechanics is timeless. The opinion of others has always mattered.
However, the environment in which we observe it has changed. In Tocqueville’s day, public opinion was developed in newspapers, salons, churches, associations and assemblies. It was not free from political or economical interests. Today, however, a fresh intermediary appeared: recommending systems that co-determine what parts of reality scope a peculiar person.
The algorithm does not gotta close us tightly in the bubble or change our views. It is adequate that it affects which voices we see more often, which seem dominant and which appear marginal. The systems were not designed primarily as mechanisms for determining truth. They are to foretell what content we consider worthy of further attention, so they observe what is holding our attention, and they learn to supply us with more akin incentives.
And this is where the old problem gains a fresh dimension. In the past, man was subject to the opinion of the majority. Today, he besides uses a strategy that co-decisions on what the majority will see.
It is not essential to control the views of man to influence his image of society. If we see a position constantly, we can begin to overestimate its scale of support and vice versa. And if, as Asch showed, the unanimity of the environment can undermine the assurance of its own judgment, the question of who and what principles organize our informational environment ceases to be just a method detail.
That doesn't mean we're all locked up in information bubbles. Besides, what we see does not always change our beliefs. Man is not a plasticine that an algorithm can freely form. He has the same - reliance of thinking, although sometimes he is pregnant. Equality does not remove the force of conformism. Sometimes it is adequate to feel that almost everyone around us feels the opposite. A individual subject to specified force on the collective – even if the collective failed to prove its right, but only seems unanimous – ceases to trust his own judgment, and frequently begins to uncertainty not only his own strength, but besides his own rations. These pressures arise, and in time we can begin to treat others as our own. interior opposition is besides weak due to the fact that there is no 1 to protest, since no 1 formally forced us to do anything.
In specified circumstances, the question ceases to be merely, ‘Is it true?’. The second question is, "Do others think so?" This is peculiarly evident in the era of media, which were to be our window into the world, and are besides its crooked mirror. On the 1 hand, they brought us closer to the people of power – we see their errors and increasingly hard to treat them as a higher species whose privileges come from the natural order of things. On the another hand, they let us to make an environment in which we meet any opinions constantly and others almost vanish from sight.
So we function in an information environment that affects our perception of what others think, and thus besides the certainty with which we talk our own opinion.
At this point, however, it is easy to fall into another trap. By criticizing conformism, we can find with large satisfaction that the problem is primarily about others. They're the ones surviving in the bubble. They repeat another people's opinions. They control the algorithms. We, of course, think alone.
This would be highly convenient, and at the same time would be a denial of everything I am writing about. Since the mechanisms of conformism are part of human psyche, there is no reason to presume that the author of this text or its reader is peculiarly resistant to it (for my own good I remember all now and then – and I advise you to do so – that what I see is not a faithful image of reality).
It is not adequate just to argue the majority as a proof of same - reliance. A man who thinks the other of everyone, with large probability, may be wrong. Besides, he is addicted to most opinions as much as a conformist, only that he needs it for something else – to know why he should deny it.
It is besides fair to say that the majority opinion is not just a threat. Widely shared public opinion can be a real brake on the impulses of government or capitalist elites. Democracy without public opinion would be virtually impossible. The problem starts not erstwhile most people think the same way, but erstwhile numbers begin to replace the argument – erstwhile alternatively of questioning, searching and thinking, we look at who thinks the same way and how many of us there are.
Democracy representing the majority so requires us to work constantly: to search fresh sources of information and constantly verify them, the ability to separate the popularity of information from its credibility, and contact with people whom neither the algorithm nor our own preferences have chosen for us. Doesn't warrant we're right. But it gives us a space where we can be incorrect for our own reasons, alternatively of being right just due to the fact that everyone around us has it. We are inactive free men, but freedom of thought does not end with the right to have an opinion. It starts with a much more hard duty: to check from time to time where it actually came from and whether it truly is ours.
