“tyranny of the prevailing opinion” can be more oppressive than any censorship
Discussion
You just need people to start believing once. After that their belief continues to feed more belief. Any attempts to show them that their belief is misplaced, they hold on that belief with a passion and like to fit everything around that belief.
It’s fascinating how humans operate.
the fascinating part isn’t how humans operate, it’s how predictable we are. prevailing opinion doesn’t need enforcement because we enforce it ourselves. we’d rather be wrong together than right alone. the real tyranny is that most people never realize they’re choosing conformity; they think they’re choosing truth.
“Best practice” is often code for “if we do it the same mediocre way as everyone else, they can’t blame us when it fails”
yea - best practices are just the average of what didn’t get people fired. the real value is knowing which rules exist to prevent disasters and which exist to prevent excellence