I thought about replying to this anecdote about sleep with an anecdote of my own, but decided that it’ll only add noise to the discussion. At the same time, I caught a heuristic that I would possibly follow had I not caught it, and that I now recall I did follow on many occasions: if someone else already replied, I’d join in.
It’s a variety of conformity bias, and it sounds dangerous: turns out that sometimes, only two people agreeing with each other is enough to change my decision, independently on whether them agreeing with each other gives any evidence to change my own mind. This is a powerful force, that threatens to irrationally synchronize people in a group even where influence is not strong, and the group is far from being on the way towards an affective death spiral.
I thought about replying to this anecdote about sleep with an anecdote of my own, but decided that it’ll only add noise to the discussion. At the same time, I caught a heuristic that I would possibly follow had I not caught it, and that I now recall I did follow on many occasions: if someone else already replied, I’d join in.
It’s a variety of conformity bias, and it sounds dangerous: turns out that sometimes, only two people agreeing with each other is enough to change my decision, independently on whether them agreeing with each other gives any evidence to change my own mind. This is a powerful force, that threatens to irrationally synchronize people in a group even where influence is not strong, and the group is far from being on the way towards an affective death spiral.