Herd Mentality Vs. Herd Immunity in the Social Imagination...

We previously posted on Herd mentality. Let's review that: Herd mentality (also known as mob mentality) describes a behavior in which people act the same way or adopt similar behaviors as the people around them — often ignoring their own feelings in the process. Think of a sheep blindly following the flock no matter where they go just because that’s what the herd is doing. And this isn’t just pseudoscience: There have been peer-reviewed psychological studies conducted on the subject.

In 2008, Professor Jens Krause and Dr. John Dyer of Leeds University conducted an experiment where groups of subjects were told to walk in a random path inside of a big hall while not communicating with the other subjects. However, the researchers told a few of the subjects exactly where they should walk.

Guess what happened? They discovered that the people who were told exactly where to walk started being followed by the subjects walking “randomly.” Were told exactly where to walk... Mmm!

From Professor Krause: We’ve all been in situations where we get swept along by the crowd. But what’s interesting about this research is that our participants ended up making a consensus decision despite the fact that they weren’t allowed to talk or gesture to one another. In most cases the participants didn’t realize they were being led by others. Oh wow!

 

Now, is that the same kind of social experience in context of Herd immunity?  Interesting question, isn't it?  What is Herd immunity? We read that Herd immunity occurs when enough people become immune to a disease to make its spread unlikely. As a result, the entire community is protected, even those who are not themselves immune. Herd immunity is usually achieved through vaccination, but it can also occur through natural infection.

Its that last part of the above sentence that we want to pay attention to... "occur through natural infection". That means it passes from one to another naturally. Just as it appears to be with Herd mentality, right?  If we are talking about information then yes. And, on this blog, we are always talking about information reality in the social imagination. 

 

So how could the two be similar in terms of information reality. Again, Herd mentality is about the exchange of information. It happens when one or a couple members of a group behave in a way that attracts others to join in. Herd immunity does the same. How? 

 

It happens in this way. Herd immunity through the 'natural' exchange of information occurs naturally just as it is with Herd mentality. Now, you might think that all Herd mentality is bad but it can be good and bad. Herd immunity is also both good and bad. 

 

Its good because it leads to immunity and bad because through natural infection 'dissemination' of viral information (as it is when a message/meme has 'gone viral') someone can lose rather than gain in that process. In saying that, we realize the same thing can happen in the Herd mentality processing of information. 

 

Though some are walking the right way, that 'right' information can be rejected in order to walk the way everyone else is... just because, it seems that its more likely to be the right way or the better way as in faster or the popular way. Again, you might be wondering how is that like Herd immunity? 

 

Herd immunity doesn't pay attention to the 'right way' either as much as it pays attention to the fastest way possible to circulate what it thinks is 'right' information. This is why, Herd immunity could be argued or could be preferable at least in terms of getting results quicker than long time studies done or research conducted to find a solution. 

 

Herd mentality could be understood in the same way; however, it should not be paid attention to unless its reason for not walking the right way gets results that are better/faster than if the right way was walked all along. Now, that sounds like loopy... Well, Herd immunity is like that too. But, if we consider that any 'right' way to be the fast track, then what is the 'well thought out' slow process of scientific study/research necessary for. Aren't we seeing that now?

Where is the sense in either of these herds; especially, when you hear, "Well, everyone is doing it or going that way... aren't you going to"? Or, "Look, they are doing it, so, I guess we should go along to at least to get along, right"? Or, "I don't want to appear anti something...". Besides, "sooner or later, everyone will be doing it". 

 

Which path are we on/you on? And, who wants to find out by trial and error, right? Interestingly, both "herds" end up in the same predicament in the social imagination. Why/How? No one is outside of either... its all inclusive! 

 

Ironically, most people think that they have a choice or the ability to choose their own way to go; and, no one can say if its the right way or the wrong way... lest they be called a negative charged director; that's jargon for bully. 

 

Whatever... but then again, everyone is in a herd of some kind and if your herd is in charge your herd will attempt to herd the rest. And, every herd has a bull or two.

*scroll down to the next topic and find out what science really is...

Imagining an Absolute Source of all Information in the Social Imagination...

 

In a fallen ‘entropic’ world, the social reality is an information reality experience akin to a live streaming event comparable to the game of telephone. The farther from the source, the more scrambled the message. Yet, even in such a game, we imagine that there was and remains an absolute source or established point of departure that generated what we assume to be useful information since it was circulated … and so, we tend to trust that relayed information even if we cannot see or have a firsthand in-person experience with its source.

Scientists as well as philosophers have been searching for the source of all information. The problem with ‘scientists/philosophers’ is that they fail to recognize that they exist inside the information reality; which is a social agreement reality. It’s the only reality; because, any reality that is observable depends on what two or more people can agree on in the social imagination.

A single person may have all information but if there is no one to agree on what is ‘real’ in the experience of it… then there is no social reality. And, if there is no social reality, then what ‘reality’ is there?

The process of agreement reality can be compared to the collapse of a wave function. Once it is observed (information presented in the moment of observation) it collapses due to being observed. Yet, the truth of that collapse (as an event witnessed) … it must be recognized by more than one (agreed on) in order that its collapse is a real experience.

In quantum mechanics, wave function collapse occurs when a wave function, initially in a superposition of several eigenstates, reduces to a single eigenstate due to interaction with the external world. This is irreversible.

In the world's most famous thought experiment, physicist Erwin Schrödinger described how a cat in a box could be in an uncertain predicament. The peculiar rules of quantum theory meant that it could be both dead and alive, until the box was opened and the cat's state measured.

Without the ability to have and arrive at agreement through shared information which is experience due to interaction with the external world (including the necessary social actors in that world), we would exist in an uncertain predicament.

However, even in saying that, doesn’t mean that what we agree on is really and truly real. Its only as real as we agree on it as being real to us as it was with the cat.

So, in fact, understanding this… shows us how information works for us and against us; and, how disinformation is created from previously agreed on information received through shared experience. Disinformation works to undermine anything that we can agree on as the truth of what is being experienced as real.

When you really consider that on a deep level, within the frame of what we call science, you understand that science is a means for arriving at agreement and nothing more. Its always up to change as agreement changes. Science in its most basic definition is an intellectual and practical activity which relies on agreement in the social imagination. 

Sure, there is a 'process' to what we call science; but, the process does not and cannot move forward if there is no mutual agreement. Many theories remain as such for that very reason.  And, yet... theories also require agreement to be referred to as theories and remain on the theoretical stage.

Science and its scientists are social creatures, living in a social agreement reality. This is dependent on social dynamics of the two or more or group. Which means that over time, as with the game of telephone, the social experience of shared information can be agreed upon differently. There is no concrete evidence existing outside of human observation; what the eye sees and interprets is one thing but that interpretation among many eyes needs agreement to be seen as 'truly' something. 

Charles Darwin, was a social creature like you/me, who wasn't a very good scholar but rather a tag along. In such social context, he was window dressing for his contemporaries. Yes, he was/is attributed to being the 'father of evolution' but when it came to the human eye, he said it was beyond the sphere of his view of evolution. Darwin himself confessed that it was "absurd" to propose that the human eye evolved through spontaneous mutation and natural selection.

In a recent paper, a Darwinian scientist with the help another researcher, were determined to prove the human eye did in fact evolve. So, they looked at slides and declared that they found the molecular fingerprint necessary. They determined this fingerprint to exist in the cells of a worm's brain that for them was quite similar to the human molecular fingerprint (coding of cells) of humans.

This scientist and assistant researcher agree that when this molecular activity in the cells of the worm brain were observed– it was clear to them that these cells shared a molecular fingerprint with humans. This was concrete evidence for them that there is common evolutionary origin. So, two people agreed, it was 'clear' to them. Sounds Darwinian in that they were window dressing. 

What is window dressing? Darwin drew from Baconian principles (build knowledge from the ground up/from nothing) which allows the freedom to accumulate wholesale facts without any preconceived idea as to what they might imply. This scientific 'art' is also known as hpothetico-deductive method.

Darwin was an excellent practitioner of the hypothetico–deductive method. Such claims are little more than “window dressing.” Darwin was seeking to allay the concerns of his contemporaries, whether philosophers or other possible critics, who would surely find his theory of natural selection hard to take and would be prompt to denounce it as a prejudicial abstraction without empirical foundation. So, if you dress up the science it sounds more believable. 

Hypothetical-deductive reasoning involves starting with a general theory of all possible factors that might affect an outcome and forming a hypothesis; then deductions are made from that hypothesis to predict what might happen in an experiment. Now, some call that evidence based... but I call it a vast social imagination...which is only true in agreement and that does not make it absolutely true.

Ok, so is there any way to know what is what as in true and how it came to be? Some look to math for that answer. Now, you may think that math doesn’t change because mathematics deals with the logic of shape, quantity and arrangement. However, math arose out of basic needs and or the basic wants of a society. The more complex a society, the more complex the mathematical needs are.

Mathematics also is dependent upon the social agreement reality in the social imagination. You may argue that 2+2=4. It always has and will. But the social agreement that we stand by (at least for now) is still in agreement that that equation is more true in our social experience of it than it is not true.

So, what is really real? Only that which we agree on and keep agreeing on until something else or some other information changes our social experience of agreement reality. Where could such information come from? The source of all information... of course. Which is? Only God knows and He does.

 

 

 

*online source ~  https://www.pnas.org/content/106/Supplement_1/10033