One of my pet peeves is ignorant journalists. When utter nonsense is expressed with some competence and polish it is more offensive than if it had been brayed in gutter patois.

IN A conversation today, someone averred that several characters in the book we were discussing had failed in a fundamental way because they had failed to be true to themselves; their other flaws were simply manifestations of that basic rift. By looking to the outside for validation, they had set themselves up for tragedy.

It's a common sentiment. But is it right? On the one hand you know yourself best. But as James Surowiecki ably demonstrated in his book, The Wisdom of Crowds, the collective judgement of the group is more likely to be correct than a single opinion.

This provides an evolutionary explanation for why human beings are herd animals.

Humans are not herd animals, we are pack animals. Failing to know and make the distinction is idiotic. It is an insult, usually intentional, to portray a group of humans as a herd.

Surowiecki did not demonstrate that the "the collective judgement of the group is more likely to be correct than a single opinion", just the opposite. It is the aggregate judgment of an independent, diverse and distributed group that is remarkably accurate for certain kinds of problems which have factual answers. When all of their guesses, made without consultation with one another, are aggregated, the high and low guesses average out and the number of beans in the jar is thus guessed with a high degree of accuracy.

What the bovine Economist blogger has described is an information cascade, which may or may not have any correspondence with reality, though over time it has been shown to be inaccurate in nearly every instance.

Going along to get along may be a useful career move. Being clubbable can help an otherwise talentless bureaucrat rise in the ranks. So long as there is never any real work to do, no threats or attacks to defend against, no tasks to perform that engage reality, then you can prosper with nothing more than a functioning social reader and a simpering personality.

But this is an abdication of responsibility that degrades society. To be a useful part of the social mind and do your bit for the species you must actually try to grasp reality and speak up about it. You must do independent thinking.

The opinions of others can be information too, but when they differ from your own opinions that is only an indication that you might profit from a reexamination of the facts. If they also have compelling arguments that reveal new information or arrange known facts in a logical fashion that you can duplicate and agree with then it isn't their opinion that matters, it's their information and methods, which you can then adopt as your own. To simply grab your ankles and defer to their opinions is not useful, however pleasant you may find it.