Almost Everything is Social Proofs
When I was little, I used to have these funny fantasies whenever I was taking an long flight. I imagined that I was ushered into a metal cage for a few hours while everybody outside hurriedly shuffled big props along and put on convincing disguises. When my flight supposedly “arrives”, the plane never actually moved from its starting point, but everyone happily pretended that I've arrived somewhere else, because I'm that important.
It was fun to amuse myself with these far-fetched scenarios, more recently I started thinking if there isn't something deeper than this.
How did I know that I HAVE actually arrived at a different place, and the whole world wasn't just trying to make my world more interesting?
It's the same reason that I know that the Earth is round, that Covid-19 is real, that the Euler formula is true.
People have a strong grip on parts of the reality that they can see and touch. We easily agree that fire is good at making food more edible, and that water makes our hand less sticky.
However, outside of that immediate sphere, everything becomes social proofs. I trust the astronomers that the Earth is round. I trust the journalists that there is a virus going around. I trust the mathematicians that the Euler formula is true.
Where does that trust come from?
Having a theory of mind contributes. If I believe that everybody else thinks and acts similar to me, then I know that they likely won't bother an elaborate prank to pretend that I flew somewhere else.
Experience also contributes. After using a the Euler formula for a while, I get some confidence that it's at least pretty useful.
But I think what contributes the most is the chain of social beliefs. Every fact we believe that isn't immediately visible to us has passed through a chain of people who trust each other:
I trust my science teacher, who trust the astronomy textbook writer, who trusts their scientific peers. I trust the public, who trusts media outlets, who trust journalists. I trust the math professor, who presumably had to prove Euler's formula at some point. The chain of trust can be quite long and for the most part, it is extremely effective. Without this chain of trust, we would likely still be living in cases.
At the same time, that kind of trust is eminently hackable. We trust recordings even though they can be taken out of context, we trust kind people if they can fake it especially well, we trust authority figures if they have a likable personality, we trust rhetoric that validates our emotions.
Once that trust has been acquired, it can be leveraged to undermine trust in other sources, effectively gaining control of another person's belief system.
If there's an insight that really made the world make a lot more sense for me, it would be the extent to which everything is invisible and is based on social proof. It's why people who are book-smart fall for scams, and why similar people can see reality so differently. It's how cults and radicalizations work.
This is a concept that my mandatory education hasn't come near with a ten-foot pole, but definitely something that I wish I had explicitly learnt growing up.
— Categorized under: #psychology, #sociology