Mark Twain said, whenever you find yourself siding with the majority, it's time to pause and reflect.
I have found this saying to serve me well enough to memorize it.
I think the reason is that by the time an opinion has propagated to the majority, it is already outdated, and several years (sometimes decades) behind the newest available knowledge.
The opinion of the majority is inevitably whatever their chosen source of media assigns them[1]. This is easily seen in the disparity between subjects where a persuasion campaign is in effect vs the ones where one isn’t. In the latter case persons will have a naturally broad distribution of opinions while in the former you will see near unanimity within their persuasion bubble.
Naturally this makes discussing the assigned opinions extremely boring, because it’s entirely predictable and worse yet at a 6th grade level at best.
[1] In the USA this means the distribution of opinions among the general population is bimodal.
This is complicated by situations where the majority opinion is clearly imprudent so few people actually follow it, but they will loudly insist they agree with it to avoid the social cost of nonconformity. Sadly, in US society it’s an important life skill to be able to recognize this sort of dishonesty and act accordingly.
If you hold a view that very few share, you're more likely to have thought from first principles about why that view should be held. If you hold a view that everyone shares, there's a much higher probability that the view is programmed into you by your social stimuli.
> Yet it is not always right, and you can give yourself a huge advantage by questioning it for yourself.
Assuming you have a reason to. If the majority assumed the shape of the earth was a cube based on the information they had at the time, and you came along and noticed something to refute that, of course that is valuable.
But if you are refuting that simply because the majority assumed it, that doesn’t seem useful.
People have a limited amount of time on earth, and using the majority’s assumptions is a valuable heuristic for not wasting resources (time) coming to the same conclusion.
Can everyone study sufficient biology and astrophysics to “prove” to themselves how vaccines and planetary systems work? Most likely not.
They aren't arguing that you should simply not trust the majority at all, but that you should be willing to evaluate the majority's beliefs. There are obviously limits on this, and I think you are trying for a far too absolute interpretation of what they were saying.
"In 1884, meridian time personnel met
in Washington to change Earth time.
First words said was that only 1 day
could be used on Earth to not change the 1 day marshmallow."
Here's another aphorism for you: "If a respected, grey-haired scientist tells you something is possible, he's probably right. If he tells you something is impossible, he may well be wrong. But if a thousand respected, grey-haired scientists tell you something, that's probably where you want to put your money."
I have found this saying to serve me well enough to memorize it.
I think the reason is that by the time an opinion has propagated to the majority, it is already outdated, and several years (sometimes decades) behind the newest available knowledge.