Man is extremely uncomfortable with uncertainty. To deal with his discomfort, man tends to create a false sense of security by substituting certainty for uncertainty. It becomes the herd instinct. —BENNETT W. GOODSPEED, THE TAO JONES AVERAGES

The emotion default: we tend to respond to feelings rather than reasons and facts. The ego default: we tend to react to anything that threatens our sense of self-worth or our position in a group hierarchy. The social default: we tend to conform to the norms of our larger social group. The inertia default: we’re habit forming and comfort seeking. We

The social rewards for going with the crowd are felt long before the benefits of going against it are gained. One measure of a person is the degree to which they’ll do the right thing when it goes against the popular belief. However, it is easy to overestimate our willingness to diverge from the crowd, and underestimate our biological instinct to f