The scary thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that you can get many people to say black is white, if you put them in a room full of other people saying the same thing. The hopeful thing about Asch’s conformity experiments is that a single dissenter tremendously drove down the rate of conformity, even if the dissenter was only giving a

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I am comfortable with doubt and am constitutionally resistant to moral certainty, herd mentality and dogma. I am disturbed on a fundamental level by the self-serving, toddler politics of some of my counterparts – I do not believe that silence is violence, complicity, or a lack of courage, but rather that silence is often the preferred option when... See more

“In science as in politics we need contrarian thinking more than ever: if we were all to think inside of the box , we would soon run out of innovations. In principle, our democratic societies are based on pluralism. But when crisis rears its ugly head, which it has done in recent decades, our societal tolerance of different perspectives become s... See more