Collective Illusion

In almost everything that matters in our society, there is a good chance there's a 'collective illusion' at the heart of our values. Collective illusion is a situation where most people in a group go along with an idea that they don't actually agree with, simply because they incorrectly believe that most people in the group agree with it. Why we're so afraid to deviate from our groups is an evolutionary holdover where it is in fact dangerous to be ostracized from the group. For as important as conformity is to us as human beings, it turns out we're actually not terribly good at estimating group consensus. Your brain assumes that the loudest voices repeated the most often are the majority. And so, we can get duped by a 'vocal fringe' into believing that that is the majority. And as soon as that happens, our conformity bias can be weaponized into leading us to adopt beliefs that the majority never actually held. And as a result, we get these collective illusions that become reality.