Popular Delusions: Difference between revisions

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<seo title="Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds" metakeywords="popular mass delusions, famous delusions, common delusions, popular delusions of crowds" metadescription="What are the most common delusions and why delusions happen"/>
[[File:Popular Delusions Hype.png|alt=Popular Delusions Hype|thumb|'''Figure 1'''. Popular Delusions Gartner Hype Cycle]]
[[File:Popular Delusions Hype.png|alt=Popular Delusions Hype|thumb|'''Figure 1'''. Popular Delusions Gartner Hype Cycle]]
[[File:South Sea Macro Delusion.jpg|alt=South Sea Macro Delusion|thumb|'''Figure 2'''. "Night wind hawkers" sold stock on the streets during the South Sea Bubble. (The Great Picture of Folly, 1720)]]
[[File:South Sea Macro Delusion.jpg|alt=South Sea Macro Delusion|thumb|'''Figure 2'''. "Night wind hawkers" sold stock on the streets during the South Sea Bubble. (The Great Picture of Folly, 1720)]]

Revision as of 00:24, 16 December 2022

Popular Delusions Hype
Figure 1. Popular Delusions Gartner Hype Cycle
South Sea Macro Delusion
Figure 2. "Night wind hawkers" sold stock on the streets during the South Sea Bubble. (The Great Picture of Folly, 1720)

Popular delusions are biases, paradoxes or fallacies that become transiently popular in a given society. They are characterised by their rapid transmissibility and fickle nature[1] (see Figure 1). Historically, in their hype phase, these delusions have caused frantic activity of people such as the South Sea Bubble, Tulip Mania or Witch Mania. Today popular delusions have become ever more transmissible through propagation by the advertising industry via framing techniques.

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology would infer that any human characteristic brought about by evolutionary change should cause an increase in fitness, it is a wonder therefore how then a delusions often hold negative connotations that they arise. One rationale is the energy frugal brain making shortcuts (heuristics) to save energy. In modern times, the that issue arises here is that these heuristics were made for another time. I.e. all fatty foods taste nice to humans as starvation was prevalent, similarly on the next level computational non critical thought was prevalent until the creation of information junk food like Candy Crush.

References

  1. The Effects of Twitter Sentiment on Stock Price Returns Gabriele Ranco,Darko Aleksovski ,Guido Caldarelli,Miha Grčar,Igor Mozetič Published: September 21, 2015 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0138441

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