I'm surprised to find that a Google search for the phrase "crowd mentality" (until now) has no results. I'd think its a fascinating aspect of human behavior. Tiny groups of three to five people chit chatting are private individuals, too important to be bothered with any damn petty conference venue flunky blinking lights on and off. But when addressed by a single speaker in a loud, bold voice, they become an audience, and -- if they are entertained -- they love to be told to clap their hands in unison, or to shout the same phrase, or (as here) march out the damn door when it's time to go, for no better reason than they're being led...TO FREEDOM!
I'm surprised to find that a Google search for the phrase "crowd mentality" (until now) has no results.
I'm confused. I get 5.6 million results for "crowd mentality" (and only 1.2 million for "mob mentality", which is the phrase I've heard used more often). I'm reasonably confident that those 5.6 million haven't shown up in the last 5 hours.
Today's post, To Lead, You Must Stand Up was originally published on 29 December 2007. A summary (taken from the LW wiki):
By attempting to take a leadership role, you really have to get people's attention first. This is often harder than it seems. If what you attempt to do fails, or if people don't follow you, you risk embarrassment. Deal with it.
Discuss the post here (rather than in the comments to the original post).
This post is part of the Rerunning the Sequences series, where we'll be going through Eliezer Yudkowsky's old posts in order so that people who are interested can (re-)read and discuss them. The previous post was Lonely Dissent, and you can use the sequence_reruns tag or rss feed to follow the rest of the series.
Sequence reruns are a community-driven effort. You can participate by re-reading the sequence post, discussing it here, posting the next day's sequence reruns post, or summarizing forthcoming articles on the wiki. Go here for more details, or to have meta discussions about the Rerunning the Sequences series.