"I Don't Follow Fads!" (Even When They're Right)

It's possible for something to be a fad and also happen to be correct. People who pride themselves on not 'following fads' sometimes blindly follow the wrong path instead. Or to put it another way, sometimes the 'sheeple' are right. If your ego is tied up in your ability to 'not follow the crowd', you may fail to follow the crowd when they happen to be going in the right direction.

Forget about whether something is a fad or not - the only thing that matters is whether something is correct or not. What you need is a set of 'mental tools' to distinguish good ideas from bad ideas.

This mentality seems to be a kind of 'inverse argumentum ad populum' - effectively believing something is false because it is popular.

Sometimes the sheep are going in some particular direction simply because there's food, water or sanctuary from danger that way.

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