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You’re in a Cult. You Just Don’t Know It Yet - FutureIQ

14,303 views Wait, is this logic right? • Apr 04, 2025
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Slog Reference: Understanding Group Beliefs

Description

Some people say cow pee can cure COVID and that the Ganga river is always clean, even if there’s poop in it. That sounds kinda crazy, right?? But many people believe it — even important people like politicians and scientists!
In this episode, we talk about why people believe weird stuff and how sometimes, being part of a group makes you say silly things just to fit in. Like saying Ronaldo is better than Messi (even if you secretly like Messi more).

We also talked about how telling the truth can get you in big trouble and how your brain tricks you to make you think your group is always right.
It’s kinda funny and kinda scary. But mostly really interesting. Come listen!!

More Videos For You:
You’re the Reason Our Planet Is Dying - Tragedy of the Commons: https://youtu.be/u81mslnKOOA
From Instinct to Insight - How Do We Really Decide? Bayesian Thinking - Future IQ: https://youtu.be/9_Ffrs0YyX0
Why Do We Follow Social Norms: https://youtu.be/_XhIECCt_P8
You Can Only Have 150 Friends: https://youtu.be/ekAtODyfkyw
Showing Off Is Important: https://youtu.be/0YEBK7eR3Ek
Your Unpopular Opinion Is Popular: https://youtu.be/Pwh90BkWRt8

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

Listen it on the podcast provider of your choice: https://tapthe.link/FutureIQRSS

Sources:
https://x.com/MANJULtoons/status/1898965076406947917 - “Water quality during Kumbh fit for bathing” says new CPCB report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/24/opinion/why-fiction-trumps-truth.html: Yuval Noah Harari on Why Fiction Trumps the Truth
Book, Sapiens, by Yuval Noah Harari: https://tapthe.link/SapiensBook
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2015/02/11/what-is-ritual/: The connection between rituals and group beliefs
https://news.abplive.com/religion/holi-2025-know-the-history-and-significance-behind-this-festival-of-colours-1750864
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/holi-festival-colors-meaning-180958119/
https://twitter.com/kevinsimler/status/1264994328092368896: Thread on why independent thinkers are a liability to a party
https://x.com/NGKabra/status/1384046120318373891 : Bad behaviour by “us” vs “them”



00:00 Gomutra Can Cure Covid?
00:50 Why Are They So Widespread?
02:36 Back to African Savana
05:23 Membership Fee?
07:23 Groups Dictate Beliefs Or Beliefs Create Groups?
09:36 The Stronger The Belief, The Stronger The Identity
11:32 Why are Unscientific Beliefs Still persistent?
13:14 Are You In A Group With Stupid Belief?
14:56 Unscientific Beliefs Die Out?
18:24 Should We NOT Dismiss Such beliefs?
19:14 What About Delulu Beliefs?

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Understanding Group Beliefs

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Transcript

Gumutra can cure COVID. All Ganga water is extremely pure no matter what you dump in it and how much. These provably false statements are made not just by people but by our politicians and our scientific and government institutions like the Central Pollution Control Board. What is going on? Are these people stupid or is there some other explanation? He said it. I didn't. But I agree with him that there must be some other explanation which Naven will give. I'm not calling them stupid man. How can you call them stupid? No, I said they're not. I think an important principle in life is that if a large number of people say or believe something, you can't just
say that they are all stupid. There has to be a better explanation. Right. Yeah. Because these are obviously unscientific statements and yet they are so widespread. How is it that they're so widespread? Yeah. So, I'm talking not just about these statements but a bunch of other things that people believe. Uh, and there are three major explanations. One is called group conformism. For example, if everybody in your group believes that Salman Khan is awesome, then you also start believing it. There is scientific evidence for this and there is evolutionary reasons for this.
In fact, we have done an episode where we talked about how just whether one line is smaller than another line even that people mess up simply because everyone in the group is saying that the hash conformity test it was a wonderful episode where I learned a lot of things and you also will. So yeah, group confirmism definitely affects how you think about a certain topic. That's one reason. The second reason is preference falsification where okay internally you think Salman Khan is like a terrible actor right but if you say it out loud amongst your friends they will stop calling you to parties right this is preference falsification another very important thing uh which drives a lot of
politics uh these days and identities uh we have done an episode on that also yes But the most important one is different from both of these and we're going to talk about that today and that is a concept called the price of membership. Price of membership. What membership is this? This is membership in your group, your tribe, your people. Okay. To explain this, I want to go a little back. Okay. To the African savana. Yes. Yeah. back then. So, humans used to live in groups of like 150 people. The Dunbar number. The Dunbar number, right? Our brain is built to be able to handle and understand 150 people. Yeah. And we lived in tribes of that size and the
members of the tribe cooperated, helped each other, gave each other their food and protected each other from wild animals. All of those things, right? That's the only way for humans to survive. A lone human cannot survive in this world, right? Yeah. However, now the world is made up of 8 billion people. True. And they don't like you don't just hang out with the same people that you live with, right? You live with a certain group of people, work with a different set of people, hang out with a third group of people, spend time online with a fourth group of people and you truly truly believe in the beliefs of a different set of groups of people, right? Like Salman Khan, like
a good actor or not. Yeah. This is because our brain is still from the African savana. It wants to have that group. Okay. Now, here is the other thing about a group. Being a part of the group and then helping the other people in the group is expensive. In what sense? Expensive? Because you are making some sort of a promise that you will share your things with them. You will protect the others when uh necessary and so on. Right. Correct. social aspect of living. So to be part of a group is expensive, right? Also it means that you don't want freeloaders in the group.
True. You want people there who are paying their share of it being expensive. Right? Now if somebody else comes along and could easily pretend to be part of your group and take all the advantages without paying back into the group, that would be bad for the group. Yeah. Right. So over the centuries our modern concept of groups has evolved in a way where to be part of a group you have to pay a membership fee an expensive membership fee so that it is not easy for freeloaders to just pretend. Correct. Because if somebody's willing to pay that membership fee then they would also be willing to you know partake in the sharing of the socialness
of the group. Correct. Correct. That's how a group has a strong identity and a long life, right? Because if anybody was free to come and go as they please, then it's not really a group. It's just a collection of people that keeps changing. Yeah. Right. And you don't know whom to help. True. You don't know who will help you. But here's what I'm thinking. I'm not exactly paying any membership fee to be a part of a lot of these groups. Yeah. The membership fee has to be some sort of a costly signal.
Okay. Either the default membership fee is time. You have spent a lot of time with this set of people. That's not easy to fake. True. Right. Another is a ridiculous belief. Right. Okay. Because you're going once you have publicly announced that go mutra cures everything. Now it'll be very hard for you to suddenly switch over to being a scientific member. Yeah. Or if you have publicly announced that you believe in science, it's very hard for you to come over to this group. You can see how clearly these two groups form. Yeah. There's a very clear distinct boundary. That's not a line.
That's a wall that you can't easily cross. Right? So that's the whole point of group beliefs, right? A group makes you have public beliefs or public behaviors which make it extremely clear that you are part of this group and that you cannot be part of a whole bunch of other groups. Right? Agreed. And clearly Gumutra curing COVID or Gutra not curing CO is one such example of uh um these beliefs these expensive beliefs that are costly signals also right. Yeah. a whole bunch of beliefs, right? Uh and behaviors, right? That no meat, I will not eat meat, I cannot eat meat. That's one set of beliefs, right? True. No sex allowed for the rest of your life. There
are groups like that. Yes. There are vaccines are bad. I will never have a vaccine. Yes. Right. There are cases of politicians in the US who to signal membership in their group to get votes, claim vaccines are bad and then secretly give vaccines to their kids. Right? So yeah, I mean it is an expensive belief. Who sets these beliefs? And what I mean by that is do groups dictate beliefs or do beliefs create groups? It's a little of both. It's circular. Okay. And economics have a term for this called shelling sort. Shelling sword. Yeah.
Basically if there are 300 people and then just one little belief shows up somewhere minor thing and then some people who like that belief they gravitate there and the people who don't like it gravitate away from that. Okay. And then it becomes a little more prominent. So people even further away say okay I want to be part of that. And then these people who are a little further there they say no no I don't want to be part of that. they move away. So over time these beliefs get stronger and stronger and more a part of the identity. The beliefs are called shelling points by economists and the process by which people cleanly separate out into two groups when they were not
separate earlier is called shelling sort. Okay. A great example comes from Galiver's travels. Okay. Okay. In that there is a king who was once you know breaking an egg from the little end of that egg and the shell cracked and he hurt his finger. Okay. So then he said from today on nobody in my kingdom is allowed to break the egg from the little end. You will only break the egg from the big end. Okay. And then a whole bunch of people who wanted to be with the king started doing that. and a whole bunch of people who didn't like this way of making rules started saying no we will break from the little end the
rebels then shelling sort happened there and then over time they separated out into two kingdoms the little Indians and the big Indians okay and then four generations later there are wars between these two kingdoms and nobody knows why these people so strongly believe in the big end and these people so strongly believe in the little end, right? The belief itself doesn't matter. The fact that it is tied to this identity of us versus them, that becomes the most important thing. Yeah. And us versus them being created from just this tiny little thing about how to crack an egg.
Wow. And the reason this happens is also very interesting. Okay. related to evolution because the stronger there is a group belief like this. The stronger is the group identity, the more people in that group will be willing to sacrifice to protect other people from the group to help other people in the group and more they will be willing to sacrifice to fight people from the other groups. Okay. over a long time. If you have one group which is strongly knit like this because of a ridiculous belief and another group which is kind of weakly knit, what will happen is that this group will out compete that group through protection and through fighting. Okay. Now think
about the groups you know and the ones with the strongest identity and tell me if this is not true. This is absolutely true. I was just thinking that this is exactly how nations get formed. This is exactly how religions get formed. This is how communities get formed. Any kind of There is a strong scientific reason for this because once you have a group identity like this, it's easier to take joint decisions. It's easier to take joint actions. It's easier to get things done quickly, right? In weaker groups, you just all the time you're just fighting and not making any decisions.
and one person wants to do X, the other wants to do Y and then you just go round and round and round. Whereas with a strong group, one person says we will do X. That's your group belief and you're done. Right? So groups with the strongest tradition of blind faith in the leadership are the ones that act most decisively and with the best coordination. Okay, I see what you mean and uh I think you know what he means also. But here's the question. Uh it it sounds funny but when a group belief is unscientific when it is not backed by facts or science why doesn't someone sensible in that group stop that belief from growing and shut the group down.
There must be some individual who can speak up do some independent thinking or a leader who can insist on speaking the truth. Let me ask you this. Okay. Try to imagine a leader of sheep. Hm. And a leader of a herd of cats. I don't think there is a leader of a herd of cats. Cats do their own thing. I want you to still try to imagine that. And then you tell this person that together you have to do something and this one together you have to do something. Who gets anything done? That person. Independent thinking in public is a disadvantage.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. Having one person says something, everybody else is forced to follow works extremely well for quite a long time, right? Yeah. The other problem is that not everybody can handle the truth, right? A politician that tells the truth all the time is guaranteed to lose an election sooner or later, right? There are no honest politicians, right? out. But as a result, what is happening is that if an independent thinker is born, if an honest politician actually makes it to some level, sooner or later they get shelling sorted out of the group. Oh yeah. By the people who are willing to go along with the ridiculous beliefs. Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. And we have seen
plenty of examples in the most uh recent past. Thankfully I uh think I'm not a part of any such groups with stupid beliefs or stupid belief of us part of such groups. Okay. Just because you think a belief is not stupid or just because that today's world most people don't believe a belief is stupid doesn't mean that's true. Right? So 500 years ago, the best thinkers in the western world thought slavery was fine, right? Okay. Today, everybody believes that monogamy is great. Being married to a person, one person and love them is great. Very possible 500 years from now people will say that was so stupid.
Haha. Right. Okay. Uh trading treading water here. Nave. Yeah. I mean, you know, you believe that schools are excellent. That's a great idea. Okay. Yeah. Right. There are books written. Well, let me put it this way. There's a lot of data showing that schools are a terrible idea. Okay. And it is possible that 500 years from now we will come up with a much better system and then everyone will laugh at how stupid we were to you know lock up our children for 8 hours a day doing really stupid pointless things. Okay. Born intelligent but education ruined me and all of that etc etc. Yeah. Uh okay. I I I get what you're saying. It is very easy to see
ridiculousness in other people's beliefs. Yeah. It is not easy to see it in ourselves because our entire brain is built like that for 300,000 years. If a group has beliefs that don't match reality, then that group should be at a disadvantage and should probably die out so to speak. For example, antivaxing is not matched by the scientific reality. Yes. So yes, technically that is true, right? If you have a belief and that belief doesn't match reality, usually reality wins. Yeah. Right. And we would like to believe that all the stupid unscientific beliefs of other groups will run into this problem. Right. Yes.
But a lot of times a slight mismatch with reality is not such a big disadvantage. But we make it out to be a much bigger deal than it is, right? Because of our strong group belief in science is the only thing that matters. We try to make it as if this light mismatch is going to be the most important thing and the group is going to die out. Okay. Okay. You don't know what I'm talking about. I'll give an example. Okay. If you believe in science, you know that homeopathy is full. Yeah. Right. Yet people who take homeopathy are not dying. That group continues to survive. that group thrives. Okay. And I will give you an
explanation. Okay. What homeopathy is doing is basically giving sugar water to patients. Yeah. Right. Except that in most cases when somebody has some problem very likely that if you wait two or 3 weeks your body will deal with the problem and solve it. Right? It's just that you are impatient and you go to a doctor and a modern medicine doctor will prescribe some medicine because if the doctor doesn't prescribe a medicine, sends you home and collects a 500 rupee fee, the patients are going to start beating up the receptionist. Okay, I know this is true. Okay, the patients are going to beat up the receptionist, not the doctor. So the point is some some cases
some cases they also beat up the doctors. Yeah. The point I'm making is this that our belief in science and modern medicine has blinded us to the fact that doctors overprescribe. Yeah. Okay. On the other hand what's happening with homeopathy which is like totally unscientific is that 90% of their patients are getting better on their own and that was the right thing to do. Yeah. Right. And plus most homeopathy patients also have this belief that after trying homeopathy for 3 months, if still nothing happens, then you go to a modern medicine doctor, right? Yeah. So that is an adaptive belief, right? That belief confers advantages, right?
Similar arguments I can make about astrology, right? It cuts down your options. Like you know without astrology you're like I could do this, I could do this, I could do that and you are in analysis paralysis and then you don't get anything done. Whereas an astrology person is told you know don't do this today you're not supposed to do anything. Chill. Decision taken. From tomorrow for one week, you have to do XY Z. Decision taken. Now just action, right? So much better. Yeah. I mean, it's a very interesting juosition of the uh reducing choices episode that we've done and also of uh this entire thing about group beliefs. So what I'm hearing is we should not dismiss these
irrational beliefs summarily. Yeah, absolutely. especially uh if that irrational belief has survived in human society for a long time. Right? Talb calls this the Lindy principle that if a belief has survived for 5,000 years, there's a good chance that it'll survive for another 5,000 years because there is some hidden advantage that your science hasn't managed to capture. Right? Whereas if a belief is just 20 years old, then very likely it could just disappear after another 20 years. So a belief that has persisted for a long time in the past is also equally likely to persist for a long time in the future. That's what the Lindy principle says. But there are so many people with
deluded beliefs, delusional beliefs that are actually harmful to them and the society in in in a large part. What do we do about them? Yes. So first of all, I think we need a little more humility. Okay. Because our current thoughts about what is a good belief and what is a bad belief can be quite wrong without us knowing because it is not easy to see it. Right? Let me give examples. A lot of us think okay eating meat is completely fine. Okay. A lot of us think driving cars is fine even though it kills 1.3 million people. M these are beliefs that could flip in 30 years and those people will think of us as savages
who ate meat and who allowed 1.3 million people to die. Right? So first of all be careful about judging others. Okay. Second is you know pick your fights. Okay most irrational beliefs like homeopathy are irrational but they are not really that harmful. Okay fair right? But it is our group identity which is giving us such strong emotions about people believing something irrational. Okay. Live and let live. That is usually the best thing. Right. Okay. In a small number of cases there are things that you know those beliefs really really are worth fighting.
Antivaxing. Antivaxing maybe. If antivaxing is going to bring back measles and if measles is going to kill kids I am definitely fighting it. Correct. I mean that's because the parents beliefs are harming the children. Exactly. Yeah. So some things you do want to fight but the 973 principle applies. 97% of the time letting go is the right thing to do. Fair. 3% of the time you fight. Okay. And also the fact that a lot of our beliefs can uh can only exist as long as there is evidence to support those beliefs also matters I think. Hm. And just most important is be kind. Be kind.
Yes. All right. Be kind in the comments when you respond to this episode and do let us know what you thought about it. Uh about this whole concept of how beliefs continue to persist and why they continue to persist. Shriant Naven Future IQ.