There's dangers at both ends of the spectrum.

Much of our culture applauds the anti-consensus actor, the lone visionary who goes ahead despite the disapproval of the crowd. And that's understandable. As Spike Milligan put it "Progress is like an old car. It takes a crank to get things started." Progress depends upon the unreasonable man. What looks like "knowledge over-confidence" turns out to be "justified confidence" in widely unrecognised truths. Further, in entrepreneurial circles, if you're prepared to risk your own money and time on a crazed venture then that's celebrated.

But in reality you create risks to externalities far beyond your own wallet. Such a culture absolves the reckless engineer of causing great harms because they are "a genius" and we want to ride their coat tails. Some of this seeped into Silicon Valley culture where many tech people see the digital world as their own personal laboratory to experiment on masses like bugs in a petri dish.

This could be contrasted with the socially conscious non-consensus actor, who departs from crowd wisdom at great personal loss and just wants to be left alone to do their own thing. That's a different breed of individualism. It's often rooted in falliblism rather than over-confidence. Such a person, out of wisdom, knows how stupid they can be themself, and sees the crowd as no better.

I would say dangers at the other end of the spectrum, of blind unthinking assent, group-think, conflict avoidance, is much better documented and understood. Whether that's a negative or positive depends on the context. On a frontier rugged individualism is an asset while more measured conformity tends to work in long established communities. The contrast of the North American frontiersman and the Nordic observer of small town "Jante Law" is marked.

That would be interesting i know how it has personally effected me and others. All i can gather is that over time the people blindly following mainstream consensus are isolating themselves together and getting more and more radical ideas.

to tease out the nuance, the mechanism of mainstreaming isn't an extension of stupidity (ignorance is certainly a more accurate term), but of limited focus and stress. most people don't spend much time thinking about the wider world and how it should work very deeply, so they follow the herd on most things, because it's a decent heuristic and it has a social benefit.

it's a literal luxury to have enough time and mental space to think for more than a few minutes on any given issue. that's one of the most valuable "legs up" that wealth gives you, not so much the money itself, but the room to think (and unfortunately, often to try to manipulate the world around you in a self-serving/self-centered way--the corrupting of personal integrity that's as old as time).

> a literal luxury to have enough time and mental space to think for more than a few minutes

Yet I observe people reaching for their phone-distractor device when confronted with a moment of free time.

yah, often those moments are too short for deep thinking anyway, which really requires contiguous, distraction-free hours. the more pertinent issue is that devices tend to themselves fragment potential contiguous blocks of time and condition our brain for shorter attention spans (just like what happened to me right now, as i was in the middle of doing something else, but stopped to respond!).

Similarly, people don't want to evaluate interesting restaurants, they want to jump on the bandwagon known as Yelp or Google reviews. There's something wrong with jumping on the bandwagon, but there's more right than wrong.

it depends on what you're looking for psychologically. chain restaurants are the most popular, but that's because they're "safe". other folks want adventure, to wander off the beaten path. sometimes that brings great reward and other times it doesn't. it does, however, provide the adventurer satisfaction in the adventure itself. similarly, the mainstreamer gets comfort from the safety of their choice, apart from the enjoyment of the food.

note that these aren't mutually exclusive groups of people, but typically phases of our own selves. for example, i rarely want chain food, but every once in a while i do. and sometimes i go and enjoy it because the people i'm with want it and enjoy it.

This is always going to reflect, in large part, who is in power in a society, since the mainstream consensus is so heavily influenced by the top. And in societies where people, by inches or by miles, become unable to speak freely - the top can effectively dictate consensus.

In a society where those in power are are not only primarily motivated to achieve a healthier society and nation, but also have the intelligence and wisdom to achieve it - then following the mainstream consensus could achieve something quite remarkable.

In a society where those in power are primarily motivated by their own interests, or lack the wisdom or intelligence to positively lead society forward, then of course everybody following the mainstream consensus means you're, vice versa, headed towards something quite awful.

You’re in luck, the article speaks to exactly that question!

Specifically, it says that the people “following mainstream consensus” are actually less likely to do so “blindly”, i. e. overconfidently.

So the answer would seem to be: rather low.

>Specifically, it says that the people “following mainstream consensus” are actually less likely to do so “blindly”, i. e. overconfidently.

After the past few years, I’m really not sure if there is anyone left that doesn’t have a personal anecdote against this.

This article is not about ignorance per se. It is about views in opposition to well-established consensus, e.g. "rejection of vaccines or opposition to climate change mitigation policies." These views are highly damaging to society and individuals.

Creating or joining a bandwagon to vilify people who reject well established consensus is highly damaging to individuals and society.