We often assume that harmful social movements succeed because people are misinformed, irrational, or “don’t know the facts.” But knowing the truth is sometimes not enough to avoid this danger. History, and current events, suggest something more unsettling.
Many people do recognise deception. Many are sceptical. And yet socially harmful dynamics still emerge, mobilise, and sometimes gain power.
In a new article, I explore this puzzle using a systems perspective rather than a political or moral one. The central idea is simple but uncomfortable: social failure is often driven not by false belief, but by misdirected coupling; i.e., strong local alignment to individuals or groups whose behaviour undermines wider social viability.
Small, tightly committed groups can dominate outcomes even when most people privately disagree. Crowd dynamics and emotional contagion can temporarily override reflexive judgement. And harmful patterns can reproduce across generations through social learning and imitation, especially among the young.
This means that fact-checking, media literacy, and moral exhortation, while important, are often insufficient. The article argues that what is increasingly needed is a different kind of education:
- awareness of psychological and social pathologies;
- understanding of how coupling and crowd dynamics work; and
- motivational reflexivity: the capacity to regulate behaviour under emotional and social pressure.
This is not about ideology or politics. It is about recognising system failure modes and learning how to constrain them before they propagate.
The full article is available as a downloadable PDF here:
https://rational-understanding.com/sst
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