Mass Beliefs and the Ideas That Shape Them

[S.O.T.T]: If you're human, then chances are you believe something that "everybody knows" to be true. And if you're a thinking human, then chances are you know that such beliefs can turn out to be not so true after all. Everybody knew saturated fat is bad for you, after all. But now they don't and the opposite is true. Fancy that!

Whether it's beliefs, emotions, or behaviors, social contagion is a real thing, and it's the shared nature of these phenomena that hold communities together in one relatively cohesive whole. Good, bad, or ugly, we all have to deal with trends, fads, memes, and world views.

But every mass belief has to start somewhere. How do we account for the source of new ideas? If two or more people come up with the same new idea at the same time, with no knowledge of each other, how do we account for that? Coincidence? Or something more? On a more general level, where do ideas even come from? What is creativity? How to trends propagate? And what is it that gives them their stubborn power to resist change?...read more>>>...