Dr. Todd Rose

And here's the thing about your brain that is just crazy, is how your brain estimates what your group believes.

Because you'd imagine given how important it is with conformity and belonging, you'd have some sophisticated way that your brain calculates like, on average, this is what my group believes.

Now, there's a shortcut your brain takes.

No kidding.

Your brain assumes the loudest voices repeated the most are the majority.

Even when you know it's not true, even intellectually, you know, oh, this is just Mel telling me this over and over again.

That's your brain is keeping score this way.

So it must have worked.

You evolved to have the shortcut, but you put that into a social media age.

Okay.

So here's a stat that blows my mind.

If you take what was Twitter, which is now X,

Research has shown that 80% of all the content on that platform is generated by only 10% of the users.

And here's the trick.

Pew Research has found that that 10% isn't remotely representative of the general public.

They are extreme on almost every social issue.

But you can see the problem here.

Let's say 10% of people hold some view, but you think it's 80%.

That error signal kicks in.

Unless you're willing to override that and go against what you think your group believes, what do you do?