Crowd Psychology

By Ramesh Akkineni

I saw how easy it must have been for the ancient heathen priests to impose upon ignorant, and therefore credulous mankind. I saw how easy it will always be for impostors to find dupes, and I realized, even better than the Roman orator, why two augurs could never look at each other without laughing; it was because they had both an equal interest in giving importance to the deceit they perpetrated, and from which they derived such immense profits - from The Memoirs of Jacques Casanova.
(Augur - in ancient Rome, a religious official who interpreted omens to guide public policy.)

The crowd is always caught by appearance, and the crowd is all there is in the world. - Machiavelli, The Prince

To act without understanding - that is the way of the mob. - Mencius, Discourse

Try to make your own decision based on the facts... majority is usually wrong... try to zig when the crowd zags, but make sure that you are right...

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