The Psychology Of Conformity - Notes

[Daniel Balan]

I've manually taken notes as I followed along @Leo Gura's video, The psychology of conformity. No AI or any brain-dead transcript summarizing tool was used for these notes, just my manual work of taking the most important insights from the video. For me personally this was the most impactful and life transforming video I've watched from Leo. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Leo from the bottom of my heart for creating this video. Here are the notes:

The psychology of conformity

 

Your mind judges the truth based on popularity and acceptance by others around you.

You haven't been taught to really evaluate truth in your life. You have been taught throughout all of your education and your job and your career and your professional life you have been taught to conform.

So you don't judge truth through your direct consciousness as you should, your mind is not autonomous. You are judging truth to the extent your culture and your group has led you to believe is acceptable, rational, sane and normal.

Almost 100% of people's worldview is just group think. The only reason you have the worldview that you have is because of the place and time that you were born.

Conformity is a stage of cognitive development.

You don't think original stuff, you parrot whatever the collective requires for its survival.

There is no limit to the amount of fantasies and falsehoods that your mind can be programmed with in the first 20 years of your life.

Once your mind has been programmed with illusions and falsehoods you fall in love with the falsehoods and you defend the programming.

Programming is bad because it limits your mind. Your mind is capable of so much more than what your culture has programmed it with.

Conformity connects deeply with the topic of self-deception.

The key insight is that you assume that your worldview is true simply because everyone around you believes in the same worldview.

Developing above the centre of gravity will present you with problems. It is going to create friction for you within your family, in your community, in your church, in your business, corporation, in your government if you are part of the government, in the military if you are part of the military etc.

Notice that all the people in 3rd world nations are completely lost in conformity and group-think.

Conformity is the reason conservative ideologies and politics have such a high traction to the public whereas progressive politics struggles to convince the electorate. Precisely because 50% of the adult population is entrenched in conformity and stage blue.

All humans that are in stage blue or below are so conformist that they are incapable of doing any intellectual work.

All the biases of your culture will infect your mind and your thinking process.

Group think creates an echo chamber effect where contrary views are not allowed and this results in collective fantasies and illusion that you mistake for reality.

Ideas that challenge and contradict conformist norms are denied, demonized, rejected and suppressed. That results in a collective paradigm lock.

Conformity equals belief. An autonomous mind is experience, consciousness and insight.

Insight can never be conformity. Independent of culture.

Understanding reality and proper sense makes requires breaking out of conformity.

Genuine philosophical work is about generating insights and deriving ideas for yourself. It is not about reading books, it is about generating your own ideas.

Humans always parrot other humans in 99.99% of the time.

Intelligence is the ability to question infinitely, thinking through a topic all on your own from first principles, questioning every assumption.

Examples of conformity

• Religion, all religion is conformity
• Islam and the middle east
• Mormons and Jehovah's witnesses
• Quakers and Shakers
• The only reason you believe and follow your religion is because of conformity, there is no other reason.
• Judaism
• Zionism
• Traditional cultures in China, Japan, Russia, India, Africa
• Ethnocentrism
• Nationalism
• Stereotypes
• Demonization and scapegoating
• Racism
• Xenophobia
• Anti-Immigration
• Indigenous folk culture
• Traditionalism, people defending their traditions
• The entire conservative worldview is to blindly conform to tradition without ever questioning it.
• Views on sex
• Arranged marriage
• Political movements like populism, fascism, communism, Christian nationalism, theocracy, propaganda
• CIA
• Military industrial complex
• Views on abortion
• Woke
• Anti-Woke (Anti-wokeness is more conformity than wokeness)
• KKK
• Groypers
• Socialism
• Marxism
• Capitalism
• Progressives
• Leftists
• Environmentalism
• College campus political activism
• Gender ideology
• Post modernism
• Centrism
• News media
• US media on Israel
• Money in politics
• All political analysis on social media/alternative media is just conformity. No serious thinking there.
• Iraq war, reactions post 9/11
• Washington DC culture
• America Empire
• Libertarianism
• Legal system
• Conspiracy theories
• Internet culture
• Debates
• Popular social media influencers
• Silicon valley conformity investing
• Crypto
• NFT's
• Pod-casters
• Mano-sphere
• Toxic masculinity, young men imitating Andrew Tate, who is also extremely conformist
• Business culture
• Sponsorships
• The Tai Lopez phenomenon
• Pick up
• Ideas of success. Success is defined by your culture, you didn't come up yourself with what successful means.
• Health, nutrition, diet and fitness
• Gym routine
• Anti-Vaxx
• Western medicine
• New age alternative medicine
• Circumcision
• Drug views
• Psychedelics
• Self help
• Book publishing industry
• Hollywood
• Rap
• Hip-hop
• Basketball expensive shoes
• Dance videos on Tik-Tok
• Popularity of brands ( Iphone's etc, Rolex etc)
• Wine
• Fancy chef cuisines
• Business suits
• Sports
• Golf
• The way you use language, the jargons and expressions you use, the way you use grammar and punctuation signs, this is all just copied from other humans.
• AI doomerism is also pure conformity
• Human rights
• Freedom
• Veneration of the constitution
• The legal system
• All society and all your entire life

 

There is a big connection between conformity and corruption.

All corruption is just conformity.

Seeing and curing corruption requires tremendous independent thinking, live consciousness

Also any time spirituality is done in a conformist way it becomes corrupt because god is live autonomous intelligence

 

Conformity is also a corruption on morality

Observe that the ones who claim to be the most religious, the most fundamentalist of Christians, Muslims etc happen to be some of the most immoral and evil people, often stealing as much as they can get away with.

 

Don't attribute to malice what can be explained by group think and conformity.

What is terrorism but conformity and group-think.

Have you noticed that the most evil things mankind has done was done out of conformity?

Conformity creates mass stupidity.

You are just a survival zombie that follows the path of least resistance laid ouy for you by your culture, which mostly leads to mediocre results.

Your mind has been hijacked by collective survival and you don't even know it.

 

Autonomous minds are virtually impossible in 3rd world societies because survival is too difficult. In such societies survival is eased by conforming to the biases of the collective.

Notice how you conform to make money.

Autonomy of mind requires financial independence.

You think as others think because it is easier to survive that way.

The devils exploit the conformity of the masses for their own personal gain.

 

Look at Facebook, Tik-Tok, they are just conformity milking mechanisms.

Tiktok, Facebook and others just feed the reptile brain in you for their profit, they give the devil in you more and more fuel.

Near all political views and perspectives are just conformity. There is no true political autonomous thinking happening on social media. Conservatives are more conformist than liberals. All of conservativism is about insane levels of conformity. Conformity and group-think devolve into extremism.

You can be intelligent when it comes to politics only after you have transcended all the conformity of the right, the left.

 

Conformity affects what you find the most meaningful and what you should pursue in life. You are a monkey copying other monkeys.

You need to put in decades of inner work just to realize who you really are and what you want out of life. For that you need to transcend conformity

No one can tell you who you are but you.

If you are doing business in any kind of industry pay attention to the norms of the industry that you are doing business in and why you follow those norms.

 

Look at how much of what you do is conformity. Audit Your political beliefs, how you dress, the music you listen to, how you use language, grammar, spelling, idioms, cliches, stereotypes and memes. Even the emojis you use, the abbreviations like lol etc.

Audit how you speak to waiters to customers to your boss etc, see the conformity in those

 

Audit the tropes and concepts you think in. Categories like leftist, conservative, liberal, good, evil etc, audit why you use these categories.

Audit the mental models that you use, models like spiral dynamics and many other models

Audit your Fears and problems

Audit criticism and judgement

Audit history and narratives, who you respect and admire, your business ideas, a lot of your business ideas are extremely conformist

The city and country you live in, your morality, how you learn, the methods you use to learn, what do you consider authority sources, who you trust and who you distrust.

 

Audit your opinions, where did your opinions come from? Most of your opinions are not your own. You got them from some YouTuber or some influencer. Your style and your taste. The kind of art you like and do. Your art will only improve the more you transcend conformity.

Be mindful of the philosophers that you parrot.

 

Notice the font you use to write your word documents.

Notice the food that you eat because of conformity

Notice your entire religion is just conformity

Notice the language that you use is conformity

Notice how you talk to your friends is conformity

 

Notice that your scientific explanation of reality is just conformity

Notice how you apply skepticism is conformist.

Your ideas of right and wrong are conformist

 

Audit all your behaviors, beliefs, lifestyle with this one question: why am I really doing this? Am I doing this just because others are doing it?

Why you are in this career, why do you admire this person here, why do you like the art that you like etc

 

 

Start noticing how you think in clichés. Trace where your ideas are coming from. Notice just how much you are repeating ideas you have heard elsewhere. Whether is Marxism or some libertarian notion like freedom or some notion of human rights or some notion of climate catastrophe or some gender ideology.

 

Notice that you didn't generate these ideas.

Oh god, I've never had an autonomous thought in my entire life. It's all been just rehashing stuff that's been around my environment from other people.

 

Especially be weary of this if you are an extroverted social person. You are always talking to other people, socializing thus you get bombarded everyday with new perspectives and opinions that you adopt for yourself without too much observation and reflection about them. This is what happens to all the podcasters. You are just accepting stuff just by talking.

 

Symptoms of group-think

Overestimation of the group, its power and mortality.

Illusions of invulnerability, delusional optimism and encouragement of risk taking

Unquestioned belief in the morality of the group causing members to ignore the consequences of their actions.

Close mindedness. Rationalizing away warnings that challenge the groups assumptions

Stereotyping those who oppose the group as weak, evil, biased, spiteful, impotent or stupid.

Pressures towards uniformity

Self-censorship of ideas that deviate from the apparent group consensus

Illusions of unanimity among group members, silence is viewed as agreement

Direct pressure to conform toward any member that questions the group couched as disloyalty and treason. You are a traitor if you think differently.

Mind guards, self-appointed members who shield the group from dissenting information

 

 

Group-think results in irrational dehumanizing actions directed towards out-groups

 

Your number 1 priority in any organization you take part in is to combat for yourself(not publicly vocally) all the group-think.

 

Group think is the price you pay for being part in any organization.

 

Realize that everything you hear a human say is group think, which is why you can't take any of it too seriously.

 

Don't underestimate the power of just observation. Observe other people acting out of conformity. More importantly, observe your mind, your thoughts, how you speak and behave out of conformity.

You can assess someone's mind by the capacity to which it can think autonomously.

 

Tier 2 cognition, spiral dynamics stage yellow and above is highly non-conformist. Conformist minds are extremely predictable, they are like animals. Your mind only becomes nonconformist and unpredictable at tier 2.

Autonomous mind is a signal that cannot be faked, you can clearly see when a mind is not autonomous.

 

Atheism is conformity.

 

The highest intelligence must be nonconformist.

 

Why is the highest intelligence nonconformist? Because if you were infinitely intelligent, why would you need to conform to anything? You'd operate completely on your own, you would be self-sufficient, you would be confident in your own intelligence,

You wouldn't doubt yourself.

High intelligence means questioning assumptions and seeing paradigms and frames.

True intelligence is non mechanical, is not about copying something.

 

It is not about going through an algorithm or a formula. It's not about regurgitating something like these LLM's like chatgpt or grok or others.

 

When you need others to tell you what is real, this breaks the unity of your mind.

 

The highest intelligence makes new discoveries, that cannot be done from conformity.

 

Social media algorithms are fueling group-think and AI is making things even worse. The AI is just the averaging of human thought.

 

The monkey see, monkey do dynamic is very powerful and present in your everyday life, notice how much you are imitating others. Celebrities, successful people or business leaders, politicians, social media influencers, actors, spiritual teachers. As an artist you imitate other artists.

Some of this is necessary, but it goes way too far.

Many of you unconsciously want to imitate Leo. The stuff that works for Leo might not work for you.

 

If you value creativity, you must overcome conformity. This enables you to create things no one has created before.

 

The biggest artists, the biggest inventors, scientists, philosophers and leaders were and are non-conformist.

 

Non conformity is essential in starting new innovative businesses, developing new technologies, breaking out of wage slavery and developing financial independence. For very good investing, great leadership, new scientific discoveries and great art.

 

The beauty of life is to find your unique self-expression.

 

Great art is rare because most people are way too conformist to come up with anything new. What they are doing is that they are just imitating others.

 

Evolution requires new ways of thinking that challenge current intellectual norms.

Imagine inventing a new system of government. Not socialism, communism, dictatorship, democracy etc. Something uniquely new.

Non conformity allows you to discover the most amazing aspects of life. New music, film, games, people, inventions etc

 

Conformity is a shallow way to live, nonconformity is an unique, deep and fulfilling way to live.

 

To majorly change your position in life, it requires doing the change in nonconformist ways.

Lets say you are poor, you are stuck in a bad situation in life... How do you change your position in life? That will require serious unorthodox ways of thinking. Sure there are ways if you suck up to some very rich corrupt guy that you will become rich and corrupt yourself, sure that can happen if you conform to that. But the bottom line is that you want connection to yourself, not connection to corruption and theft. That's why this is not a good strategy.

 

Warnings

 

The trap of developing a nonconformist identity. The ego loves the idea of being special.

 

Doing non conformity in a conformist way.

Like anti-vaxx, MAGA, flat-earthers, conspiracy theorists, goths, libertarians etc.

 

Joining a non-mainstream subculture and thinking it will make your thinking autonomous.

There are 2 types of conformity, the wider, bigger conformity like mainstream conformity, national identity and there is then the sub-group conformity like MAGA conformity, gamer conformity, Marxists conformity, silicon valley conformity, new age culture etc.

 

There will be a lot of challenge and friction for challenging conformity.

You will have to stand up to a lot of gaslighting and demonizing and nay-saying.

 

Non conformity can be dangerous or even lethal. Especially in 3rd world places where they have a weak legal system. You are really playing with fire if you are going to be nonconformist politically or religiously. If you will be nonconformist politically in Russia or Saudi Arabia, they will kill you. So think very carefully about that.

Conformity can also be lethal, wars, cults these can also be lethal.

 

Non conformity can be socially isolating and lonely. All the human social stuff gets harder, that's why people conform.

 

Also be aware that the crowd can be sometimes right, the crowd is not always stupid and the crowd will know more than you do.

For the most part collective thinking does work and is very helpful all you gotta do is to sort the wheat from the chaff.

 

Conformity is the shadow of the collective thinking, the collective thinking is quite good.

 

Also imitation is good if you are just a newbie beginner, you gotta learn the fundamentals first before you start innovating.

 

How do you develop to the autonomous stage?

 

Start by observing your own conformity. Do the audits that were outlined earlier above.

 

Lots of observation work, also observing the conformity of others.

Observing the conformity of other cultures. Study other cultures

Questioning and contemplation. You question everything.

Ask many, many powerful questions.

 

Stop getting pleasure and meaning from being approved of by others. Stop needing their approval.

 

 

It is really important that you make sure to design your life in such a way that you are not dependent on the collective. Also you need to make sure that the way you are earning money is totally under your control and responsibility. If others hold the strings on how you pay your rent then you will never be autonomous in your mind. You are always gonna be their slave.

 

Critically question every truthism, every platitude, every truth, every claim in every book that you read.

Don't just take something as truth, question it and come up with counter arguments.

 

Catch yourself parroting authority figures like authors, experts, Leo or others and cut that off.

You want to reach a point when you generate your own ideas. Not just repeating what you've been reading or hearing.

You need more diversity or experience especially from other cultures to break out of your bubble.

Spend hours alone contemplating. That is the gist of how you develop autonomy of mind.

 

Also take psychedelics.

 

An exercise: sit down and try to think of an original thought that no one has thought before.

Try to imagine some completely new video game, a completely new movie, art, object, music.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 08:11 PM by Daniel Balan

[JosephKnecht]

@Daniel Balan Thanks, mate. You saved me 4 hours of my life.  

[Daniel Balan]

8 hours ago, JosephKnecht said:

@Daniel Balan Thanks, mate. You saved me 4 hours of my life.  

😎🎃

[Daniel Balan]

I hope those notes are helpful to you guys, btw what are your thoughts on the video? For me this is the best video of all time.

[Daniel Balan]

🎃