I recently read about the manner in which different people parse information, which has caused a seismic shift in my understanding of many issues: from politics, to economics, to religion. The author concludes that the majority of people "parse information through a consensus filter as a safety mechanism. They do not ask "is this true", they ask "will others be OK with me thinking this is true". This trait makes people very susceptible to perceived "consensus", with many never questioning the accuracy of the consensus position. Wanting to be an accepted part of the "tribe" is evolutionarily very sensible. It improves the chance of the individual’s survival. However, where consensus is wrong, this can be catastrophic to the survival of the species. Fortunately, there is an in-built evolutionary mechanism to protect the tribe from universal collapse – a small percent of people that do actually parse information through a "true / false" prism. Following a recent discussion on this topic with Dr. Frans Cronje, he opened a BizNews talk with a related point – while analysts are regularly criticised for being "negative" (and very occasionally complimented for being "positive"), for us it’s never been about "positive" or "negative", but about "true" or "false".