For humans consensus is important. Consensus in a group means that no one will argue with the established beliefs and if you do you will meet resistance.
Consensus is a dangerous thing that leads to groupthink and may lead us to disregard hard facts verified by experiments as the scientific methods postulate – but it can be good also – we need to understand when to fight it.
When is it good? When having a group of people that squabbles over small not very important things that are more up to perception and feelings – in this case a process that leads to consensus can help put all that used energy to rest and let it be used for more pressing matters. We see this in democracy when, every pre-election-period, people start to squabble about – on the whole – small changes to “the machine” called society. As the election pass, the majority of the people got their will and the majority of the minority respect the result and fall into consensus with the new situation.
When is it bad? When it makes you or your group argue against evidence. Argue against known evidence is really bad – but also argue against yet unknown evidence and stopping research into the matter due to not wanting to know the facts. The USA is one current example of this – consensus in the Republican party neglects evidence of presidential misconduct and wants to limit the investigations into several questionable matters.
Why do I bring this up? This is why: The empirical evidence is crystal clear – raising the level of abstraction by using models to build software as MDriven does is very much faster, leads to higher quality yet reduce the need for test, better overall performance and machine utilization, better documentation of the developed product, happier developers that can be relaxed and still meet all demands, make systems easier to maintain, democratize business information like never before, drives digitalization and makes businesses thrive.
But the consensus in the developer community says this is all wrong.
To all of us using MDriven or MDriven like strategies: You are not crazy – but you are fighting consensus and that is always hard. We thank you for joining us in this fight! At one point in the future consensus will shift and everyone will take your way of working for granted – and maybe fight some new findings for the wrong reasons – this is just part of human nature it seems. We must be vigilant in everyday life to reflect on where we are going along with consensus but the consensus is wrong.
I am watching the HBO series Chernobyl. My stomach aches as I watch the group-think, the consensus and total neglect for scientific evidence that naturally arise in all totalitarian systems. We must never forget that just because one group is in power – they can never shift reality. The scientific method is the most powerful tool we have ever constructed for seeing reality. Consensus is an inherent thing of our biology that is the enemy of science, the enemy of discovery, the enemy of progress and the enemy of change.
Consensus is at the core of all religions and religion would not be possible without it. Keep vigilant – question everything once a year at least and try to look objectively on your beliefs – maybe you will find that you are the victim of a consensus-group that has it all wrong?
I backed this book translation at kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1138088857/space-earth-human. It is by Alexander Parkhomov and he is fighting the consensus in science that LENR is not possible – Low Energy Nuclear Reactions. He has in an open fashion shown that it very much seems to exist – still – no cigar. Consensus might prevent us from seeing a new safe energy source and all the good that it would bring.
Keep fighting! It is what makes life intriguing and fun! Never stop!
