Consensus and Caution

I think of consensus as a useful psychological tool that can be beneficial in making decisions quickly based on insufficient information. Like any other tool, it has the potential to be used as an instrument for positive or negative consequences. I think the psychological tool of consensus is intended to assist us in making better decisions at critical times when it would otherwise be dangerous to resort to inefficient decision-making processes. In this way it can provide a layer of protection from making less favorable decisions. Although I can see the benefits of consensus, I can also see how it can be used to cause harm, particularly if we are not mindful of the possibility of it being used against us.

The idea of determining the psychological tools of animals and then using it against them is as old as hunting and gathering, particularly the hunting. An example of a psychological tool simpler than consensus is a fisherman realizing a fish is reacting to the way its meal looks and then luring a fish to the hook through presentation, by displaying bait that is or looks like food the animal desires by its nature. As for consensus, we can find examples outside of humans.

When I was a young boy, large enough to wield a 20-gauge, but not a 12-gauge shotgun, I began joining my father when he went duck hunting. I remember one morning, we spread out our decoys and set up in position while it was still dark. Since my father was in the US Army, we didn’t live anywhere very long, so it was common for my father to try different hunting locations since he didn’t have a favorite spot to frequent like the locals. This time we setup in a designated hunting area close to a wildlife reserve. As the sun started to come up and we could begin to observe the flight patterns of the birds, I noticed something interesting on the surface of the water. Off in the distance, I could faintly make out buoys marking out a line across the water indicating the border of the wildlife reserve. I was astonished to see the surface of the water on the other side of the buoys covered in ducks. More surprising, was that there were no visible ducks on the surface of the water on our side of the buoys. Clearly ducks do not understand the concept of government wildlife preserves, however they do possess the psychological tool to recognize other ducks and the vocal calls of other ducks calling to them from safety. The ability of ducks to pinpoint the safe zones in bodies of water they have never visited before could be viewed as a positive consequence of the psychological tool of consensus (by proximity). It was duck hunting season in a popular duck hunting spot, but a similar effect could be achieved if the predators in the water had been crocodiles instead of humans. In the areas where the crocodiles were present, ducks would be killed or escape the area, while ducks in areas without predators would remain in those areas. Over time, ducks would accumulate predominately in the area of the water with less or no predators and all the ducks calling them over.

So, was our hunting spot hopeless? There were thousands of ducks calling the other ducks over to their location, but we went home after a successful hunting trip because we knew what the ducks were responding to. The migratory birds were looking for other ducks on the surface of the water and listening for the sound of their calls to assist in locating them. The ducks will even call more urgently if the other ducks fly by without joining them, to assist those in flight like a “you’re getting warmer”, “you’re getting colder” routine. So we setup decoys and waited for ducks to approach our body of water overhead and then we would call to them using duck calls. In this scenario, the duck’s psychological tool which assists in finding safety is being used against it, and the ducks would adjust their flight to approach our decoys and prepare for landing.

This is why I think we should view it as naive to think that humans, who can notice this psychological tool in ducks and use it for their purposes, cannot notice it in humans as well and use it for their purposes on those who are not aware of the potential danger. Though we were successful enough, sometimes the ducks would get the sense that something was not right, such as a duck decoy blowing in the wind in an unusual way, and would turn away before coming into firing range. So while the ducks responded to consensus, they did not all trust consensus to a full landing. They possess other instincts that assist in fine-tuning their consensus reaction for optimal benefit, by recognizing something that didn’t fit the rest of the deception. Without consensus, I’m not sure ducks would be able to safely traverse their migratory patterns each year, particularly the first year of their lives, but it can also be their downfall when humans use the beneficial psychological tool for deception instead. What we can learn from the ducks is that consensus is an important tool for survival and can also be used to deceive us. There is also a lesson to be learned from the ducks that turned away; if consensus exists, but something doesn’t seem right, it is wise to reassess, get more information, and proceed with caution.