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The bandwagon effect reveals that human beliefs are not formed in isolation but are partly constituted by their social prevalence—we don't just happen to agree with popular opinions, we find them more plausible because they are popular. This creates a profound epistemological problem: it becomes nearly impossible to distinguish between ideas that are popular because they're true and ideas that seem true because they're popular. The effect is self-concealing, since admitting you believe something because others do feels like intellectual weakness, so people unconsciously generate post-hoc rationalizations for socially acquired beliefs.
