Le Bon, Crowds, and the Irrational Baseline

Philosopher Bry Willis from the "Philosophics" blog critiques the century-old crowd psychology thesis proposed by Gustave Le Bon, who suggested that rational individuals become irrational only when merging into a crowd. The author contends that this view, rooted in an Enlightenment belief in the inherently rational person, is overly flattering and inaccurate according to modern behavioural science. Citing work from Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely, the piece argues that humans are fundamentally and predictably irrational due to ingrained cognitive biases. Therefore, the text concludes that crowds do not corrupt a rational base but instead amplify and accelerate an existing irrational baseline, making Le Bon's observations about the dangers of the crowd correct but insufficiently bleak.https://philosophics.blog/2025/09/22/the-myth-of-the-rational-base-le-bon-and-the-crowd-revisited/