Last, we should remember from the prisoner’s dilemma that sometimes a game can have irredeemably lousy rules. There may be nothing we can do once we’re in it, but the theory of information cascades may help us to avoid such a game in the first place. And if you’re the kind of person who always does what you think is right, no matter how crazy others think it is, take heart. The bad news is that you will be wrong more often than the herd followers. The good news is that sticking to your convictions creates a positive externality, letting people make accurate inferences from your behavior. There
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