Midwits and Mentiswave.

Midwits are people of approximately average intelligence that back the consensus in almost all subjects, regardless of the evidence for the consensus.  Mentiswave  in his video  "Why 'Educated' People Fall for Stupid Narratives: Midwits VS Propaganda." asked us to imagine a Las Vegas game where you could be on the an expert being right or some crackpot off the street being right.  He claimed that the majority of the time the expert would be the one to bet on.  That's true but with a caveat.  This assumes that the expert is effectively paid to be right.  In the hard sciences and engineering that's the case, but in things like sociology, economics and foreign affairs saying things that appeal to The Cathedral may be more beneficial in terms of prestige, money and career.  

Of course you don't have to go to Vegas to bet on whether an expert or a crackpot is right.  The financial markets provide that opportunity every day, hell every second in an enormous variety of contexts.   In financial markets accepting non-consensus opinions is more profitable if true, since the perceived probability is part of the price.  But being right and against the consensus is always a bigger win.  It shows you are capable of making your own correct decisions better than consensus leaders. 

So why don't midwits at least occasionally back the non-consensus view? This is because it costs less to accept a consensus mistake than a non-consensus one.  Someone who accepts a consensus view and is wrong is no more wrong than the vast majority of people.  If they are in the field they are no more wrong than the majority in the field.  Suppose 90% of people think the COVID vaccines are safe, and 10% think not.  Stating they are safe at worst puts you in the dumbest 90% of people.  Stating that they are unsafe could put you in the dumbest 10%.    The later almost certainly means you will lose considerable influence, career opportunities or respect if these were in contention.  The former is unlikely to lose you anything, as anyone you're competing with almost certainly stated the same beliefs.  Note how often members of the Cathedral have been disastrously wrong and nothing happened to them.  Nobody lost their jobs over Russiagate, the Iraq war, the Biden laptop, the CIA connection to cocaine smuggling need I go on?

Also of course the very power of the Cathedral depends on near complete unanimity so they punish disagreement more than error.