Reputation travels faster than truth — and Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century Arab historian and sociologist, built an entire theory of civilization around this observation. He noticed that human groups don't primarily respond to facts; they respond to 'asabiyyah' — the felt sense of group solidarity and shared momentum — which functions like a social gravity field that pulls behavior toward it regardless of individual reasoning. In business and technology, this plays out constantly: a company's hiring surges not because its product suddenly improved, but because its perceived momentum shifted, and people want to attach themselves to what feels alive. The practical move is to stop asking 'is this decision rational?' and start asking 'what solidarity signal is this person actually responding to?' — because that's the behavior you're actually looking at.

When did you last change your position on something because the people around you were moving confidently in a direction — and what did you tell yourself was the reason?

Drawing from Islamic historiography / Early social science — Ibn Khaldun