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HalFinney comments on Good Quality Heuristics - Less Wrong
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Do what other people do in your situation.
Better: Imitate what successful people do/did in your situation.
Or perhaps: Adopt the most successfully tested strategy; if you think you've figured out something better, ask first why you don't see others doing it already.
The problem is that you are more likely to know how things turned out for successful people than for unsuccessful ones. A policy which has a large chance of disaster but a small chance of great success might appear to be very good under this heuristic, since it worked great for everyone you've heard of.
Excellent point. I was thinking more in terms of social strategies, which don't seem to have devastating black swan outcomes in the way that "guaranteed" gambling or investment strategies do. Is there a pithy way to make that distinction?
I am skeptical that enough people do the best thing enough of the time to make this a good heuristic, even if you ignore the fact that "what other people do in your situation" isn't always available information.
You can also replace "do" with 'believe".
One interesting question is whether you should believe what the experts do, or what the majority of people do, in situations where they differ. (See CronoDAS's suggestion on this page about believing the experts.)
No, you should not believe what others believe unless they presented serious arguments.
Otherwise
gain strength.
Doing is different here, as it is more costly than believing.
The fact that this policy may contribute to an information cascade is (mostly) a cost to other people rather than a cost to yourself. If your goal is the truth, the presence of this cost is not relevant.
The real question is whether the beliefs of others are a reliable guide to the truth, and if not, what is better. Judging the quality of arguments has IMO not been shown to be something that most people can successfully implement - too much opportunity for bias to creep in.
I suggest the following revision: If you don't think it's worth your time to analyze your options, choose whatever option people seem to be choosing. Exceptions in the case of situations where too many people choosing one option is bad for all of them (for example, too many people with degrees in y is bad for all of them.)