Collective Intelligence Can Change the World

In the 1950s, a cult formed in suburban Minnesota, led by a woman who adopted the pseudonym Marian Keech. She predicted that during the night of Dec. 20, 1954, the world would come to an end, but that a spaceship landing by her house at midnight would save her cult members.

Neither happened, and her skeptical husband slept soundly through the night. But rather than being disheartened by this unrealized calamity, the cult concluded that the strength of their faith had saved the world from imminent disaster and from then on went out recruiting with renewed vigor.