'So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.'
A great description of modern markets as many fund managers become agreeing machines because their survival requires it. What do I mean by this? Some very large fund managers tend to benchmark themselves against a stock market index, that is performance is published as +/- percentage points. Human nature demands that performing close to the index (beta) is much more marketable for gathering funds under management. This tendency to hug the index is also at the core of the passive v active manager debate.
source: Salient Partners