[apaitch]

A wise man learns from the mistakes of others, yes. But you don't have to be doing what everyone else is doing to learn from their mistakes (otherwise you wouldn't be learning from their mistakes, but from your own). Also, if, as you say, you follow others and do what they do it's not really based on data either until you get enough experience to know what works and what doesn't. After that your "data" will be the sum of past experience and observing the successes and failures of others. It's really the same process if you follow your intuition.

I think the misconception is that following your intuition HAS to mean NOT following the herd. That's only true in the sense of making up your mind and choosing what it is you want to do regardless of what other people are doing. If this happens to coincide with the herd's behaviour it doesn't make your behaviour herd-y (=P). The difference is the "why", not the "what". You're acting in a certain way because that's what you decided to do based on, say, intuition, or based on what other people are doing (or a mix of both). What it is you're doing may be exactly the same as what others are doing, but that's secondary. And I should say that living according to your inner voice really isn't that difficult/frustrating. In fact it's somewhat liberating to do what you want to do as figuring out the herd and convincing yourself to follow it takes more mental energy (in my opinion/experience, of course).

Lastly, when talking about "learning what works and what doesn't", it's unlikely that you'll learn about things that really work from those that follow the herd. It's more likely that you'll learn from those who lead the herd - and those people do it by following their inner voice.