If this thing = making sure users want what you're making, that particular cargo cult would find to their delight that planes were starting to land.

Yes, well, people are terrible, terrible, at thinking for themselves. And when they do think for themselves, they are even more terrible at acknowledging that their thoughts don't shape reality.

That's glib. There is a very, very difficult balancing act between trusting your innermost convictions and learning to doubt said convictions frequently, as an exercise which reinforces the good bits and dispels the nonsense within them. Failure is the most valuable when you fail at something you personally believe in, because you're forced to confront yourself in the failing. Failure because you followed some BS system for doing or creating a thing without using your own thought processes along the way might teach you to stop being such an idiot, but usually it takes many failures of that sort before the message seeps in.