Compendium 35 — Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking
"Group wisdom emerges whenever information is dispersed among different minds." — Matthew Syed
📖 Brief Overview
Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking by Matthew Syed explores the transformative potential of diverse perspectives in decision-making and problem-solving. Syed argues that embracing cognitive diversity, which includes a variety of experiences, backgrounds, and perspectives, leads to more innovative and effective solutions. Drawing on examples from various fields such as business, sports, and science, the author illustrates how diverse teams outperform homogeneous ones. Syed challenges the conventional notion of individual genius and emphasizes the collective intelligence that arises when individuals with different viewpoints collaborate. The book delves into the importance of breaking away from groupthink and fostering an inclusive environment that encourages dissent and unique contributions. Syed suggests that learning from failure is crucial for adaptation and progress. By highlighting real-world success stories and the impact of diverse thinking, Rebel Ideas inspires readers to appreciate the strength of collaborative, inclusive approaches in tackling complex challenges. Ultimately, the book advocates for a shift in mindset, urging individuals and organizations to value diversity not just as a social good but as a strategic imperative for innovation and success.
💡 Twelve Big Ideas
Rebel Ideas in two quotes:
1. "Group wisdom emerges whenever information is dispersed among different minds."
2. "Diversity, in a real sense, is the hidden engine of humanity.
1. Argument Against Diversity
One argument against diversity proposes that people should be recruited based on skill, not merely because they are different. The argument goes something like this 'If I'm running a company, I want to hire the best people for the job, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual preferences. Aiming to appear diverse to seem woke hinders the performance of the company'.
Matthew address this argument in the beginning on the book.
"This is a book about diversity, about the power of bringing people together who think differently from one another. At one level, this might seem like a curious objective. Surely, we should aim to think correctly or accurately, not differently. One should only wish to think differently from other people when they are in the wrong. When other people are right, thinking differently will only lead you into error. This seems like common sense. Another seemingly commonsensical statement was that made by Justice Scalia. He argued that recruiting people because they are different, in one way or another, is to jeopardize performance. You should hire people because they are smart, or knowledgeable or fast. Why would you hire people who are less knowledgeable, fast or talented, just because they are different?"
The reason, by the way, is because people that are different think differently.
When I say 'different', I, like the author, am speaking about cognitive and demographic diversity. People that share varying views, beliefs and life experiences.
"Demographic diversity (differences in race, gender, age, class, sexual orientation, religion and so on) can, in certain circumstances, increase group wisdom. Teams that are diverse in personal experiences tend to have a richer, more nuanced understanding of their fellow human beings. They have a wider array of perspectives – fewer blind spots. They bridge between frames of reference."
If we only surround ourselves with people who think like us, our life becomes an echo chamber; we only hear the viewpoint we already believe. Our life becomes a living lesson in the power of confirmation bias. This fact is one social media companies are optimizing their algorithms around.
2. Social Media Manipulation
Algorithm manipulation was touched on in the book but is too important not further explore.
Social media companies, by design, keep us on their services for a long as possible. They only optimize for getting people somewhere and keeping them there.
In Stuart J. Russell's book, Human Compatible, he explains how they accomplish this (paraphrased for simplicity).
There are two ways an algorithm can achieve its goal:
1. Become better at predicting what the user wants.
2. Manipulate the user's preferences to make them more predictable.
As it turns out, these algorithms have been focusing primarily on the second option.
The algorithms selecting content to feed you will display information that either matches your current beliefs or, over time, drip feeds you enough news that pushes you one way or another. This may provide one answer as to why people are adopting more extremist views. Being out on the edges of a political spectrum makes you easier to predict, whereas if you're in the middle, you can swing either way - it's not as clear what your believes are and how you will act.
Social media is one arena, but what about Google? Google is neutral, right? It just answers my questions, doesn't it? Unfortunately, that's not the case. Everything you type into Google and click on logged. Google then uses your search and click history to show the most relevant results for you. Google is not a neutral adversary. Your experience on the platform is based on your previous interactions with it.
This all provides for a rather one-dimensional experience online. It would be like living with your family your whole life, never venturing outside of your hometown. Ask yourself next time you see a triggering article on your feed, why am I being shown this? What conclusions does this information lead me to believe? And perhaps, most importantly, are they true?
3. Echo Chambers
An echo chamber refers to beliefs being amplified and confirmed inside a closed system, away from any rebuttal. Theories are reinforced inside them without any exposure to opposing viewpoints. They are dangerously easy to fall into, as we have explored. The result of residing inside an echo chamber is confirmation bias, in where a person interprets information in a way that supports their current beliefs.
Here are a couple of my favourite quotes to stop yourself from falling victim to echo chamber thinking.
Does a community’s belief system actively undermine the trustworthiness of any outsiders who don’t subscribe to its central dogmas? Then it’s probably an echo chamber. - C. Thi Nguyen
I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do. - Charlie Munger
Here is an example from the book of an echo chamber in reality.
"The mathematician Emma Pierson analysed how the troubles of Ferguson, Missouri were covered on social media in 2014, after a white police officer called Darren Wilson shot and killed a black man, Michael Brown. She found two, distinct clusters. ‘Blue tweets’ expressed horror at Brown’s death and criticised the oppressive police response, while the ‘red tweets’ argued that the policeman was being scapegoated and the protesters were looters. As Pierson puts it:
“The red group says they would feel safer meeting Darren Wilson than Michael Brown, and says that Brown was armed when he was shot; the blue group sarcastically contrasts Darren Wilson with the unarmed Michael Brown. The red group talks about mob justice and race baiting; the blue group talks about breaking the system. The red group blames Obama for exacerbating tensions and forcing the Missouri governor into declaring a state of emergency; the blue group says the state of emergency must not be used to violate human rights.
“Perhaps most tellingly of all, these two groups had virtually no interaction with each other. They were only seeing tweets from people who agreed with them, a demonstration of how the segmentary dynamics of the Internet can filter information. ‘When it comes to Ferguson, two groups with very different political and racial backgrounds ignore each other,’ Pierson writes. ‘This seems likely to cause problems, and in fact it does. For one thing, the two groups think drastically different things.’"
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