Wednesday 19 August 2009

The Generation M Manifesto

This is adolescent posturing. It's stupid and simplistic. Let's take an example:

"You wanted big, fat, lazy "business." We want small, responsive, micro-scale commerce."

Does he actually think that people sat down and chose "big, fat, lazy business"? Presumably not. That would show a complete lack of understanding of human nature.

So what does he mean by this?


Let's assume, at least for now, that 'business' is fat and lazy*. Even with these fairly naive starting assumptions we could construct a nuanced and interesting question; 'How did people with good intentions end up creating these seemingly fat and lazy companies'?

There's a huge range of literature on why humans think the way they do, much of it completely fascinating. If I were to glibly oversimplify it I'd say that most of the problems stem from the fact that it seems that the human brain was never designed to find truth; it was designed to live in a human society. This leads to all sorts of problems, mainly due to people signalling values they want to portray to others in the society rather than facing reality as it is.

What he's done in this post is to sell people a fictional story; one that will appeal greatly to them but contains no truth or merit. That's fine so long as no one tries to act on it. But as soon as things have to be done in the real world, reality bites and anyone who tried to find meaningful content in his words would be chasing shadows.

The irony is that he's criticising perhaps the most stereotypically 'enlightened' generation, that of the 60's - the one that would have bought in to the sentiments expressed in this post most avidly. Remember how rock and roll was going to save the world? He's updated that stupidity by 50 years.

Is it possible that the very reason things have gone wrong is because, back when the current CEO's were in their impressionable youth, they bought into exactly the same crap he's peddling here? By making decisions on unrealistic, fairy-tale versions of reality nothing will work out the way we expect.

People have thought long and hard about their decisions to make the world the way it is today. I offer you the modern understanding of cognitive biases and behavioural economics as a way of understanding where they went wrong.

Unless you can offer me a new explanation of why they made their mistakes, since both you and they are human, you're probably going to screw up in exactly the same way.



*breaking this down would provide more food for thought. Businesses do seem to be overly fat and lazy but how, in a competitive market place, can this happen?

23 comments:

  1. I find this fascinating - understanding the psychology of a social movement or a revolution.

    It's a bit like a collective falling in love.

    Or, to use the (inappropriate) physicist's analogy, a phase transition. Suddenly (it is not a gradual process) the rules of organising change at all scales, and a new order is established.

    News from the White House earlier in the year, or now the news from Tehran. It's a great mental buzz.

    I'm not sure what Foucauldians would say to all this. One order is gone, and a new one is established. The new rules and institutions are still telling us what to do, how we should behave to each other and they are "watching us"...

    Probably in a generation, those need to be replaced again through the collective spirit of a movement.

    A mathematician's mind can't escape asking the banal question - does this sequence converge? But to answer that, you have to choose some kind of metric (right, or a topology :)).
    Let's call it "freedom". Or should we call it "happiness".

    One could have so much fun simulating these things.

    Maybe the point of convergence is a cynical generation who sees social movement as a child's game. Or an enlightened one for that matter, who are not easily sold stories, the one that was taught evolutionary psychology in nursery school.

    But I guess it's great to fall in love. Or carry pamphlets. Or both, at the same time.

    Maybe the metric should be... wait, "love". Damn you 60s.

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  2. "If I were to glibly oversimplify it I'd say that most of the problems stem from the fact that it seems that the human brain was never designed to find truth; it was designed to live in a human society. This leads to all sorts of problems, mainly due to people signalling values they want to portray to others in the society rather than facing reality as it is."

    I agree. Living within the safe network of a community/society is one of the surest paths to stability and long-term happiness. Plus, it makes perfect evolutionary sense.
    Of course, the society needs a pioneer here and there to go across the savanna and check out the zebras over there.

    But, also, obviously, the momentum of social change is an important thing to engage with, even though it's interwoven with hypocrisy and slogans, it often does move things forward.

    I want to live to see the day when travel to any part of the planet is an inalienable human right, so that visas don't exist as a concept anymore. A new flavour of freedom.

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  3. Aida, you haven't taken into account the necessity of risk-taking in hunter-gathering. Safety and long life are very recent innovations, and evolutionary psychology says that our "nature" (i.e. tendencies and capabilities) are still optimised for hunter-gathering. If nothing else, sexual selection tells us why young men often take big risks: if they succeed, they attract the ladies and get to breed. If they fail, OR if they don't try, then they don't. Therefore the next generation will have an increasing tendency towards risk-taking.

    Marc, you said that business "seems" fat and lazy. Got a measurement for that?

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  4. I agree that within the constraints of society a certain amount of risk taking is necessary. But what we're talking about here is slightly different.

    There's a noticeable divergence between what people say and what people do. Everyone says they want to help others, but very few people actually do to any really considerable degree. This leads me to believe that people are in fact signalling - essentially saying one thing then acting another. This doesn't even have to be conscious - people called Louise will be able to give you a thousand good reasons why they live in New Orleans - but i bet they won't ever say it's because Louisiana sounds like Louise. And yet we find that this correlation exists and is repeatable (dentists called Dennis etc..).

    These stories, "I live in New Orleans because of the cultural diversity", are constructs of society that do not reflect the underlying reality. What I think Aida means is that calling society out on such issues, particularly those that are related to beliefs that we cherish (charity, love etc) is not the path to happiness.

    (or evolutionary success - I don't think its a coincidence that it's not very attractive to talk about hard truths without an underlying narrative framework - if the brain had evolved through sexual selection to select for stories that demonstrated the quality of the underlying genes then this is as we'd expect)

    In answer to your question about business, i don't have a measurement, but i do have a stack of anecdotal evidence. I would even bet the data is out there somewhere.

    If you ask around I'd say that its probably a conservative estimate to say that 20% of work time is being wasted. Even if it's smaller it doesn't make a huge difference to the point. In a truly competitive market place surely any company that had any slack would be out produced? What's the limiting mechanism that is allowing all these companies to survive? I can think of a few options but I'd be interested to hear ideas.

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  5. I do agree that people are indeed signalling all the time consciously and unconsciously.

    However, when you say, "those that are related to beliefs that we cherish (charity, love etc) is not the path to happiness" seems to contradict to what studies in positive psychology have shown so far. Despite the studies are empirical, they find that belonging to or in service of these beliefs (charity, knowledge, religion etc) produce the maximum subjective well-being of individuals (what we called happiness). Perhaps it comes down to it is not what happens to people that determines how happy they are but how they interpret what happens. These terminologies provide means to interpret those events.

    In respond to your question on what's the limiting mechanism. I would boldly suggests that it may be human ourselves are the limiting factor. One individual may be extremely hard working, efficiently, no procrastination etc. But if you put many different people in an organisation, a business, collectively they will cancel each other out productivity-wise. We are built to survive, not to be most productive. In fact, I can already think of examples that being very productive may actually jeopardise survival.

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  6. I didn't mean that charity and love aren't the path to happiness. I meant that explaining the hypocrisy of the attitude of society to charity and love isn't the path to happiness.

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  7. I believe that worrying too much (or at all) about the hypocrisy of others is severely unproductive. Marc, do you have a vision of an ideal, Utopian society?

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  8. I disagree.

    No, I don't see a conventional utopian society as a possibility within human nature. What I do see is that, were we to take reality for what it is, we could improve a huge part of our society.

    If we understand ourselves we can create institutions to channel our behaviours towards more desirable outcomes (this may sound utopian but i'm thinking more along the lines of democratic government to prevent corruption and police to prevent crime).

    Understanding ourselves involves being able to predict responses of people to situations - something that is impossible to do if you listen to how people talk about themselves. Studying the 'hypocrisy' of people is, to me, a route to truly developing understanding of human behaviour. Sure, this is a huge project, but it doesn't stop it being an extremely interesting and worthwhile one.

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  9. If you seek to understand human nature, have you fully looked into behavioural economics, evolutionary psychology, and the latest research on negotiation (hat tip to IQ for that one)?

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  10. Yes. I'm extremely interested in behavioural economics etc. Anything where there's empirical data on human decisions. The hypocrisy that i discuss is entirely derived from the experiments of these disciplines.

    The reason i concentrate on hypocrisy is because it's provably irrational (incentives stay the same, decision changes - the definition of irrationality). Other forms of what is conventionally labelled 'irrationality' (e.g. murder) could just be explained away as an unusual utility functions so, without detailed discussions, it's difficult to get across the message.

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  11. I think you'll find that all of the other quirks of human thought, including so-called hypocrisy, come from evolutionarily mandated cognitive processes. Cognitive dissonance, anyone?

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  12. Certainly.

    This is what Aida was referring to when she said:
    "Living within the safe network of a community/society is one of the surest paths to stability and long-term happiness. Plus, it makes perfect evolutionary sense."

    The idea is that now we're beyond using our brains simply to tell stories. The scientific method, when used properly, frees us from our biases and let's us address the underlying reality. Our evolutionarily evolved biases simply mean that we make the same mistakes, doing things that we know other people will like rather than what's best. I think it's possible to fix it.

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  13. Aida says that stability makes the most evolutionary sense. I disagree. What makes most evolutionary sense is to have great variation between individuals (including a propensity for great risk-taking in some). The survival of the fittest does not mean being best adapted for the current conditions. It means being best adapted for the next, different set of conditions. Even in our present, rather safe society (in the West - not in all parts of the world), risk-taking is rewarded with wealth and breeding opportunities.

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  14. Well I think Aida might need to be slightly clearer about what exactly she's referring to. She's not speaking about general behaviours, she's referring to behaviours that only exist within a social context. That's why risk taking doesn't necessarily increase reward - because if society defines the rules then there's no beating them.

    This really needs a separate post to explain but what she means is behaviours like pretending to give to charity in public but not really doing that much in private. Being the risk taker that explains "how they don't give a shit about giving money to charity" isn't going to work because society defines the rules.

    Perhaps we should wait for a clearer exposition as, in general, you're right about evolution. It's just in these cases there's some subtleties about where the actual pressure lies. It's a conventional evolutionarily pressure not to give away stuff to charity, but a social, and no less real, pressure to give to charity to impress the opposite sex. Evolutions solution to the paradox - we lie to society about giving stuff away - getting the social benefits without costs*.

    A couple of technical points. I disagree with:

    "The survival of the fittest does not mean being best adapted for the current conditions."

    Evolution can only ever select for the ability to survive in the current conditions. That's literally how the process works. If the conditions change then evolution will start to select for those new conditions. But it can never pre-select in anticipation of new conditions as you imply.

    Also I'm not sure that it's totally obvious that, in the modern environment, wealth brings breeding opportunities in a way that will cause an evolutionary pressure (i.e. i agree women like rich guys but i'm not sure those rich guys like having children with the women - and now they have a choice not too).

    I think it could equally be argued - particularly on a global scale, but even if we limit it to the western world - that the richer you are the fewer children you have. I wouldn't want to commit either way without studying a lot of data.




    *this is an over exaggeration for clarity - we actually tend to give as small amount as possible as publicly as possible.

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  15. @Marc

    "Evolution can only ever select for the ability to survive in the current conditions. That's literally how the process works. If the conditions change then evolution will start to select for those new conditions. But it can never pre-select in anticipation of new conditions as you imply."

    Since over the long term, conditions definitely will change, over the long term the most adaptable species will survive and thrive the best. That's literally how the process works.

    "I think it could equally be argued - particularly on a global scale, but even if we limit it to the western world - that the richer you are the fewer children you have. I wouldn't want to commit either way without studying a lot of data."

    The Economist had a relevant article on 6 Aug 2009, "A link between wealth and breeding: The best of all possible worlds?". Summary at top: "It was once a rule of demography that people have fewer children as their countries get richer. That rule no longer holds true."

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  16. Thanks for the link. Although I'm not sure that the tail (from the new data) will make the difference until a lot more countries are lifted out of poverty.



    "Since over the long term, conditions definitely will change, over the long term the most adaptable species will survive and thrive the best. That's literally how the process works."

    No, that's not how it works. You could design a species that is 95% efficient in all possible conditions (i.e. highly adaptable). I could design one that's 96% efficient in the current conditions, 0% efficient in all others (low adaptability). My species would out-compete yours in the present then die out when the conditions change.

    Evolution can't select for risk taking unless it provides a competitive benefit at this moment, otherwise the risk takers will get out-competed and the trait will cease to exist before the conditions change.

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  17. Obviously you have evidence that this 1% difference would lead to annihilation of the more adaptable species. Right?

    By the way, the many rhetorical artificialities you are relying on include that the two species are competing for exactly the same resources, in a bounded area, and that the adaptability would not leave some individuals to adapt to using different resources. What's your field, Marc?

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  18. Thanks for taking such an active interest. It makes it much more interesting getting these new perspectives.

    Before we get too carried away with the precise numerical difference let's remember that the percentages were chosen by me to illustrate my point. Don't feel you have to hang your argument on those specific numbers :).

    And I agree that there's certainly a huge amount of detail behind what is favoured evolutionarily but I think that to discuss it in depth would only cloud the issue.

    Let's not lose sight of what I was originally disagreeing with (I include further context for clarity):

    "The survival of the fittest does not mean being best adapted for the current conditions. It means being best adapted for the next, different set of conditions."

    Whatever rhetorical sleights of typing I may or may not be using (none were used for obfuscation; it was intended to be clarification through simplification) I don't think that disagreeing with that statement is a controversial claim.

    Would you disagree with this statement?

    'Evolution has no predictive ability to determine what the next set of conditions will be, so can have no power to pre-select for after the transition to new conditions.'

    Unless you disagree with that I'd find it hard to see how you could stand by your original statement. If you do disagree, please could you explain where, then perhaps we can find out where exactly the root of our differences lie?

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  19. 'Evolution has no predictive ability to determine what the next set of conditions will be, so can have no power to pre-select for after the transition to new conditions.'

    I disagree with your corollary; evolution does not need to have "predictive ability". The species that will survive in the long-term is the one that will adapt. This is an exposition on that. Your claim that if there are two species competing for similar resources, one must annihilate the other, is the logical fallacy of the false dilemma.

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  20. I think I understand the disagreement now.

    More adaptable (what you say now) is not the same as being best adapted to conditions that don't currently exist (how I read your original statement).

    Perhaps you didn't intend for your statement to be interpreted this way but:

    "The survival of the fittest does not mean being best adapted for the current conditions. It means being best adapted for the next, different set of conditions."

    implies that the species is not optimised for the current conditions but for future conditions. It's like a woolly mammoth living in current day England in anticipation of an ice age; which is obviously an evolutionary fallacy.

    I'm further considering the later point of whether adaptability is evolutionarily selected, is simply a fact conditional on a species existing, or only selected for under certain strategies.

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  21. Your use of the word "optimise" is confusing you. You seem to be tied to the idea of all-or-nothing perfectionism.

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  22. My use of the word "optimise" may be confusing you.

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  23. This discussion is going nowhere, it's going in circle right. Can you two sum up your points in a short paragraph and we have a fresh start?

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