Nothing - Nic; Photo by Jaroslaw Pocztarski
My Hero says: My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves & the quality of their knowledge too seriously & those who don’t have the courage to sometimes say: I don’t know…” I say, on this blog - “…goofiness is important, it reduces the probability of b.s.“
Only difference is, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, aka “Hero”, that suggests that moment of doubt, the moment of saying “I don’t know”. And when I say I’m trying to reduce the chance of b.s., I’m first and foremost talking of reducing my own b.s. I suspect that’s not Taleb’s starting point. But I’m going to fantasize that on reading this he will crack a perfect joke, take himself down a notch, and remain My Hero.
In fact, my own viewpoint aligns with My Hero’s. That is, an awareness of ‘not knowing’ is the right starting point for much analysis or action. Unfortunately, being told that one doesn’t know more than one knows can seriously disturb many a machismo and ego.
I’d like to interlace Disney & that 2002 web phenomenon “Hot-or-Not”, to illustrate. With my own perverted sense of weekend relaxation, I spent one Saturday standing outside the downtown Disney store in the rain, holding posters of Winnie (leaking paint) and protesting the sacking of sweatshop employees in Disney’s factories in Bangladesh. It was a a complicated case. A contractor was found to have violated some labor laws in his subcontracted factory, so Disney peremptorily closed off the contract, resulting in all the employees losing their (already miserable) jobs.
I had struggled with the case. There were many complexities, not least of which was the contradiction between Disney following it’s ‘ethical’ guidelines to justify a move that resulted in real terms in even more damage to the workers than the initial violation. Was it as simple as Disney giving itself a checkmark for following it’s ’socially responsible’ principles hoping that no one dug around to see that it’s scorecard in real terms had just gone even more negative? Or should I be considering the corporate viewpoint, of the spirit “but what’s a good well-meaning company to do?” Sarcasm aside, though, I do have some sense of how hard it is to toe the line of a principle you’ve set yourself especially as it’s ramifications play out in a complex society. For example in this case, was it more important for the company to send a strong message to its’ other contractors, which in the longer run would be beneficial to workers everywhere? (Just for the sake of argument – I’m not assuming that this was truly Disney’s consideration – and there are in fact some much better alternatives).
After thinking about it, I decided that even though I couldn’t balance all the possible pieces of this puzzle to land on a comprehensively supportable course of action, I should still join my couple of friends to protest Disney. My philosophy, that we generally operate with an incomplete understanding of all the factors at play especially for distant scenarios, was a starting point. Against this backdrop, I felt it eminently sensible to put in a pitch with what what was likely the statistically underrepresented side – the side of the sacked workers.
There are many such situations where I feel that supporting the underrepresented side is justified, even if the scenario seems complex, when the impact may be severe along the axes of health, food, shelter. Disney didn’t need my help at all. By being silent, I was in effect supporting Disney, not the workers. Somewhere someone would adjust all the parameters and make decisions that would impact the scenario. Me, I could do my bit to just ensure that those whose voices aren’t heard as often get a bit of support. If you think of all the time that you’re spending not acting and contributing to the statistics (noise included) of the default, then a few times of standing in a crowd protesting the other side just can’t be wrong.
That evening, through some random connections, I ended up hanging out with the guy who founded ‘Hot or Not’ and found myself explaining my day’s activities and my rationale. But Hot (Not) was not only unconvinced by the rationale for my actions but also grew steadily angrier. It became apparent to me that for someone who had just convinced himself that he was smart beyond the norm, having just recently been catapulted into sudden fame and perhaps even fortune, what I was justifying was in turn pulling the rug out from under his rationalized sense of his position in the world. It was obviously upsetting to his sense of self that I was putting the weight of my personality behind a world view (similar to My Hero’s dare I say) where his newly proven smarts could never be sufficient or perhaps even useful. I guess when your future wealth may depend on the profound and quantifiable metric, ‘degree of hotness’, you can’t bear to hear about how it may actually be less useful than something unassessed, something immeasurable at it’s core.
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