Framers: Human Advantage in an Age of Technology and Turmoil
by
Kenneth Cukier
,
Viktor Mayer-Schönberger
and
Francis de Véricourt
Published 10 May 2021
But embracing pluralism inevitably means some frames will emerge that see the variety of mental models as a blight. That is what happened in the 1930s, as Nazis, fascists, and communists succeeded in suffocating the diversity of thought. It is a concern that the philosopher Karl Popper called the “paradox of tolerance”: that to tolerate intolerance eventually leads to no tolerance at all (fittingly, see note). Throughout this book we have taken pains to suggest there is no such thing as a bad frame, only those that don’t fit the circumstances well. And they should certainly be allowed to coexist. But we also carefully emphasized that there is a qualification to this generous rule.
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See: Rutka Laskier, Rutka’s Notebook: A Voice from the Holocaust, eds. Daniella Zaidman-Mauer and Kelly Knauer (New York: Time/Yad Vashem, 2008), 29–30. On market coordination: Charles E. Lindblom, The Market System—What It Is, How It Works, and What to Make of It (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001). On Karl Popper’s “paradox of tolerance”: Karl Popper, “The Principle of Leadership,” in The Open Society and Its Enemies, vol. 1 (Abington, UK: Routledge, 1945), note 4. The idea is raised only in a note, not the text. Building on Plato’s “paradox of freedom” (giving a tyrant the freedom to destroy freedom means society ends up with no freedom), Popper writes: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.
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Chan, 35 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 41 Kleiner, Eugene, 42 Kodak, 182 Kuhn, Thomas, 10 Langdell, Christopher Columbus, 86–87 Langley, Samuel, 37 language, grammatical, 57, 58 Lanier, Jaron, 112 “latticework of models,” 129 Laurel, Brenda, 85 learning and explainability, 63–64 learning as disruptive, 152–154 “Lego Ideas,” 165–166 Leopold the Pious, 169 Lilienthal, Otto, 36 Lister, Joseph, 61–62 Lo, Andrew, 130 “local optimum,” 166–167, 243 Lombrozo, Tania, 63–64 Lysenko, Trofim, and Lysenkoism, 7 MacGyver (television program), 91 Mandžukić, Mario, 77–78 maps, 27–28 Mauborgne, Renée, 35 McCarthy, John, 44 McDowell, Alex, 114 Meitner, Lise, 133 mental diversity advantages of, when identifying solutions, 166–167, 176 broadening range of frames, 155–156, 160–161, 241 business monocultures and, 183 clean-slate strategy for increasing, 158–160, 241 “cognitive foraging” for increasing, 156–158, 160 conceptual leaps necessary for, 152–153 friction resulting from, 194–195 ideological silos and, 207 importance of, when reframing, 162–163 as mind-set, not method, 151–154 within organizations, 161–166, 241–242 Podolny and, 150–151 rise and fall of social structures and, 183–185 social structure’s belief in validity of dominant mental model and, 179 variation not volume as important, 154 mental models art and, 11 banning certain, 186–187 broadness of, and ability to work in different circumstances, 144–146 building real models to support, 115–117 business and management and, 35 causal, from ability to abstract from direct observation and, 54–55, 59 choosing new, 40–44 coexistence of competing, 198–199 coexistence of new and old, 134 cognitive dexterity necessary to entertain many different, 168 convincing causal explanations needed for application of, 62 dangers of exclusion of alternative, 179–182 defined, 226 efficiency of choosing, 153, 208–209 emotionalists and, 69 employed affect options, 5 end of history and liberal, market democracy as only, 181–182 everyday use of, 9, 25 explainability as essential to success of, 62 for financial crisis of 2008, 50–51 flawed causal, 66–67 as foundation of human cognition, 5, 25, 26, 208 hard constraints and, 104 harnessing, 139–140, 219 historical, for financial markets, 50 importance of diversity of, when reframing, 162–163 invention of new, 7–8 keep world manageable and thus actionable, 9 learning enabled by, 64 maps as physical representations of, 27–28 as means of finding solutions, 4–5, 8, 38–39 need for diversity of, 151–152, 186 nine-dot test and, 46 as operationalizing values, 39 other terms for, 25 pluralism as flourishing of many clashing, 177–178 pluralism of, versus uniformity of, 14–15 poor, 6–7, 60–61, 178–179, 186 reapplication of same successful, 127, 179, 207 reduce cognitive load by focusing mind, 11–12 as shaping worldview, 39–40 single, as truth, 179 social structure’s belief in validity of dominant, 179 space exploration and, 33–35 technology’s need for human input of causal, to outperform humans, 70 as templates for human cognition, 11 tendency toward homophily and, 89, 162, 234 tension between, 160–161 use and validation of, 40 Messner, Reinhold, 123–126, 127 metaphors, importance of, 57 MeToo movement, 24 migration and mobility, 191–194 Milano, Alyssa, 23–24 minimal-change principle, 108–110 Minority Report (film), 111–114 misframing, 6–7, 10, 30–31 Mokyr, Joel, 183–184 monocultures, 179–183 monolithic thinking, 20, 180 Monument Valley, 85–86 moon landing, 33–34 Morris, Jan (formerly James), 160 Mosia, Nthabiseng, 203–204 mountain climbing, 123–126, 127 Mount Everest, 123–126, 127 Munger, Charlie, 129 Murdoch, Rupert, 194 Musk, Elon, 105–106, 194 mutability, 104–107, 110 mutilated checkerboard problem, 152–153 Nadella, Satya, 194 Neptune, prediction of existence of, 35 Netanyahu, Jonathan “Yoni,” 100 Newton, 7–8, 78, 131 New York Times, 34, 170–171 Nie Yunchen, 202–203 nine-dot test, 46, 47 Nix, Kevin, 189 Nokia versus Apple, 6–7 Norgay, Tenzing, 123 Norway, 163 Occam’s razor, 108 Ono, Koichi, 65 OpenAI, 70 options AI’s failure to conjure restraints creates too many, 118 constraints enable identification of viable, 117 counterfactuals and, 90 framing as ideal for efficiently identifying valuable, 208 mental models employed affect, 5 reframing provides new, 126 “Our World in Data” project, 19 Page, Scott, 166–167, 243 paradigm shifts, 10–11 “paradox of tolerance,” 178, 244 Parker, Robert, 109 Pasteur, Louis, 61 pattern recognition, 56 Pauling, Linus, 132 Pearl, Judea, 68 Perec, Georges, 103, 236 Perfume (Süskind), 83 Piaget, Jean, 80 Pichai, Sundar, 194 Pinker, Steven, 56, 57 Plato, 77 play, 80–82 pluralism banning certain mental models, 186–187 benefits of, 176 Chinese versus European societies, 183–185 coexistence of competing mental models, 198–199 cultural diversity and, 193 debate in “public sphere,” 195–197 in economic and political spheres, 176–177 education and childhood socialization to foster, 190–191 embracing variation to foster, 188–190 expansion and restriction of, 173–176 flourishing of multiplicity of clashing mental models, 177–178 as fostering and celebrating differences, 14–15 friction resulting from, 194–195 goal of, 186 importance of, 151–152, 179–181, 186 as means to end, 177 migration and mobility to foster, 191–194 as necessary for societal survival, 177–178 reapplication of same mental models and, 179 social pressure to censor and, 186 versus uniformity of mental models, 14–15 as unnatural state for humans, 187–188 Podolny, Joel, 149–151, 164–165 Poetics (Aristotle), 84–85 Popper, Karl, 178, 244 Porat, Ruth, 194 possibilities.
Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown
by
Philip Mirowski
Published 24 Jun 2013
Many writers have noted in detail how Popper’s vision proved incompatible with that of Hayek; many philosophers of science have rejected Popper’s vision of how science actually works.123 But Popper himself at least glimpsed that his youthful exaltation of tolerance for unlimited criticism was unavailing in many circumstances that resembled those the MPS was constructed to counter. For instance, in a long footnote in Open Society he grants the plausibility of paradoxes of tolerance (“Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance”) and democracy (“the majority may decide that a tyrant should rule”), but had little to offer concerning how those paradoxes should be defanged. Yet around the same time, Popper was already flirting with the Hayekian “solution”: membership in the Open Society had to be prescreened to conform to a “minimum philosophy”: but the principles of selection for that philosophy were never made as explicit as they were by Hayek in practice.124 Here, I believe, we can witness the birth of one of the trademark “double truth” doctrines of neoliberalism at the MPS.
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Hayek’s Road is written in this register, with its dedication, “To socialists of all parties.” Divergent views should compete and be criticized from the opposing camp. Everyone, they said, was welcome to participate. Yet there abided a closed subset of MPS insiders who recognized the force of the paradoxes of tolerance and democracy; and consequently they ran their thought collective as an exclusive hierarchical organization, consisting of members preselected for conformity, which encountered opposed conceptions of the world only in highly caricatured versions produced by their own true believers. Esoteric knowledge was transgressive: a liberalism for the twenty-first century could be incubated and sustained only by an irredeemably illiberal organization.
Lurking: How a Person Became a User
by
Joanne McNeil
Published 25 Feb 2020
Miranda reported on the demise of Vermonica for the Los Angeles Times (“After 24 Years at an L.A. Strip Mall, Sheila Klein’s Beloved ‘Vermonica’ Light Sculpture Is Moved without Notice,” November 30, 2017). Thanks to Kim Cooper at Esotouric tours for bringing it to public attention. I interviewed P. Tomi Austin on July 7, 2018. I interviewed Kat Lo in July 2018. Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance is often invoked as a counter to the policy of content free-for-all. He defined this in his 1945 book, The Open Society and Its Enemies (2nd ed., Routledge, 1952, 265): “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”
The Glass Half-Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century
by
Rodrigo Aguilera
Published 10 Mar 2020
. … But to go beyond this minimalist definition and label a country democratic only if it guarantees a comprehensive catalog of social, political, economic, and religious rights turns the word democracy into a badge of honor rather than a descriptive category.12 Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, it has become painfully obvious that there is no guarantee that the transition from autocracy to electoral democracy is enough to nurture the forces of liberalism, even in the longer run. Democracy, after all, suffers from the political version of Karl Popper’s Paradox of Tolerance, which has it that tolerating the intolerant can lead to the latter imposing their intolerance13: autocrats can use democracy to gain power and impose autocracy, even if slightly disguised from outright dictatorship. Zakaria believed that those countries with a liberal past (even if autocratic) were in the best position to turn into liberal democracies; he gave the example of the former constituent states of the Austro-Hungarian Empire — a liberal autocracy — most of which quickly matured into functional, stable liberal democracies.
Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, From the Ancients to Fake News
by
Eric Berkowitz
Published 3 May 2021
In 1978, the courts affirmed the right of neo-Nazis to march in uniforms through the Chicago suburb of Skokie, Illinois, where forty thousand Jews—seven thousand of them Holocaust survivors—lived in the village of seventy thousand.113 In 1992, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down a law against putting a burning cross or swastika anywhere “in an attempt to arouse anger or alarm on the basis of race, color, creed, or religion.”114 And in 2011, the court sided with a hate group that picketed the funeral of a gay soldier killed in Iraq, brandishing signs saying “God Hates Fags” and “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.” “Such speech,” the court held, “cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.”115 The European policy toward hate speech reflects the “paradox of tolerance” theory of the Austrian-born British philosopher Karl Popper. In The Open Society and Its Enemies, he wrote that “unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant . . . then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. . . .
What We Owe the Future: A Million-Year View
by
William MacAskill
Published 31 Aug 2022
One challenge is that these institutions and ideas will be morally controversial; for example, from many fundamentalist religious perspectives, the idea that we would encourage or even allow a diversity of worldviews might be regarded as abominable. Similarly, the idea that the path to the correct moral view is via reflection and good-faith debate, rather than studying the scripture of a holy book, is not one that everyone would accept.130 The lock-in paradox thus resembles the familiar paradox of tolerance—the necessity for liberal societies to defend themselves against intolerant views that would undermine their freedom, even if doing so requires curtailing the very tolerance they want to preserve.131 I think we must live with these paradoxes. If we wish to avoid the lock-in of bad moral views, an entirely laissez-faire approach would not be possible; over time, the forces of cultural evolution would dictate how the future goes, and the ideologies that lead to the greatest military power and that try to eliminate their competition would suppress all others.132 In this chapter, I’ve suggested that we are living through a period of plasticity, that the moral views that shape society are like molten glass that can be blown into many different shapes.
Small Men on the Wrong Side of History: The Decline, Fall and Unlikely Return of Conservatism
by
Ed West
Published 19 Mar 2020
Many liberals have always vehemently opposed such intellectual straitjacketing, and indeed ‘political correctness’ was originally a pejorative and satirical term used by people on the Left ‘as a guard against their own orthodoxy in social change efforts’, in academic Debra Schultz’s words.10 Although American politics became less radical in the 1970s and 1980s, with election victories for Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, academia became more so, especially when the students of 1968 returned as professors; and this radicalism fanned out into the wider culture of media and politics. One interpretation of PC is that it is the ‘paradox of tolerance’, promoting tolerance of historically disadvantaged or persecuted groups to such an extreme that it becomes itself another form of intolerance.11 The Left would argue that PC is used to fight injustices or hate speech, although what defines hate speech is the big question. Of course, whoever is in control tends to censor what their opponents do; in my glorious pre-1968 golden age theatre was still censored and comedians were prohibited from mocking politicians on television.
Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World
by
Timothy Garton Ash
Published 23 May 2016
As Thomas Scanlon observes, tolerance asks us to position ourselves somewhere between ‘wholehearted acceptance and unrestrained opposition’.17 For the sake of living together peacefully in cosmopolis, we accept the free expression of beliefs, values and lifestyles that we find profoundly wrong. So we accept them but don’t accept them. ‘To tolerate is to insult’, Goethe mused in one of his notebooks.18 Yet if we go too far in tolerating those who are themselves programmatically intolerant, we will end up destroying the foundations of tolerance. Karl Popper calls this the paradox of tolerance: ‘unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance’.19 Exploring the idea of civility thus takes us to the heart of an unending debate about the internal balances of a liberal, pluralist, open society. Experts on each thinker that I have quoted may object that Montesquieu, Machiavelli or Goethe meant something more complex when using the term, which obviously they did.