The right way of thinking
There is no right way of thinking.
Diversity of thought is what creates progress. If you can only think of what has already been thought of, no one ever learns anything new.
Diversity of thought comes from diversity of viewpoints. Young people, maturing people, old people. Single people, married people. Men, women, non-binary people. People with backgrounds from all over the planet. People that come from socialist countries and people that come from war-torn countries. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Catholics, Protestants, Buddhists, atheists, zealots, iconoclasts. People who believe in the ascendance of the free market and collectivist communists. People who look and think and act just like you and people who look and think and act completely differently from you.
If anything is off-limits, that’s a problem for ideation. Even “toxic” ideas.
Creative people need the freedom to be wrong.
About diversity of thought
Science happens because people fervently disagree about what the truth of the world is and test it.
Financial markets work because people passionately disagree about the value of things and place bets with each other on that.
Politics evolves because people furiously disagree about what nations should be doing and debate about it to win over popular support.
International rivalries happen because nations disagree about the path to prosperity and create alliances and sanctions (and sometimes, wars) to promote their way of thinking.
Consider all of these systems. They have rules — there are rules about how to do science, how to participate in markets, how to hold elections, and even how nations in conflict are supposed to behave. But within those rules there is breathtaking disagreement and diversity. More rules usually means less creativity and less progress. But a lack of rules also makes progress difficult.
Think about the internet, which is perhaps the greatest invention for the progress of world thinking, where there are rules enforced by code (if you don’t code your site according to those rules, other people can’t see it) but within those rules, you can post anything from the Communist Manifesto to beat poetry to a documentary on baseball to pornography.
Of all the things we have created as a species, the idea of “markets” of all kinds — ideas, commerce, sport, art — may be the most fertile. Markets grow things. Individual participants in markets fail and succeed, but taken together, they advance us all. Breathtaking.
But now . . .
The U.S. government is cancelling grants because researchers are studying things with words like “women” in them.
The federal government is vying to put supervision in place at Columbia University to make sure it complies with its agreement to root our thinkers who believe in diversity.
These sorts of choices are stupid and shortsighted because they deny the fundamental principle of human progress: diversity of ideas and disagreement are where growth comes from. If you tell people what they are allowed to think, they stop thinking of things that are not allowed, and innovation stagnates.
Two things got us into the situation. First, a majority of U.S. voters voted for someone who insisted that people who think the wrong way are “disgusting.” Now he’s doing what he said he’d do — stopping people who look and think and act and love differently from what is “normal.”
But the other thing that got us here is the degree to which federal government money funds the places where thinking happens: research institutes and universities. If the feds fund thinking, the feds can decide not to fund certain sorts of thinking. Universities and research institutes who assumed that they’d continue to get funded to think of new ideas just because they always had been were, in the end, naive.
Regrettably, I worry that this genie cannot be stuffed back into the bottle. Even if other people take control of federal funding in the future, it would be difficult to permanently restore protections for diversity of thought. And there is a risk that people of a different ideological bent would just use the same mechanisms to enforce their way of thinking. (It’s still worth trying to restore funding for a greater diversity of research, I just worry that any solution would be politically vulnerable to a regression to what’s happening now.)
The alternative is for other sources of funding to step up. Harvard has a $50 billion endowment. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has $70 billion. The total value of all foundations exceeds $1 trillion. This is a moment of crisis that seems to demand a complete shift in the funding of research and diversity of thought.
I wonder, if foundations created funds specifically dedicated to diversity of thought, would rich individuals contribute? Would venture capital and private equity funds? Would companies? Would all of us?
It pains me to think that our government is losing the ability to fill this role. But it is too important to lose altogether.
What do you think?
The only diversity that matters is diversity of thought … and only to the extent that it leads to better, sounder outcomes, however we define better and sounder. Diversity of demographics should be pursued only to the extent that it makes better, sounder outcomes more likely.
I think I appreciate your insights. What struck me most was the need for rules. Rules are power. We need to figure out how to use the least amount for the greatest benefit, otherwise rules, like power, suppress and destroy.
Rules on the interpersonal level might be called core values. What we are missing is the smallest set of common core values/rules to live by, globally, so that diversity grows with those values embedded in every diverse thought and action we find ourselves capable of.
“A majority of U.S. voters voted for someone who insisted that people who think the wrong way are ‘disgusting.’”
This is why I’ll nothing to do with companies or groups whose name includes “Liberty.” Nearly always, they believe that only someone who holds their political views can be a patriot.
I meant to write, “This is why I’ll nothing to do with companies or groups whose name includes ‘Liberty’ or ‘Patriot’.” Nearly always, they believe that only someone who holds their political views can be a patriot.
You write: “Diversity of thought is what creates progress.” (I’d be inclined to edit it to read simply, “Diversity of thought is what creates.” Ha ha!)
This strongly mirrors what came into my inbox this morning, via The Writer’s Almanac for April 11, 2014:
It is clear from [Marguerite de Navarre’s] book [The Heptameron] that freedom of conscience for women can lead anywhere — if your eternal soul is your own responsibility, and cannot be saved through reliance upon a corrupt church, then it is a short and slippery slope from there to all sorts of freedom, first of belief and thought, then of feeling, then of action. – Jane Smiley (American novelist and author of 5 works of nonfiction), writing about de Navarre (b. 1492), an archetypal French novelist concerned with women’s rights and religious reform
I love how similar things, with somewhat different angles, so often shoot across my bow nearly simultaneously, usually on the same day. Somehow it’s comforting, perhaps that all is right in the universe …
I edit written material. Recently I met with a potential client regarding his self-described autobiographical novel about how he has seen and experienced the world (his experience is both national and international; he doesn’t live under a rock). He and I are on opposite sides of our nation’s current political spectrum, yet I felt obligated to treat the synopsis of his book with respect, critiquing it so that he can polish it to clarify and focus his message. It’s not my business whether or not the world accepts his book; it’s not my business to argue with his premises. It’s my business to help him achieve a quality that will reveal his credibility and authenticity.
I think that this was a great post.
Interestingly, the other day I was thinking about Harvard’s Endowment and how that might shield them from damage from losing government support. I fear for other universities, though.
Diversity grows on poor soil, not on rich soil. Rich soil promotes mono culture that over grows every nice, as the niches too are “rich”. On poor soil every little “micro climate” promotes diversification.