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Adversarial instead of truth-seeking engagement is baked into so many aspects of our society Summary: Our society often relies on adversarial advocates for decision-making, but this approach doesn't lead to the truth. We need a cooperative effort where people are open to changing their minds and acknowledging different perspectives. This applies to civic organizations, legal systems, political systems, and even neighborhood associations. We tend to punish those who disagree with the established opinion, leading to a lack of pluralism. We should strive for diverse viewpoints and a cooperative search for the truth. Transcript: Speaker 1 There's a thing wrong with our society which is we have even the institutions that work reasonably well in our society are still often built around adversarial advocates in which the Idea is i will argue as passionately as possible for one side you will argue as passionately as possible for the other side we will deploy whatever resources we can rhetoric money etc And somehow we like to think that by i don't know interpolation that will arrive at the truth and that's totally not true right i mean i we know that there are lots of types of decision-making Where that's a disaster where what you need is not these two sides each of which are deliberately undercutting the other as effectively and including viciously as they can but you want Everybody to be willing to change their mind openly publicly to be willing to publicly acknowledge the point that the other person is making and you want to sense that people are cooperatively Working together toward the truth but that's not how most civic organizations work it's not how our legal system works it's not our political system works nowadays maybe there was Some golden age in the past but it did probably not it's not even how neighborhood associations work right i mean there may be some diversity in how homeowners associations work internally Although i regret to say i don't think that's usually true because they're usually very self-selected groups of people who are quite vocal but once they arrive at a decision they're Like good old-fashioned Maoist democratic centralists you know like well we represent the neighborhood and this is our monolithic opinion and if somebody shows up and says well i Live in that neighborhood but i i actually don't agree then they they get piled on and punished and if somebody says i'm an environmentalist but this environmental organization doesn't Speak for me or i belong to this racial or ethnic group but i don't necessarily agree with what the claimed representatives of that group say that group wants they get punished again A lack of pluralism but i think it's not just a lack of diversity it's this notion that the way to get make decisions is for everybody to hammer their stake as firmly into the ground as they Can

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

Inversion: Avoiding stupidity is easier than trying to be brilliant. Instead of asking, “How can I help my company?” you should ask, “What’s hurting my company the most and how can I avoid it?” Identify obvious failure points, and steer clear of them.

50 Ideas That Changed My Life - David Perell

perell.com

Social Search Engines: Asking "I do X. Who do you think I should meet?" at Conferences Summary: Read the bios, not the session titles. Look for interesting people, not just panelists. Approach the moderators after panels and ask for recommendations. Repeat this process to meet important people. Don't oversell yourself when approaching referred individuals. Offer to buy them a drink. This methodical approach helps navigate the overwhelming number of sessions. Transcript: Speaker 1 So how do you choose among all the sessions? You probly have some big, fat book that youre like, my god. How am i possibly gong to tackle any of this? Number one, read the bios, not the sessions. The session titles may not tell you the whole story. For interesting people, not titles of sessions. And secondly, don't just look at the people on the panel. Look at the moderators. And so what i did my first time to south by southwest is i would go to a panel, i would listen to these amazing people on the on a given panel, and then i would go up, not to the alisters on the Panel, afterwards, i would go to the moderator, many of whom are equally impressive, in their own right. And i would go to the moderator, whois usually not nearly as mobbed, and i would give them a quick explanation at sahe thisis my first time at southby. I don't know anyone. Connel lost. Just finish my first book. It's about a, b and c. Personally, i'm interested n at the time, say, brazilian jujito, this, this and this. Is there anyone here you think i might really hit it off with? Anyone you think i should talk to? I'm pretty good at this and this? And they be as sure, yes, i thinkshul o, this person and this person. And i just repeated that line of questioning over and over and over again. And that's how i met many of the people who led to the tipping point for the book. And when i went up to those people who were referred, by the way, don't say so and so, said, we should really meet. Don't, don't oversell it. Just say i went up to them, i asked them this. They said this. I figured, what the hell, maybe we'd hit it off. Can i buy you drink? It's a very methodical way to go about tackling deluge of sessions.

#99 — How to Build a World-Class Network in Record Time

The Tim Ferriss Show

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