Optimism versus Realism

Reg Braithwaite wrote an essay about 'learned optimism', a book written by Dr. Martin Seligman.

Reg summarizes Seligman's theory like so:

One predictor of success is this characteristic Dr. Seligman calls optimism, which he measures by testing whether you explain good or bad events as being personal, general, and permanent.

Reg carefully states at the beginning of his own essay:

Trust me on this one, you should not judge a book solely by whether you like what I said about it. Read it for yourself and decide.

I have not read the book, but I am putting it on my list.


Realism over optimism

In the meantime, I can't resist to criticize Reg's call (instead of criticizing Seligman's theory) to develop an optimistic mind.

As Reg puts it himself in a comment on the HN thread:

The essay calls on people to actually think in a certain and possibly different way.

That is, to encourage people to be optimistic. Here is my criticism: isn't there more value in realism? What is the point of being optimistic if you are wrong?

Have you ever discredited someone for being disconnected from reality? To take a simple example, if somebody keeps on having bad grades in a course, is it realistic that this person would qualify this fact as impersonal, specific and temporary? It strikes me as obvious that this would qualify as naivety and that this person should address the problem as personal at least. Why learn to see things in an optimistic way, instead of facing reality, to the full extent of one's cognitive powers will permit?

What I dislike about this call to optimism is that it resonates with naivety and the silly happiness theory. The less you know, the happier you will be.

Optimism/pessimism revolves around subjectivity. Realism is an attempt to get rid of this subjectivity, which leads, according to me, to more profitable decision-making.

However, I recognize that I have no data to support my intuition, whereas Seligman has research showing that optimists do better than pessimists, i.e. fare better when measuring their so-called success.


Challenging the status quo

There is one important thing with which I whole-heartedly agree with at the end of his essay: the confidence to change the world, the attack on conservatism:

Optimism is what drives us forward to create and change. The pessimists are the ones who cling to legacy technologies and old ways of doing things. They accept the bad things as permanent and deny themselves the ability to change things, to fix things.

Those who want to keep the status quo do it because they have a vested interest in it. The resistance of the labels in regards to file-sharing is just but one example of an industry fighting to keep the old models which used to be profitable, instead of adapting to an evolving reality.

Lessig on the hybrid economy and corruption

Lessig was invited on Charlie Rose show. The 38-minute interview revolved around the ideas in his new book: Remix, Making Art and Commerce Thrive in the Hybrid Economy. Here are my highlights.



Huge respect for Barack Obama

Lessig first met Obama at Stanford university, at a time where both were law professors. When Rose asked Lessig what he thought about Obama, he mentioned his respect for Obama's constant character and authenticity through every stage of his career. He also mentioned the intellectual pleasure to discuss with him:

"He was an extraordinary careful deep thinker, and reflective and balanced, and he wasn't on the left, he wasn't on the right about whatever issue it was, you know, he was thinking through every issue." - Lessig

A merge between 2 kinds of economies

Lessig identifies 2 kinds of economies in our world. One of them is called a 'sharing economy', e.g. Wikipedia, where people produce enormous value without getting paid. He links it with his concept of 'free culture', i.e. the freedom of people to take and build upon the culture around them. The other economy is the traditional 'commercial economy', e.g. selling books.

In the last 5 years, businesses have begun to realize that there is significant value when the commercial entities is trying to leverage value out of sharing entities. And vice-versa, sharing entities can leverage value out of commercial entities. In other words, in this 'hybrid economy', there must be a mutual respect between both economies.

Lessig emphasized that the efforts must come from the 'commercial economy' in showing respect for and encourage the creativity in the 'sharing economy'.


Cause of corruption in Congress: dependency on money

What Lessig is trying to fight is corruption, particularly in Congress. The cause of corruption is the disproportional influence of money over the political debate. As he puts it: "the system is too focused on dollars and not focused enough on sense".

Congressmen live inside a system where "everything they do has to be tuned to what would make it possible for them to raise money". They do what the money says, not what the people say. In other words: "money buys results in Congress".

Lessig sees this corruption as the very first problem to solve, since unless solved, even simple/obvious issues won't get solved. The fundamental change that must happen is to "break the connection between money and results". So that we could say a congressman changed the vote not because he had a 10000$ contribution from some interests group, but because he thought about it differently or because he got convinced by the people.


The big idea around the corner

As a final question, Rose asked Lessig what he thought would be the big idea around the corner. His answer was a consciousness of empowerment from the people (exemplified by Wikipedia, the Obama's campaign, the Internet, the read/write culture). The revival of the feeling that people can do something, which would evaporate the current political cynicism.

Paraphrasing Lessig, "the cynicism that we had in the 20th century will look very 20th century".

Wisdom of crowds in the blogosphere, by James Surowiecki

I watched the TED talk (dated from February 2005) from James Surowiecki, the author of The Wisdom of Crowds. Very interesting talk, where he highlights positive and negative characteristics of the blogging phenomenon, with his own concept of the wisdom of crowds.


The 2004 tsunami: a blogosphere milestone

He introduces his talk by identifying a point in time - the 2004 South Asian tsunami - as a seminal moment for the blogosphere. Unorganized, unconnected writers, video bloggers provided a "collective portrait of the disaster which gave us a sense of what it was like to actually be there, better than the mainstream media could give us."

Surowiecki then asked 3 questions and structured his talk around them.

What motivates people to blog or produce content on internet?

The peculiarity with blogs content is that most of it has been produced by its authors for free (out of a crave of attention or reputation or sharing), with no concrete reward - no money involved. The tsunami bloggers, he points out, did write for no other reason than to tell their story and share.

With a traditional economic perspective, this tells us to expand our ideas of what counts as rational, since it is possible to have brilliant products without monetary remuneration.

Do blogs have the possibility to access a collective intelligence that has previously remained untapped?

Yes it does. That's the positive side. The premises in his book "the wisdom of crowds" are as follows: under the right conditions, groups can be remarkably intelligent; they can be smarter than the smartest person within them. In this context, the blogosphere is a collection of people's voices who could not be heard before, providing a new type of information - more diversified and plural. Related to that are the concepts of participatory journalism and citizen journalism.

What are the potential problems about blogs?

There also is a negative side. And it comes from the network, from the fact that people are interconnected. Indeed, as the network shapes your views, enforces a certain way to think, the more you become connected, and the harder it is to be independent.

Surowiecki refers to this as the paradox of the "wisdom of crowds": collective intelligence requires a form of independent thinking. The networks makes it harder because they drive attention to the things that the network values. "Groups are only smart when the people in them are independent."

His departing thoughts

In order to illustrate this, he brings the example of an ant colony, where the accumulation of each ant's actions can produce amazing results. However, if a problem occurs, each ant could follow the behavior of the ant in front of it, which can lead to a "circular mill", where each ant is following the one in front of it, marching without asking questions, forming one huge revolving circle, naturally leading to disastrous results.

Not surprisingly, the challenge is to exploit the wisdom of crowds, while ensuring that the individuals in the crowd avoid to fall in a state of dependent thinking.

The provocative defense of capitalism

The Economist has had a take on the current ravaging financial crisis, going through the genesis of the crisis, but also exposing its position. Not surprisingly, this is a defense of capitalism and a support for minimal state intervention.



One could read in this article, the unequivocal and assertive statement:

Provocative as it may sound in today’s febrile and dangerous climate, freer and more flexible markets will still do more for the world economy than the heavy hand of government. - The Economist

And in this one, claiming proudly:

Capitalism is at bay, but those who believe in it must fight for it. For all its flaws, it is the best economic system man has invented yet. - The Economist

Reflecting the importance of the topic today, a plethora of comments (250+ to date) ensued. The vast majority of the commenters were very critical.

One of the wisest ones came from user typingmonkey:

The key philosophical point the Economist is missing is that capitalism is not a system at all. It is the absence of a system. It is the unleashing of unpredictable uncontrollable individual interests in what is supposed to be a limited arena defined by political, social, and legal boundaries. To call capitalism a system is to make the mistake of calling the anarchist movement a political party. - typingmonkey

Of course it depends on the definition of 'capitalism', but it is an interesting perspective for the unfettered variant, which is close to what The Economist is trying to defend.

And still from the same user:

While capitalism's controlled chaos is very effective at generating wealth, it is NOT "self-regulating". Competition and regulation occasionally act in a similar direction, but they are fundamentally different forces. Those who foolishly mistake the former for the latter ultimately beget corruption and "races to the bottom". If Company A is profiting by compromising society's interests in some way, will Company B stop them? No. That would be regulation. Instead, Company B will try to do even more of such business than Company A, and may join Company A in lobbying government to enshrine the practice into law. That is "competition". - typingmonkey

Nicely put.

With no regulations, survival becomes the priority, not humans. Effectivity through market rules might be a very noble objective, but it all depends on which sector it is applied to and on the practical consequences (some of which can be easily foreseen).

What is disappointing from The Economist is not the recommendation - advocating for more regulation only in the finance industry - as much as the failure to recognize some obvious failures of unfettered capitalism:

• the devastating changes following the structural changes emanating from the "Washington consensus" in Latin America and Africa.
  
• the incapacity of market-led measures to decently address issues such as health and education.

Kevin Kelly forsees the web as One

In the context of a TED presentation in December 2007 (published this month), Kevin Kelly is predicting what the future of the web will be.


First off, he presents the web with its impressive stats:

• 100 billion clicks per day
• 2 million emails per second
• 1 million IM message per second
• uses 5% of global electricity on the planet

The nature and amount of connections in the web today, he says, is equivalent to one human brain. And with the size of the web doubling every 2 years, it means the web will be the equivalent of 6 billion brains in 30 years.


The One

Kelly's idea of the web is that "we're building a single global machine", a kind of black hole sucking up everything to it. Everything, he says, is increasingly connected: every screen looks into the one machine, into the cloud. In the process, we develop a dependency towards the web, driven by its usefulness, where total personalization of the users require total transparency. In order to prove his point, Kelly quotes Larry Page (Google co-founder):

What we really want to do at Google is create an AI. - Larry Page

The last slide of his presentation gives the essentials of his vision:

• There is only One machine
• The web is its OS
• All screens look into the One
• No bits will live outside the web
• To share is to gain
• Let the One read it
• The One is us

Ultimately, the web will feel like a "large organism", made of people and things.


The evolution of the web's links

Taking a historical perspective, and using the concept of 'links' as the common thread, Kelly describes the evolution of the web as follows:

• at dawn: linking computers
• lately: linking pages
• currently and soon: linking data (idea)
• in the future: internet of things (objects)
  

When Kevin Kelly does science fiction

The parallel with science fiction movies is all too natural. Does the powerful SkyNet from Cameron's Terminator come to mind? Or the Matrix from the Wachowski brothers? Or then the HAL computer from Kubrick's 2001: A space Odyssey? There are plenty more examples: the interactions between machines and humans are indeed central themes for science fiction movies.

In the Eastern world, the intimate connection between humanity and the planet is a recurring theme. We can think of Gaya, the living planet from Hironobu Sakaguchi's Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. Or Mako, the planet's energy (streams of life), in Kazushige Nojima's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. And at a more spiritual level, we could consider the principles of Buddhism...

With an amusing final note, does the East figure out the future before the West?

The dark side of the long tail

We often hear about the benefits of internet, this modern medium connecting together more people than before. While this is a reality, it hides from sight that it also connects people with morally-dubious intentions.


The context of the life in the tail

Because of the internet, the potential audience for anyone has been greatly augmented, making it possible to reach people worldwide with minimal costs. This technological development contributed to nurture niche products, as described by Chris Anderson's long tail concept.

The context in which online activities occur in the tail is particular. As Kevin Kelly describes it in a recent post:

[...] the long tail niche creation operates perfectly well in the realm of passion, enthusiasm, obsession, curiosity, peerage, love, and the gift economy. - Kevin Kelly

Money is thus not the currency for the activities occurring in the tail, as it is in the head. Rather, other incentives are fueling life in the tail, giving birth to activities of a - most often than not - non-commercial nature.

A nest for both the good and the ill

From such forces as passion, enthusiasm and obsession does not only follow good. It's not as if nice people would have a monopoly out there.

Evils such as terrorism and other forms of hatred are empowered just as much. Like the Economist explains in a recent article:

A decade ago, a zealot seeking to prove some absurd proposition—such as the denial of the Nazi Holocaust, or the Ukrainian famine—might spend days of research in the library looking for obscure works of propaganda. Today, digital versions of these books, even those out of press for decades, are accessible in dedicated online libraries. - The Economist

In other words, if you follow a suspicious agenda and need to reach millions of people and hope to rally them to your cause, the minimal requirement is simple: a presence online. The corollary is that there is a high probability that somebody with the same agenda as yours is already rallying people to his - as well as your - cause.

Sad, but true.

A resurrection a few years later

On a final note, I was curious about any previous usage of the catchy wording I used for the title of this post. So I googled the terms "dark side long tail" and I was surprised to see that there was only one blogger who used the expression, referring to the same concept as I am in this post.

John Robb, blogger and author, wrote about how global guerillas operations are facilitated by the Internet. Interesting read, dating from 2005.

The 3 pockets of the long tail

There has been some recent clarifications on the long tail, made by Seth Godin as well as Kevin Kelly, and I want to summarize them in here.


3 pockets, 3 worlds

Seth Godin, in a recent post, explains that a product owner would be clever to know which part of the tail to focus on, as the rules of the game are different depending on which pocket your product belongs to. He explains:

The most common misconception about Long Tail thinking is that if you don't succeed at pocket 1, don't worry, because the tail will take care of your product and you'll just end up in #2. That's not true. #2 isn't a consolation prize for mass market losers. Mass market losers are still losers. In order to become a mass market star you make choices about features and pricing and quality--and if you lose that game, there's no reason to believe that those choices are going to pay off for a different market. - Seth Godin

The long tail of the Dragon of Love

Kevin Kelly, in a reply to Godin's post, points to a common fallacy when discussing the long tail. And he uses Godin's post as an example of how widespread the fallacy is:

There's a blatant switcheroo that Seth (and almost everyone else) makes when explaining the Long Tail. In pocket #1 of the curve, Seth talks in terms of a creator of a work. In pocket #2 of the curve, he also talks in terms of the creator. But then when he gets to the long tail, he switches away from a creator, to talk in terms of an aggregator of other creators' work. Why is that? What happens to the creator? The creator is dropped when we get to the long tail "pocket of profit" because the long tail is not profitable for the creator. It's profitable only for the audience and aggregators. - Kevin Kelly

Rather, Kelly says at the end, the creations in the tail of the curve (pocket #3) really belong to different economy than the rest (the 2 other pockets: #1, #2):

He I prefer to think of the Long Tail as being a tail to a different animal. We've misidentified the intangible being it belongs to. It is not the long tail of the Beast of Commercial Profits. Rather it is the long tail of the Dragon of Love. The love of creating, of making, of connecting, of unreasonable passion, or making a difference, or doing something that matters to ourselves, the love of connecting, giving, learning, producing, and sharing. - Kevin Kelly