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There was just one casualty: a brand new Oldsmobile Regency 98, flattened by a hunk of blubber the size of a truck tyre. It was Umenhofer’s brand new car. A whale of a deal, indeed. | There was just one casualty: a brand new Oldsmobile Regency 98, flattened by a hunk of blubber the size of a truck tyre. It was Umenhofer’s brand new car. A whale of a deal, indeed. | ||
===Contra the hive mind: homogeneity as a good thing=== | |||
[[Thought leaders may declare that there are cases where ''[[heterogeneity]]'' — contrarianism to you, dear reader — is a bad thing. “homogeneity is important to bind your people to a common purpose and vision,” these people will say. | |||
We happy heterogeneticists would beg to differ. The problem in our darkened times, is quite the opposite: a hive mind stampeding after shiny but quixotic ideas: crypto-currencies, non-fungible tokens, [[AI]], [[ESG]] and [[critical theory]], some of which (particularly [[critical theory]]) are engineered — ironically enough — to ''quash'' contrary voices. There is very little “wacky contrarian” risk. Minority contrarians can’t hurt you. Fashionable [[yogababble]] can. | |||
Now: heterogeneity fails only when it produces ''incontrovertibly'' stupid or pernicious ideas — that cannot be quickly assessed and, if need be, rejected on their merits. In a [[wicked]] environment there are very few of these, and in a “tame” — closed, bounded, fully understood — environment they are easy to dismiss: in a game of football, the undoubtedly heterogeneous idea to pick up the ball is stupid and no-one will do it. ''But'' even there … well, just ask William Webb Ellis whether it was a stupid idea to pick up the ball and run with it. | |||
Situations where the consensus view is so unarguably right that there’s no scope to challenge it are pretty much non-existent in commerce. Many of the our great crises of the past have come out of apparently sensible homogeneous consensus, and in the face of a small, vocal, but ignored heteregenous dissent. [[LIBOR]]. The [[global financial crisis]]. [[Madoff]]. [[Enron]]. | |||
We operate in a [[Zero-sum game|non zero-sum]], not-bounded, incomplete, ambiguous environment it is hard to see how having ''some'' level of dissent doesn’t put you in a better place. | |||
{{sa}} | {{sa}} | ||
*[[Emergence]] | *[[Emergence]] | ||
*[[ClauseHub]] | *[[ClauseHub]] | ||