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What Are Serial Innovators? The Most Important Idea In David's Work and The Dangers Of Specialism

 

What Are Serial Innovators?

differentiate luck from uh good luck and bad luck from skill and the worst

forecasters turn turned out to be like the most narrowly specialized people who were it do not that these people are not

important for generating knowledge but who came to see the whole world through sort of one lens or mental model and

would they had spent their whole careers kind of studying one problem and and would see the whole world around that

and they would wrap everything into that story basically so in in this this research they were called The Hedgehogs

who knew one big thing whereas the good forecasters were the foxes who knew many

little things and sometimes they had an area of expertise and sometimes they didn't but more important than what they thought was how they

thought they would collect different perspectives they use social media anything they had to take their own

hypothesis and tell get other people to falsify it for them uh and those people

turned out to be the the best forecasters and when they were put together in groups with one another they

became even better because they had this approach of of sort of borrowing from the scientific method to test their own

ideas basically and it just surprised me that these sort of random people in many cases in a

tournament where they were pitted against the intelligence community in the United States that had access to

classified information that they did not they beat them handily and I just wouldn't have

believed that unless I unless I saw it that that body of research about forecasting the ability to see around the corner a a big aspect of what made

people good at it was actually the researcher who led this work described those people as having dragonfly eyes dragonfly's eyes are made of thousands

of different lenses each one of which takes a separate picture and they are synthesized in the dragonfly's brain and

so these people are gathering all these different perspectives and they can seem sort of confused and equivocal so they

might not make for good TV guests they actually found in the research because they don't go on and say this is how it is like the housing crash is coming and

bl blah you know they're more circumspect in some ways they might not be as good TV guest but they're very good forecasters it just made me think

that on a personal level I need to keep pushing myself out outside of my zone of comfort more that's one of the big

things I took away from the book range but also just much of your work is it's easy to get complacent in What I Know

Who I Am My identity what I do and in fact that's probably the biggest risk to my future success but also probably to

my fulfillment as well and it it goes against our natural inclination to push

into uh unknown territory yeah because the older we get the more like you know they say you can't teach an old dog new

tricks I think it's more like the old dog doesn't really want to know learn new Tri tricks you know can't see the point in learning a new trick and to

that point of the of the so-called Big Five personality traits in Psychology one of them is called openness to

experience which is the most predictive of creativity and in in middle age it reliably goes down goes down but

actually a study I loved in the book found that if you force older people to do something new can be some sodoku or

something even if they don't get good at that thing if it's new to them it will improve their openness to experience so

you can actually stem the decline of openness to experience it's not inevitable just by forcing yourself to do new stuff that you're not competent

at is like great for brain health uh it makes your life feel longer because our memory Works in sort of chapters where

when you try new stuff it's like a new chapter so it'll make your life feel like it's not passing as quickly and it keeps your openness to experience from

The Most Important Idea In David's Work

declining and so just like picking something to do that's new even if you're not planning on getting really good at it I think is important it's

funny I said that thing a second ago about um when I look at someone's LinkedIn and then I looked down and I

found this little research um piece that LinkedIn did that I'd pulled out that

said one of the best predictors of who um would become an executive in a company yeah was the number of different

job functions that individual had worked across an industry so that's research done by LinkedIn wasn't it yeah wasited

that was on about a half million members yeah and and the interesting thing about that was I when I was in contact with

LinkedIn uh talking about that and trying to get some of that data I said I kind of feel like your

guy's product might militate against people doing this because you're saying

this is this is who's doing the best but they might want a much cleaner kind of linear trajectory yeah um so maybe you

should build another product where they can build a narrative into it and say Here's why I switched here's what I

learned and what so what's the actual can you recap to me what the actual finding was I mean that was that was pretty much it that across a half

million members that the strongest predictor of who was going to go on to become a future executive um was uh the

number of different job functions that they' worked across in industry in a specific industry in Industry so not

changing Industries not changing Industries although changing Industries there was a bunch of lower level stuff and changing Industries was useful at

times also but to be an executive in a particular industry lots of job functions across that across an industry

and does that mean different departments within that industry they characterize job functions you have to be doing something fundamentally different okay

so give me an example I mean let's say I think probably the easiest one is where you go from being a a a a performer or a

good performer to being someone who's managing other performers right classic one doesn't have to be progression

though because but that's I think a very a very simple one right or in my industry it'd be like going from writing

to editing would for sure be one which is kind of a mix of writing and and managing but that's the side step in

your industry and side step yep for sure I mean some people would well I guess it depends some people would would view

that and in some places it's going up but i' a side step the other thing I found which was uh pretty shocking was

the in the part of your book where you start talking about some of the dangers of specialism and you referenced a study that found cardiac patients were less

likely to die if they were they were admitted to a hospital yeah when the doctors were away we can tie in a few of

the things we've been talking about to uh uh cardiac s to surgery here so so this was this study so I think because

I'm I'm conscious when I write about dangers specialization hugely important obviously and in medicine it would be

crazy to say that specialization in medicine increasing specialization hasn't been both inevitable and beneficial in many

ways but the point I was trying to make is that it's also an underrecognized double-edged sword to the point where these two Harvard Le studies found that

if you're checked in to a teaching hospital with certain cardiac conditions on the dates of a national Cardiology

convention when the most esteemed Specialists are away you're less likely to die that that makes no sense right

that's suboptimal outcome and and the conclusion was that's because these researchers or these these

surgeons have done the same procedure so many times that they will continue to do

it even if it's not the right solution to the problem or if data shows that it doesn't work anymore and so this called

the einstellung effect in Psychology where you've done you've solved a problem a certain way so many times that you will continue solving problems that

way even if the problem has changed or if new data emerges that shows it's not the right solution so it's not to say those people aren't important but they

are human and so they fall prey to the Ein stong effect that's again why you want some of this this mixture and to

tyion surgery you know we've also been talking about distraction and focus one of those same researchers did some work

that showed that if you have a surgical procedure and this this research looked at 980,000

procedures that if you have a procedure on the surgeon's birthday you're more likely to die

within the 30 days after the surgical procedure and they attribute it to the increased distractions that the surgeon

is having on their birthday they don't know whether it's external or internal distraction um but you might not want to

have your again and you know and this these are not huge effects but over a large number of

people it makes a difference and if yeah gosh that's terrifying so you one of the things I've

come to learn today really is that knowledge is a double-edged sword like deep knowledge on one thing really is a double-edged sword it will be your

making but in the long term it might also be your breaking yeah and that really resonates with me because as we

started the conversation with there's a lot of things that I'm like really knowledgeable about and know a lot about and in fact that's my biggest curse and

I have to find a way to basically self-d disrupt myself continually and always assume that I am wrong and not not

always assume I'm wrong always assume that there's a significant possibility that I'm wrong today and maybe yesterday

I was correct but today I could be entirely wrong um I mean I've changed my mind about like fundamental beliefs I

had you know when I was younger and it's weird to think I mean like I was a grad student

environmental sciences and I was firmly of the belief that uh environmental

preservation and technological progress were at odds and I feel completely the opposite now you know I think there are

technological things we can do that ruin the environment but I actually think the salvation of the environment requires technological progress It's just like

fundamental beliefs about the world so I think we should be open to that updating and from a career perspective you know if artificial super intelligence and

like some new form of free energy does everything better than us then it does and we'll have to reorient life in some pretty dramatic ways uh but until then I

think we need to dispense with the idea that you can live in a world where you did a period of training for most of us

and then you're just going to benefit off only that training for the rest of your life you don't have to keep relearning we have a closing tradition

on this podcast David where the last yeah I know I love this tradition I want to do it to like my friends when they come over interesting the last guest leaves a

question for the next guest interesting oh boy it's so funny watching people's body language when I open this book they

start to get quite nervous and it's so funny I've asked I don't know [ __ ] [ __ ] 100 questions today and it's when I

come to this question that people take the longest time to answer so I'm like these questions just better than my questions um no some reason people get

nervous those other questions are things that are so top of mind for me that there's it's like a choice between which of the three things that are in my mind

should I spit out this is like yeah this is very different yeah uh what's your favorite sandwich I'm joking imagine if

that was it after all I'm going to get off easy no it's much more difficult than that the question is what what is

your biggest fear and how

The Dangers Of Specialism

do you plan to face it I have

a tendency that I think in some ways is

good um and fits with some of the things I've said but in some ways is bad to want to start things over a lot and

sometimes that means burning them down even if they're going well and in the past I think I had that tendency with

some of my personal relationships to I couldn't accept something going well

and it had to change or get better and that led me to sometimes I think burn

down some personal relationships in ways that I'm embarrassed of that I

regret um and I see this even in my own work where I actually value it because I end up doing all these new novel things

but it's almost like I can't and it's good because like after my first book they're like brand yourself as a sports Gene guy I'm like no that's dead to me

now it's dead to me before it's even published it's dead to me and that led me to do these other interesting things

but I sometimes worry that I have this like pathologic why can't I just accept this

is this thing is good um and and let it be good and it worries me much less in

my work life it worries me a little in my work life that I'll always want to burn something down and start over but it does worry me there but I have a more

of a fear of it in the context of like friendships because I know what I've done in the past I think I'm better with

it now but thinking about the values I have in my life going forward I don't

want you know several relationships that were hugely important to

me uh went away for things that were preventable because I was like if it's

not perfect burn it down and I think that was a really destructive impulse

um what is that in you what is that where does that come from I don't know I think it's like this feeling of always

want to be in becoming like this feeling of starting over and improving that I find intoxicating um but I don't think that

has to apply to to personal relationships uh and so a value that I

really want to work on I read this this book that kind of influenced me about philosophy and it's centered what's called narrative values these values

that are objectively across cultures things that people value so it's could be like heroism right loyalty people

value that other country and that you are subjectively attracted to and one of the ones that I think is valued in a lot

of cultures that I'm attracted to but that I've not been good at is forgiveness and so my project is that's

a narrative value I want to start building into my story to be a more forgiving person because it's not it's I'm not good at it uh and I need to get

good at it and I'm afraid that I won't get good at it but I really want to well we learn don't we and that's um that's

much of what is what is at the very heart of your work how to become better at learning and you've clearly demonstrated that you're learning in

that regard I think much of the first the first step in learning is figuring out that we have a problem or some

something to solve as you said with your experiments book and your books are so unbelievably wonderful because they present a completely original

challenging unconventional approach to solving problems and you you do go at a lot of the things that many of us have

accepted as narratives in our life and if we've accepted them as narratives and they're false then they're probably in some way doing us a dis service in the

short or long term and that's why I find your work so wonderfully important because in many respects it is that

counternarrative to a lot of the things that we've accepted and you do go the extra mile even though it probably gives

you a headache I'm sure because a lot of authors that I speak to don't go the extra mile to figure out um if if what

we're being told is true and ultimately that's a means to an end and the end is to allow all of us to live more

optimized fulfilled and happy and productive lives in whatever domain in whatever definition we class those words

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