Unit 3: The Most Perplexing Management Problem: Human Polarization

"Let’s start with a recap of where we’ve been. In the first video, we set down the two most fundamental management principles, which are, number one, that we should avoid human extinction and, number two, that in order to increase our chances of avoiding extinction, we should respect the physical laws of nature. In the second video, I used the example of a ship captain who was unaware of an approaching iceberg to explain the importance of abstract thinking, or raising our minds to see the bigger picture. In the same spirit of trying to raise our thoughts to see things from above, in this video, I’m going to talk about the most fundamental management problem, or what we might refer to as the coming iceberg for the human race.

That coming iceberg, which in reality is already here, can be expressed in the form of a paradox, and here’s the paradox: the more just and fair we make our companies and society, the more we inevitably polarize as a species. The reason for this is because there are only two factors that determine all social and economic outcomes: genes and environment.[1] When we improve the environment, that is, when we make things more just and equal through things like better education and increased opportunities, our natural genetic differences necessarily become more important.[2] This is common sense and it’s born out in countless ways in every corner of the world. If you improve environmental conditions, you don’t create more overall equality, as most people assume. You actually create more inequality. Why is this the case? Well, because when you improve the environment, the most naturally gifted people distance themselves from people that are less naturally gifted. Over time, this distance is increased through competition and through something called assortative mating.[3] Assortative mating is technical speak for the idea that birds of a feather flock together. Now, this natural polarizing process is taking place in politics[4], biology[5], economics[6], social media[7], geography[8], religion[9], and in virtually any other area of human life that you can think of[10][10b]. The fact is that progress and polarization go hand in hand.

The interesting thing is that optimists, like Prof. Stephen Pinker of Harvard, argue that there’s no need to worry because, despite what we hear from respected academics in every corner of the world, things are getting much better.[11] Well, there’s no denying that things are getting better in many ways. We’ve made amazing progress in many different areas and on many different fronts, and that’s great, and we should celebrate this progress.

However, Pinker, and in fact most thinkers, overlook the paradox I’ve just mentioned that precisely because the world is a much better place today - that is, precisely because we’re giving more people more freedom and more opportunities - we’re polarizing and splintering into groups faster than ever before, especially at the extremes. Pinker wants us to believe that if we simply continue to make progress, we’ll someday somehow magically come together as a species, but we know that the opposite is the case, and that’s the paradox. The more progress we make, the more we’re dividing from each other. And, to make matters worse, very soon, genetic engineering tools like Crispr[12] are going to accelerate this polarizing process. We can bet that the wealthiest and most intelligent people of the world are not going to be editing their children's genes to be more like the lower classes.

So why is all of this relevant for the management of the world? It’s relevant because it helps us to see the bigger picture. Seen at this higher level, it’s clear that we're facing a profound evolutionary and anthropological problem and that what the world needs is a unifying principle to balance all of the polarization.

In future videos, I’ll get into very concrete examples of why this polarization is the most dangerous and fundamental management problem and, more importantly, I'll get into what we can do about it."

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[1] Levitt, Mairi (2013) “Perceptions of nature, nurture and behavior”, Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 2013 9:13 https://doi.org/10.1186/2195-7819-9-13.

[2] Herrnstein, R. J., & Murray, C. A. (2010). The bell curve: Intelligence and class structure in American life. New York: Free Pr. See also: https://tinyurl.com/yb5vzapv

[3] Greenwood, Jeremy and Guner,, Nezih and Kocharkov, Georgi and Santos, Cezar, 2014, “Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality”, IZA Discussion Paper No. 7895. https://tinyurl.com/yb9wmg94.

[4] Abramowitz, Alan I. and Kyle L. Saunders. 2008. Is polarization a myth? The Journal of Politics. 70(2): 542, https://tinyurl.com/y8h3d6xk.

[5] Domingue, Benjamin; Fletcher, Jason; Conley, Dalton and Boardman, Jason. (2014), “Genetic and educational assortative mating among US adults”, PNAS June 3, 2014. 111 (22) 7996-8000. https://tinyurl.com/y93a4lyj.

[6] Piketty, Thomas, (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Cambridge Massachusetts :The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. https://tinyurl.com/ybwhhsh9.

[7] Bessi A, Zollo F, Del Vicario M, Puliga M, Scala A, Caldarelli G, et al. (2016) Users Polarization on Facebook and Youtube. PLoS ONE 11(8): e0159641. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0159641.

[8] Anastasopoulos, Lefteris Jason, The Effects of Urban Diversity on Geographic Polarization: Evidence from Hurricane Katrina Migration (August 1, 2016). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2818631 or https://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2818631.

[9] Koyama, Mark and Carvalho, Jean Paul, Development and Religious Polarization: The Emergence of Reform and Ultra-Orthodox Judaism (October 15, 2011). GMU Working Paper in Economics No. 11-45. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1955232.

[10] Thomas Kelly, (2008), “Disagreement, Dogmatism and Belief Polarization”, Journal of Philosophy 105 (10):611-633. See https://philpapers.org/rec/KELDDA and https://www.princeton.edu/~tkelly/ddabp.pdf.

[10a]: For a panel discussion on science and polarization, see https://tinyurl.com/ydd5kblw.

[11] Pinker, S. (2018). Enlightenment now: A manifesto for science, reason, humanism, and progress. Allen Lane. https://tinyurl.com/y9onjwuq.

[12] See https://tinyurl.com/y7xojdwg.