3 ms·
The second culture is built for politics. There is a neat dividing line - whether questions of truth should be settled by consensus or trial against nature. Th
by roenxi 3y ago
The second culture is built for politics. There is a neat dividing line - whether questions of truth should be settled by consensus or trial against nature.
The academic STEM culture is a very carefully nurtured group of people who believe (at least to a greater extent) that truth should be decided on by a repeatable, impartial procedure that leverages natural phenomenon. So if two engineers disagree about the minimum conditions for a building to collapse, they are usually the sort of people who will converge on what happens in reality.
The more normal culture is to accept that while there may or may not be an objective truth, what really matters is what most people think. Narrative suddenly becomes important and the truth depends a lot on what you are trying to achieve. Think lawyers and judges. They may accept an objective truth exists in principle, but at the end of the day to them an argument can only be settled by most people agreeing on the truth (including dead people if tradition gets involved).
The first culture is more powerful when dealing with reality (to the shock of nobody). The second is more effective at dealing with groups and generally is more pleasant to work with, except when they lose touch with reality completely and goes berserk with groupthink.
Coincidentally, these dynamics explain why political bodies often choose to drive over the cliff rather than swerve.
- Jensson 3y ago> The second is more effective at dealing with groups and generally is more pleasant to work with, except when they lose touch with reality completely and goes berserk with groupthink. The uncomfortable truth is that such people always have lost touch with reality, that makes them very easy to deal with when they like you since they will overlook your faults and mistakes. But when such people dislike you then they will only see faults and mistakes in what you do. So it isn't that the first and second versions of those are more attuned to reality, the difference is only how positive or negative their lack of reality check is for you.
- natsucks 3y agoArguably the second culture is also built for leadership. Evidence can't tell you which direction to take a company in, and the person that decides on this direction needs to project confidence in others to instill it in others.
- 121789 3y agoDon't agree with your framing on the dividing line. I think the real difference is between groups that treat truth seeking as the end goal vs. those who treat truth seeking as a means to action. These two groups are in constant tension with each other. The first group will always bias towards low uncertainty but will often be paralyzed with inaction. The second group will bias towards action, but will risk choosing the wrong action. Both groups are valuable but often conflict
- advael 3y agoKnowledge-seeking versus goal-orientation honestly doesn't map one-to-one here, though it's probably correlated. Like I would say that is a better distinction between engineers and scientists than between both and good salespeople or politicians. Goal-oriented people can trust specificity more and knowledge-seeking people sometimes trust confidence. I think at the absolute extremes these map pretty well, but much of the middle is more complicated.