I agree with the article in general, but that said, I do think a lot of successful people are successful because they are highly opinionated in black-and-white ways. Coming across people like this in life can be frustrating whether they tend to be right or wrong. I've definitely known and worked with a few people who were black-and-white thinkers and abstracted away and ignored a lot of second order effects that could negate their opinion, but had such good intuition that they tended to be right anyway.
> I've definitely known and worked with a few people who were black-and-white thinkers and abstracted away and ignored a lot of second order effects but had such good intuition that they tended to be right anyway.
This is my wife. She’s never undecided and has incredible intuition. I’m a gray thinker to the point of paralysis. When something comes up that we need to sort out, i feed factors and we walk the decision tree until we’re both happy. Works well lol
"A bad plan is always preferable to no plan" - recently associated with Thiel but I believe it's an old military adage.
I think there is something metaphysical about it; the 'grey' is the ether and the black and white is the materiality that comes out of it literally from force of will.
You can only create something by making a choice, choosing a path, 'making the quantum observation' which dissolves the ambiguity.
Too often we think of the 'solutions' as a form of 'clarity' ... when reality, 'clarity' might be just the force
(or clarity) of vision more than anything.
Consider three rules of branding: consistency, authenticity, simplicity. The message resonates when it is consistently and repeatedly applied in a simple way, and there is some kind of 'truthiness' (i.e. authenticity) to it. Sometimes I think of a product roadmap, and all the crazy internal and external politics of it all, as a form of branding. It's a 'decision' (i.e. either black or white) reiterated among individuals such that they can resonate their various talents around it, pushing it into fruition.
Yes, the article ought to mention the downside of grey thinking. The way forward is found by closing the gap between ambiguity and certainty. "All progress depends on the unreasonable man".
The "dose" argument in the article is also rather unconvincing, and the examples used show this. I suppose this is a topic where I know something (capitalism and socialism). The author writes:
> Capitalism is enormously productive but has many limitations. Some socialist institutions actually work well in a capitalist economy, but pure socialism hasn’t tended to work at all.
But this is actually a counter-example. Most socialists (and certainly all of the originators and main theorists) would contend that socialism represents a pure qualitative break with capitalism, that socialism is at odds with capitalism in many ways (law of value, commodity production, class society) and that to speak of implementing "socialist policies" is worse than meaningless, it is a misunderstanding. They have some good reasons to say that socialism represents such a qualitative break with capitalism.
So from my point of view, you can start out thinking "gray" (most people uninformed on the scholarly work on the difference between capitalism and socialism take the point of view of the article) but when you look further, you actually see that it's black and white.
This example, at least, undermined the author's point. "Quantitative scale-based thinking" means that quality rarely enters the mix (except, perplexingly, in the example that "trying heroin once is bad"). Quantitative thinking is not always a perfect fit, because (1) it assumes the object under investigation is quantifiable, (2) it assumes the object is mathematically and formal-logically comparable, (3) quantitative models often simplify beyond how a qualitative model would (as an example, Samuelson's "commodity 1" and "commodity 2", or the presumption that inputs=outputs in Steedman).
Qualitative and quantitative thinking are both important, and the preference for quantitative over qualitative has become increasingly common; as a famous German economist once pointed out (in the criticism of Bentham's utilitarianism), quality logically preceeds quantity. If you don't know what you're talking about, its measurement will be a lot more difficult. This is the same argument levelled at Ricardo (the confusion of form, substance and magnitude into one monstrous mess).
I used to be an opinionated person in college. I went to a fairly liberal college and drank their cool aid. Then I graduated, grew older and saw a lot more nuances in life. These experiences turned me to appreciate more about grey thinking. Sure there are some cases in which we can draw a fine line between black and white zones (like rape). But most things (problems) in the world have some shade of grey to it.
For example, when it comes to events we read in the news (esp. the ones published by western-based media) about other regions have heavy bias that born out of both western values and limited (very, very often one sided) info they obtained from the people they hang out with. Even reputable publications like NYTimes and BBC, have obvious biases if you have been to the places they are reporting about. That's why I stopped believing everything I see on mainstream media and start to ignore it mostly for almost a decade now. I also avoid social media (Facebook and to an extent Reddit) because what we see there mostly represent people's fleeting reactions and emotions to things that really doesn't matter to my life for the most part. Doing that really makes my mind free of a lot of bad karma.
> Sure there are some cases in which we can draw a fine line between black and white zones (like rape).
This is the quintessence of gray area. Sure, we have violent rape versus mutually consensual, mutually enjoyable sex as black and white examples of rape and not-rape. What about mutually consensual sex where there's some kind of power imbalance? She reluctantly says yes, and doesn't seem to be enjoying it? She initially says yes, then she says stop a few minutes into it and he doesn't stop until the fourth time she says it? The gray area here is virtually endless.
Some people abandon black and white and replace it with a single shade of grey [1].
In order to have effective grey thinking, I think you need at least a basic understanding of statistics. This is also a great defense against others who seek to bamboozle you.
> I think you need at least a basic understanding of statistics
Right -- which is related to thinking in percentages (I almost wanted to say thinking in probabilities, but it's not quite that... it's more fundamental.)
For instance, the age-old question of nature vs nurture. In debates, the answer always into 100% one or the other which makes for a good fight to watch, but in real life we know it's both, and with differing percentages in each situation.
Wading into a slightly more controversial category -- gender pay gaps. Is the pay gap for the same position 100% consistently due to gender? (Twitter will have you believe "yes" but the answer is more complex). Most of us know that pay gaps are due to a series of factors of which structural discrimination based on gender is only one (a significant one, and one that needs to be rectified). But there are other factors like job performance, compensation negotiation skills, visibility of work (results don't always speak for themselves, there's often a need to sell), all factors occurring in different percentages in individuals/groups. Understanding these other factors and the proportions to which they occur and help in devising practical interventions to address them in order to have sustainable equity over the long term.
If we can only switch our mindset from binary categories to multinomial ones, and assign percentages to the contributions of each, we can make moves toward finding solutions instead of just being angry at each other, which doesn't really lead to lasting change.
So what you are saying is that Black and White thinking limits your options because its only two colors.
Adding Grey is good, unless you only think in Grey because that is only 1 color, and 1 color is less than 2.
We should all think in at least 3 colors. Which requires a basic understanding of statistics.
But what about thinking in colors that are actual colors? Like... at least the primaries. What type of education would be required to throw in some Blue or maybe Red?
> the reality is all grey area. All of it. There are very few black and white answers
The inherent contradiction in this quote needed to be highlighted. In fact "grey thinking" is superior to black and white thinking in many cases, just not all. In some cases the answer is just simply yes or no, and no buts.
As to why grey thinking is so hard I think the article leaves out a major reason: grey thinking is more demanding. We will as humans by necessity always try and simplify things as far as it is possible, in order to save mental resources. Sometimes it is good enough, many (most?) times it leads astray, or at least gives an impression of simplicity that isn't really there.
In my view black and white are just shades of grey so it should never have better results. I'd say that the only benefits of black and white thinking are that it takes less effort and that it is easier to find like minded individuals when your thinking is simpler.
Grey thinking isn't equally valuable, because in essence it means that you're trying to fill the void between your own environment and experience within it, and the collective experience, general knowledge and wisdom you've been exposed to. Some dots are easier to connect than others, and not every environment has the same amount of options available (dots you can connect to).
In my experience there are those who are so set in their views that the mere suggestion of grey thinking infuriates them. Thank you for posting this, it's helpful to have a definition for what I'd like to think I've adopted as my way of thinking.
We have a rule with our kids that we'll answer any question that they ask and articulate. "Why?" is always met with "Why what?" but if they can coherently say what they want to know we'll do our level best to explain it.
The trouble with Grey Thinking is that many people are just smart enough to convince themselves they are doing it, but not honest enough when reflecting on themselves to question whether they're making a genuine effort.
Not only is reality grey it's also multi-dimensional, there are usually many simultaneous axes on which we have to find where we stand. That's what makes it so difficult and people just snap on to a position instead.
> The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. You don't get to pick and choose. Your opinions about taxation can be predicted from your opinions about same-sex marriage.
Now,if a person were a conservative christian, them being a conservative would drive their position on taxation, while being christian would drive their position on gay marriage, however that alone would not make them an idealogue.
I think the idealogue is one who has come to his position, without considering the opposite position, thereby discounting it completely.
"In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves."
I have no idea what Graham was thinking, or if he was thinking at all, when he wrote this line. There have been hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people all around the world who easily crossed the threshold of "smart" in fields like economics, social policy, government, psychology, game theory and many more - and they were Marxists too.
So, uh, yes, most things in life are nuanced; I didn't realize anyone was suggesting otherwise.
That said, using an example based on two extremely coarse summaries of a complicated and nuanced politician, then trying to sum it up with "and reality is somewhere in the middle" isn't particularly useful or accurate. Are we so low on content that we need these "water is wet" articles?
RE slippery slopes, I think we need to talk about the "slippery slope fallacy fallacy" at some point. Slippery slope argument isn't invalid when there's actual slippery slope involved.
Or put another way, if you look at the dynamic behavior, there's plenty of structures around us that are metastable[0]. You can push and push on them, and they'll settle back roughly where they were - up until you cross a threshold, after which everything goes downhill very fast (and, at least in physics, releases a lot of energy in the process).
For instance, tragedies of the commons are such systems in real life. One or few actors abusing the commons a little bit can be tolerable. But the more actors discover that this behavior is tolerated, the more still start to do the same, and at some point a threshold is crossed and everyone starts doing it, the commons gets exhausted, and everyone is worse off.
A lot of the commenters are linking grey thinking to indecisiveness, but I think these are separate dimensions. The ability to think in a more nuanced way does not prevent you from making a decision.
One can be aware of a problem not being reducible to a single T-or-not-T while still being able to reach a decision. The reflex to do this reduction while trying to reach a decision is itself a symptom of infection with black-and-white thinking, in my opinion.
Converting a model into a decision is not the same as projecting all components of a model onto orthogonal dimensions (that is, black-and-whiting). Rather, black-and-whiting refers to doing this projection at each step, dropping information and shoehorning conclusions into either being true or false.
“Grey Thinking” as a term does a poor job at conveying what I _think_ the author wants to say. And that is, (1) don’t make generic statements and (2) consider your perspective. When you boil a problem down to its specifics, you get back to black and white thinking. Using the article’s example, “War is awful but history shows it to be occasionally necessary, and a very complex phenomenon” still contains the black and white statement of “War is good when situation X occurs and bad when situation Y occurs.”
> what I _think_ the author wants to say. And that is, (1) don’t make generic statements
I don't know if that's what the author meant, but it is bad thinking.
If you insist on no generalizations, you can't understand anything - the world is huge and awash with facts. Generalization is the process through which one can ignore irrelevant facts and focus on the important ones.
An example:
One might start out with the idea that men are stronger than women. This is not an unreasonable position to hold, but it certainly lacks some nuance.
One could point out, for example, that some women are stronger than some men. Which is true. However, this counter example is pretty weak, because most men are stronger than most women, while very few women are stronger than most men.
A more refined version of the original statement is: men have 2 std dev greater upper body strength than women, or in more approachable parlance: 95% of men have stronger upper bodies than the average woman.
It is true that the positive tails of both distributions extend to infinity, so there will always be examples of women who are strong in relation to most men. But it is also true that you will almost never find a woman who is the strongest person (at a given task - strength is specific).
At the end of the day, it is possible to craft true generic statements that capture enough nuance to be both useful and simple with a basic understanding of statistics.
I don't like to think in grey. But I try to see when I'm watching at me instead of at reality (i.e. "something is tasty" is about me, and the whole subjective category), accept that reality is complex and you have a limited view of it (and may be things that you don't know that you don't know).
You can still make your own choices, but leave the door open to accept that there are different valid views of the problems and yours may not be between them.
Thanks for this website! I read a few other articles, thought I'd be bored quick but ended thinking "it's already the end?". Seems like they're putting into words many principles I found out for myself, a pleasure to read. Wish I could afford the sub.
[+] [-] Ozzie_osman|6 years ago|reply
A good read on this is “The Cognitive Distortions of Founders” by Michael Dearing https://link.medium.com/Ri20AKKuL2.
[+] [-] jcims|6 years ago|reply
This is my wife. She’s never undecided and has incredible intuition. I’m a gray thinker to the point of paralysis. When something comes up that we need to sort out, i feed factors and we walk the decision tree until we’re both happy. Works well lol
[+] [-] jariel|6 years ago|reply
I think there is something metaphysical about it; the 'grey' is the ether and the black and white is the materiality that comes out of it literally from force of will.
You can only create something by making a choice, choosing a path, 'making the quantum observation' which dissolves the ambiguity.
Too often we think of the 'solutions' as a form of 'clarity' ... when reality, 'clarity' might be just the force (or clarity) of vision more than anything.
Consider three rules of branding: consistency, authenticity, simplicity. The message resonates when it is consistently and repeatedly applied in a simple way, and there is some kind of 'truthiness' (i.e. authenticity) to it. Sometimes I think of a product roadmap, and all the crazy internal and external politics of it all, as a form of branding. It's a 'decision' (i.e. either black or white) reiterated among individuals such that they can resonate their various talents around it, pushing it into fruition.
[+] [-] wwarner|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Swizec|6 years ago|reply
So I started using a shortcut. Instead of following the arguments, I observe the arguments themselves. Am I trying to justify a yes or a no?
Saves a lot of time. Just do what in your gut you’ve already decided to do anyway.
[+] [-] claudiawerner|6 years ago|reply
> Capitalism is enormously productive but has many limitations. Some socialist institutions actually work well in a capitalist economy, but pure socialism hasn’t tended to work at all.
But this is actually a counter-example. Most socialists (and certainly all of the originators and main theorists) would contend that socialism represents a pure qualitative break with capitalism, that socialism is at odds with capitalism in many ways (law of value, commodity production, class society) and that to speak of implementing "socialist policies" is worse than meaningless, it is a misunderstanding. They have some good reasons to say that socialism represents such a qualitative break with capitalism.
So from my point of view, you can start out thinking "gray" (most people uninformed on the scholarly work on the difference between capitalism and socialism take the point of view of the article) but when you look further, you actually see that it's black and white.
This example, at least, undermined the author's point. "Quantitative scale-based thinking" means that quality rarely enters the mix (except, perplexingly, in the example that "trying heroin once is bad"). Quantitative thinking is not always a perfect fit, because (1) it assumes the object under investigation is quantifiable, (2) it assumes the object is mathematically and formal-logically comparable, (3) quantitative models often simplify beyond how a qualitative model would (as an example, Samuelson's "commodity 1" and "commodity 2", or the presumption that inputs=outputs in Steedman).
Qualitative and quantitative thinking are both important, and the preference for quantitative over qualitative has become increasingly common; as a famous German economist once pointed out (in the criticism of Bentham's utilitarianism), quality logically preceeds quantity. If you don't know what you're talking about, its measurement will be a lot more difficult. This is the same argument levelled at Ricardo (the confusion of form, substance and magnitude into one monstrous mess).
[+] [-] programmertote|6 years ago|reply
For example, when it comes to events we read in the news (esp. the ones published by western-based media) about other regions have heavy bias that born out of both western values and limited (very, very often one sided) info they obtained from the people they hang out with. Even reputable publications like NYTimes and BBC, have obvious biases if you have been to the places they are reporting about. That's why I stopped believing everything I see on mainstream media and start to ignore it mostly for almost a decade now. I also avoid social media (Facebook and to an extent Reddit) because what we see there mostly represent people's fleeting reactions and emotions to things that really doesn't matter to my life for the most part. Doing that really makes my mind free of a lot of bad karma.
[+] [-] coffeecat|6 years ago|reply
This is the quintessence of gray area. Sure, we have violent rape versus mutually consensual, mutually enjoyable sex as black and white examples of rape and not-rape. What about mutually consensual sex where there's some kind of power imbalance? She reluctantly says yes, and doesn't seem to be enjoying it? She initially says yes, then she says stop a few minutes into it and he doesn't stop until the fourth time she says it? The gray area here is virtually endless.
[+] [-] nordsieck|6 years ago|reply
Some people abandon black and white and replace it with a single shade of grey [1].
In order to have effective grey thinking, I think you need at least a basic understanding of statistics. This is also a great defense against others who seek to bamboozle you.
___
1. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallac...
[+] [-] wenc|6 years ago|reply
Right -- which is related to thinking in percentages (I almost wanted to say thinking in probabilities, but it's not quite that... it's more fundamental.)
For instance, the age-old question of nature vs nurture. In debates, the answer always into 100% one or the other which makes for a good fight to watch, but in real life we know it's both, and with differing percentages in each situation.
Wading into a slightly more controversial category -- gender pay gaps. Is the pay gap for the same position 100% consistently due to gender? (Twitter will have you believe "yes" but the answer is more complex). Most of us know that pay gaps are due to a series of factors of which structural discrimination based on gender is only one (a significant one, and one that needs to be rectified). But there are other factors like job performance, compensation negotiation skills, visibility of work (results don't always speak for themselves, there's often a need to sell), all factors occurring in different percentages in individuals/groups. Understanding these other factors and the proportions to which they occur and help in devising practical interventions to address them in order to have sustainable equity over the long term.
If we can only switch our mindset from binary categories to multinomial ones, and assign percentages to the contributions of each, we can make moves toward finding solutions instead of just being angry at each other, which doesn't really lead to lasting change.
[+] [-] ghostbrainalpha|6 years ago|reply
Adding Grey is good, unless you only think in Grey because that is only 1 color, and 1 color is less than 2.
We should all think in at least 3 colors. Which requires a basic understanding of statistics.
But what about thinking in colors that are actual colors? Like... at least the primaries. What type of education would be required to throw in some Blue or maybe Red?
[+] [-] throwno|6 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] stareatgoats|6 years ago|reply
The inherent contradiction in this quote needed to be highlighted. In fact "grey thinking" is superior to black and white thinking in many cases, just not all. In some cases the answer is just simply yes or no, and no buts.
As to why grey thinking is so hard I think the article leaves out a major reason: grey thinking is more demanding. We will as humans by necessity always try and simplify things as far as it is possible, in order to save mental resources. Sometimes it is good enough, many (most?) times it leads astray, or at least gives an impression of simplicity that isn't really there.
[+] [-] username90|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deltron3030|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lanternslight|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] givinguflac|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrsmee89|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taneq|6 years ago|reply
Also, only a Sith deals in absolutes (generally).
[+] [-] alasdair_|6 years ago|reply
Anyone uttering the phrase "only a Sith deals in absolutes" must therefore be a Sith.
Dammit Obi-Wan. You fooled us all.
[+] [-] cjslep|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zwieback|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrandish|6 years ago|reply
http://paulgraham.com/mod.html
[+] [-] foolinaround|6 years ago|reply
> The defining quality of an ideologue, whether on the left or the right, is to acquire one's opinions in bulk. You don't get to pick and choose. Your opinions about taxation can be predicted from your opinions about same-sex marriage.
Now,if a person were a conservative christian, them being a conservative would drive their position on taxation, while being christian would drive their position on gay marriage, however that alone would not make them an idealogue.
I think the idealogue is one who has come to his position, without considering the opposite position, thereby discounting it completely.
[+] [-] PaulDavisThe1st|6 years ago|reply
"In the 20th century, a lot of very smart people were Marxists — just no one who was smart about the subjects Marxism involves."
I have no idea what Graham was thinking, or if he was thinking at all, when he wrote this line. There have been hundreds, thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of people all around the world who easily crossed the threshold of "smart" in fields like economics, social policy, government, psychology, game theory and many more - and they were Marxists too.
[+] [-] AcerbicZero|6 years ago|reply
That said, using an example based on two extremely coarse summaries of a complicated and nuanced politician, then trying to sum it up with "and reality is somewhere in the middle" isn't particularly useful or accurate. Are we so low on content that we need these "water is wet" articles?
[+] [-] whokal|6 years ago|reply
;-)
[+] [-] TeMPOraL|6 years ago|reply
Or put another way, if you look at the dynamic behavior, there's plenty of structures around us that are metastable[0]. You can push and push on them, and they'll settle back roughly where they were - up until you cross a threshold, after which everything goes downhill very fast (and, at least in physics, releases a lot of energy in the process).
For instance, tragedies of the commons are such systems in real life. One or few actors abusing the commons a little bit can be tolerable. But the more actors discover that this behavior is tolerated, the more still start to do the same, and at some point a threshold is crossed and everyone starts doing it, the commons gets exhausted, and everyone is worse off.
--
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability
[+] [-] feanaro|6 years ago|reply
One can be aware of a problem not being reducible to a single T-or-not-T while still being able to reach a decision. The reflex to do this reduction while trying to reach a decision is itself a symptom of infection with black-and-white thinking, in my opinion.
Converting a model into a decision is not the same as projecting all components of a model onto orthogonal dimensions (that is, black-and-whiting). Rather, black-and-whiting refers to doing this projection at each step, dropping information and shoehorning conclusions into either being true or false.
[+] [-] cvolzer3|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nordsieck|6 years ago|reply
I don't know if that's what the author meant, but it is bad thinking.
If you insist on no generalizations, you can't understand anything - the world is huge and awash with facts. Generalization is the process through which one can ignore irrelevant facts and focus on the important ones.
An example:
One might start out with the idea that men are stronger than women. This is not an unreasonable position to hold, but it certainly lacks some nuance.
One could point out, for example, that some women are stronger than some men. Which is true. However, this counter example is pretty weak, because most men are stronger than most women, while very few women are stronger than most men.
A more refined version of the original statement is: men have 2 std dev greater upper body strength than women, or in more approachable parlance: 95% of men have stronger upper bodies than the average woman.
It is true that the positive tails of both distributions extend to infinity, so there will always be examples of women who are strong in relation to most men. But it is also true that you will almost never find a woman who is the strongest person (at a given task - strength is specific).
At the end of the day, it is possible to craft true generic statements that capture enough nuance to be both useful and simple with a basic understanding of statistics.
[+] [-] gmuslera|6 years ago|reply
You can still make your own choices, but leave the door open to accept that there are different valid views of the problems and yours may not be between them.
[+] [-] phn|6 years ago|reply
I think people in general tend to avoid that kind of uncertainty in their life.
[+] [-] zallarak|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nradov|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iazid|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zuhayeer|6 years ago|reply
https://rapbits.com/s/662
[+] [-] throwaway72873|6 years ago|reply
Often "that sucks" is perfectly good answer.
[+] [-] Koshkin|6 years ago|reply