"Upside decay means that an organization doesn’t get any lucky breaks.
You’d think that being on the lookout for missing positive tail events would be enough to spot upside decay. But it’s too late to be useful. We need to observe an organization over a long period of time or have access to a generous chunk of its history. By the time we identify the presence of upside decay, it will already be far advanced.
What’s worse, upside decay has corrosive effects on organizations. Trying to connect with people becomes sluggish and hard. Things which were easy become longer, slower, more tedious. Problems that are left unattended will metastasize. Motivated people can still push projects through and deal with problems, but it takes all their time and energy and burns them out."
This has so many implications for organizations, governments, society, everyday life.
Are you aware of similar critiques of growth/fixed mindset? It’s very popular in my kid’s school, but I’ve heard other parents say that the pedagogical strategies that are ostensibly based on it (not stratifying kids based on ability level) are bunk. I’m interested in knowing more about the pros/cons.
I would argue that Carol Dweck argues that if you believe and are motivated, you can achieve. The criticism is that while motivation and belief i.e. grit is important -- it is only half the story. Countless studies have proven what really drives academic success -- financially well off parents who emphasize education and provide time/money/resources to help their children succeed.
"What the team found was there is a correlation between someone having more of a growth mindset and doing well academically. However, the correlation is small and the findings do not support claims that growth mindset interventions have profound effects on academic achievement." [1]
"The attempted replication of Dweck’s work that is about to be published concerned the 1998 study on praise and part of the 2007 study. Bates and his student Yue Li conducted a series of studies in a group of more than 600 Chinese students. Their results were mixed but mostly found no effect." [2]
However, build what exactly? I don’t disagree with building hospitals and important public infrastructure. However:
1) More exponential growth isn’t by definition for the better
2) We need to ask ourselves, brutally and honestly, what actually needs building, and what doesn’t?
Aside from the obvious tangible tech and infrastructure we can build, there are also many tacit things we should be building and investing in, but that are difficult to measure: International cooperation, resilience, creativity.
There’s no point in building more infrastructure (Andreessen) or trying to populate other planets (Musk), if we continue having paralyzing social inequality and international conflict, which destroy what we build. ️
> [...] if we continue having paralyzing social inequality and international conflict, which destroy what we build
"We" (meaning the US and other developed Western nations) don't have "paralyzing social inequality". Social inequality, yes, but it's far, far from paralyzing. Also, "we" might be involved in international conflicts, but these destroy only a tiny fraction of what we build.
This rings true so deeply. Best piece I’ve read in ages. I wish more governments, tech entrepreneurs and (hard) scientists understood the importance and power of the social and behavioral sciences.
"Environmental issues are not just technical challenges that can be solved with a new invention. To tackle climate change we will need insight from psychology and sociology.
[...] In diverse cases, social factors — cultural norms, educational understanding, kin and social networks, power dynamics, or simply the layout of a building — must be accounted for before policy can succeed."
and then this:
"Blind faith in data science without an understanding of what data are missing, or how algorithms can exacerbate existing biases, can lead to policy failure. In a democracy, expert advice must be balanced with considerations such as public opinion, financial costs and political demands. Still, without the humanities and social sciences, hard science and technology can do little to resolve complex societal challenges. Wise governments will find ways to incorporate that insight."
Thanks for sharing your experience! At Prolific, we found that one good resource for learning about marketing/growth is this book called Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares. It explains 19 different growth channels and instructs you around best practices on how to experiment with them.
On a very basic level, the best way to validate your market & marketing ideas is talking to the right target audience. Often you can do this in your personal circles, but sometimes you need a less biased sample (in which case Prolific might be able to help). Good luck!
Right now we’re available to participants in OECD countries and it’s probably going to be another while before we can expand globally. Within the 36 countries that we’re in, we’re currently trying to work out what incentives might work best: How can we encourage the average citizen to sign up and take part in online research? What about very hard-to-reach demographics like professionals?
We feel that cash generally works well as an incentive, but it’s not everything. A lot of the time people want to contribute to projects they personally care about. So on Prolific’s end, it will come down to matching projects with the right participants. Another type of incentive could be to offer to participants that Prolific donates their earnings to charities on their behalf, and perhaps Prolific could match their donation?
We’ve recently launched quota-based representative samples for the US and UK [1], where we stratify based on sex, ethnicity, and age. A by-product of this feature is that it specifically invites niche demographics to participate, helping fill gaps. We hope that having more surveys available for demographics that are in the minority (e.g. certain ethnicities and age groups) will improve our ability to recruit these participants (although there’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem here).
Another thing we’d like to do is launch a mobile app for participants, so anyone can take a quick survey on the go (while waiting in line, chilling at home, commuting). Making our surveys more accessible to participants through different channels should help represent more people in society.
And then there’s user experience. We’re working on making our site as self-explanatory as possible, so anybody can sign up and start participating, even if you’re someone who doesn’t spend much time on the internet.
What do you think––what might be other ways to diversify our participant pool? Very curious
