The African Enterprise (17/01/2022)
Effective Communication, The Nickname Barometer, Rush Gadol or Rush Katan, Edge of Chaos, Personalisation and Propaganda.
Hello my friends,
Greetings from Abuja.
Since it's my first email of the year, Happy New Year!!
I wish the best of the new year to everyone. Thanks for reading these emails which have spurred a sense of unending curiosity as I navigate life. This newsletter has been fuel for my intellectual journey and I'm grateful to everyone taking the time to read, engage, and share.
On writing, I fell off at the tail end of last year but I'm sending this email with a new essay: Shared Meaning and Effective Communication.
Communication, or information sharing, has evolved to a point where it has essentially flattened the world. Millions of people share ideas, opinions, and experiences unfettered every second. This abundance, though a huge plus for our civilisation, has also — according to Matt Ridley — plunged us into echo chambers and filter bubbles that leave us either enraged, depressed, soured, or polarised. Hence, communication becomes exhausting.
And this exhaustion emerges because a central rule of effective communication is mostly violated: At the core of every successful conversation lies the free flow of relevant information.
In this essay, I write about the crux of our violation of this central rule, what makes effective communication, the value of constructive argumentation, and why it's important to build and maintain bridges through the course of every interaction.
Coolest things I learned this week
The “nickname barometer”
“You can tell a lot about a society based on how [its members] refer to their elites."
In just about every section or sub-section of society, you can get a good reading of the sense, or lack, of camaraderie that exists just from the nicknames that people have.
Rosh Gadol or Rosh Katan
In the Israeli army, soldiers are divided into two groups:
Rosh Gadol (Big Head): This behavior or thinking means following orders but doing so in the best possible way, using judgment, and investing whatever effort if necessary. With this behavior, improvisation is valued over discipline. The requirement is not to stick to the fine print of any order but possess the ability to make it up as one goes along. For example, taking responsibility for a change in plan if the situation requires it.
Rosh Katan (Little head): This behavior or thinking means interpreting orders as narrowly as possible to avoid taking on the responsibility or extra work.
A case of the difference in both mentalities is best captured by a story from the Bible. A story of the master who gave his servants talents before a trip. Rosh Gadol is the mentality of that who invested the money, took the risk of losing it all. While Rosh Katan is the behavior of that who buried all the talents so as to deliver exactly as he was given.
In Isreal, Rosh Katan mentality is shunned while the can-do responsible attitude of Rosh Gadol is described as the Israeli differentiator.
h/t: Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s The Start-Up Nation: Story of Israel’s Economic miracle
The Edge of Chaos in Complexity Science
The edge of chaos in Complexity science is described as the estuary region where rigid order and random chaos meet and generate high levels of adaptation, complexity, and creativity.
As an equation:
Rigid order + Random Chaos = Adaptation, Complexity, and Creativity.
This edge of chaos is a marriage of contrast. Rigid and Random, Order and Chaos.
In most of the decisions we make, Pick One Economics is the deciding factor. It is the situation where one alternative has to be taken over the other. While that most certainly applies to most of the decisions we will make, it is nowhere near all-encompassing.
Pick one economics means we have to pick between rigid and random, order and chaos, rigid order and random chaos. But this marriage of contrast is where high levels of adaptation to circumstances or opprtuinities, creativity, and complexity can be achieved. Just like the sheltered waters of estuaries support unique ecosystems.
Is personalization autopropaganda?
Left to their own devices, personalization filters serve up a kind of invisible autopropaganda, indoctrinating us with our own ideas, amplifying our desire for things that are familiar and leaving us oblivious to the dangers lurking in the dark territory of the unknown. - Eli Pariser
When we talk about propaganda, we talk of ourselves as objects. It is a political tool used by politicians, leaders, and the media to further an agenda. It's mostly only propaganda when someone is spewing something at us to encourage a particular perception.
But what may be the most effective kind of propaganda is the one where we are both the object and the subject. On social media, where we do a significant percentage of our thinking, we follow the people we like and unfollow the ones we don't, we personalise to receive one kind of information and suppress another, we block ideas we disagree with and like the ones we do — an act used to strengthen an algorithm which now will skew strongly toward that idea.
All in all, with all the control we have over the information we receive, are we not encouraging a perception that is based solely on what we already agree with? Are we not surely now going to be surrounded only by people who share the same opinion as us? How to tell if the language with which our entire timeline is now loaded isn’t serving to further reinforce our biases?
While personalization is great, could it possibly become autopropaganda?
What do you think?
That’s it for this week.
If you have any thoughts or questions, hit reply and we can have a chat. And if you enjoyed it, share with friends.
Till next week,
Kelvin.
We do want to filter noise I think, most people do not present their ideas correctly because of the format of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube comments