
In praise of dissenters: It pays to encourage a variety of opinions - jkuria
https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/10/in-praise-of-dissenters
======
jackgavigan
The practice of purging the ranks of "difficult" subordinates - people who
question the wisdom of conventional thinking, who challenge their superiors,
who do not automatically salute and say "yes sir, yes, sir, six bags full",
when their superiors speak - over the years has produced a crop of senior
officials long on form and short on substance. The long-term result of
stifling dissent and discouraging unconventional views, while rewarding those
who conform, is an officer corps that is sterile, stagnant, and predictable.
Promoting clones, while purging mavericks, is tantamount to incest. We all
know the possible long-term effect of generations of incest -
feeblemindedness, debilitation, and insanity.

\-- Colonel James G Burton, _The Pentagon Wars_ (1992)

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celticmusic
That quote is brutal in it's simplicity, bluntness, and distinct lack of
cleverness.

I love it.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/mEjNBa](https://outline.com/mEjNBa)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.econo...](https://web.archive.org/web/20191013235042/https://www.economist.com/business/2019/10/10/in-
praise-of-dissenters)

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eecsninja
The problem is that large organizations like government agencies and
corporations don't want alternate opinions, except in the rare cases where
they specifically have a devil's advocate position to test the validity of
ideas.

Better performance isn't an argument that sways these organizations that care
more about preserving the status quo than about success in their stated goals.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
Differing opinions are seen as an annoying impediment to decision making: yet
another variable that needs to be weighed up _eye-roll_.

Management is easier when everyone just agrees and when Management is easy
then Managers are happy, which generally means employees feel less "under the
microscope".

Therefore alternative opinions have the appearance of working against both
(lazy) Managers and (paranoid) employees. There's only a small percentage of
humanity that are either willing, or unaware, enough to potentially get off-
side with their boss and peers to provide dissenting opinion. Despite the
great long-term value there is in attacking problems with the knowledge of the
various angles of entry and exit.

It's sad, but human nature. And here we find ourselves in a world of our own
making.

~~~
chrisco255
It's purely a cultural construct. Companies, societies, families,
organizations, universities, etc. all have different internal cultures that
dictate the social behavior of those in the group. When a culture of diverse
opinion is encouraged and supported by official and implicit policy, it tends
to thrive.

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pbreit
Anyone have experience surveying project teams anonymously?

"Do you think this project will be successful? Why or why not?"

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flukus
I don't trust the anonymity and without that you can't trust the honesty.
These surveys always get sent out with some sort of id/token in an email and
after that you're feeding data into a black box where you have no idea what
kind of information is being stored and how much of that information is
available to the creators the survey.

If there were some sort of neutral third party (like a non-profit or maybe a
union) running the survey I might have some trust, but companies in this space
like survey monkey are not neutral, they're beholden to whoever pays them.

~~~
intarga
You could just do it the old school way: print out responses and put them in a
ballot box.

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mcv
I'm unable to read the article at the moment, but I certainly agree with the
title. I recently had to hire 4 new developers for my team, and I found 4 I'm
really happy with, but the one I'm most happy with is the one I hired primary
because he was very opinionated, and now after two weeks, he's already having
a major positive impact on our way of working.

By contrast, the two developers with the most experience on paper are very
timid, and it's hard to get a straight answer out of them. It's probably a
cultural issue. Which makes it extra annoying, because in many situation, it's
valuable to have opinions from all cultures represented, and not just the most
direct cultures.

~~~
afarrell
I'm curious which phrase you find is a better expression of this dev's
communication:

\- "Strong opinions, weakly held"

\- "Clear opinions, openly offered"

~~~
intarga
Those two don't appear mutually exclusive

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johnwish007
We need a diversity of opinions for sure, people without opinions are just Yes
Men.

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p4bl0
I think it's Rosa Luxemburg who said "freedom is always the freedom of
dissenters". I believe that's true, the problem is knowing who are the
dissenters, as many political groups want that label while many of them do not
deserve it at all (obvious example: Trump presenting himself as an anti-system
candidate).

~~~
chrisco255
Huh? Freedom of speech is for everyone regardless of their label.

~~~
mytailorisrich
The quote means that freedom really exists when it applies to all, including
those who disagree with the government/powerful/majority.

I.e. the freedom of the dissenters is the measure of freedom in the group.

~~~
mcv
Exactly. The people in power, the dominant social group, etc, are rarely short
in freedom. It's the people who don't fit in that are most at risk of losing
their freedom. Of speech or otherwise.

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dbuder
"People from different backgrounds approach problems from different
angles—that much should be blindingly obvious." It's not obvious and in my
experience is nonsense when it comes to the workplace, it doesn't matter what
color your skin is or where you grew up, if you're at company x it's because
you fit through the same sieve and have the social awareness to shut up and
conform. I have both observed and learned the hard way again and again that
even a good solution to a long term problem will be ignored or treated with
hostility.

You are more likely to be fired for your suggestion box submission than your
idea implemented.

~~~
goatinaboat
Right. If everyone in an organisation is a graduate of the same handful of
universities, attended the same lectures from the same professors, read the
same books, is about the same age etc then where is the actual diversity?

~~~
gonzo41
In my fathers life you would see and hear stories of people who started in the
mailroom / loading dock and, they made it all the way to the top. That doesn't
exist anymore. And if you catch the hiring threads here every once and a
while. You can see people hire for 'cultural' fit. Few if any people would
hire for conflict or dissent.

~~~
jessaustin
In fairness, the journey from loading dock to executive suite probably
included enough sieving and sanding to produce a fairly precise cultural fit.
That is, the loading dock supervisors probably possess more variety than the
VPs, but less than the loading dock workers they supervise. How likely is a
person who has spent an entire career climbing one ladder to have _any_ ideas
foreign to the organization?

~~~
gonzo41
My point was more that they had that job for a time, and that shaped them.
Falling out of the Ivy League and into a job with friends in SC and then
climbing the ladder up doesn't expose you the rungs of people in life.

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otabdeveloper4
Unless they're misogynists or skeptical of "climate change", then it's best to
burn them at the stake, just to be safe that the crimethink isn't contagious.

~~~
TulliusCicero
> Unless they're misogynists

The article notes that an important factor of success is psychological safety.
Makes it rather more difficult to ensure that when you have employees who bear
hatred towards roughly 50% of the population.

Are you seriously defending misogyny as a useful character trait?

> skeptical of "climate change"

What does this have to do with the average workplace's diversity?

~~~
azangru
> who bear hatred towards roughly 50% of the population

Either the word misogyny is not used in this sense anymore, or the word
"hatred" has changed its meaning. It's too common nowadays to see men being
accused of misogyny for poor control of sexual impulses (not necessarily at
the time of the accusation, but at any point in the past), or for expressing
scepticism about certain political claims of feminists. Whatever that is, it
can hardly be described as "hatred".

~~~
mcv
Maybe 'hatred' is too broad, but surely it's not hard to see that people are
likely to be uncomfortable to share their opinion in front of people who
disagree that they should have an equal voice merely for being who they are.

~~~
azangru
> surely it's not hard to see that people are likely to be uncomfortable to
> share their opinion in front of people who disagree that they should have an
> equal voice merely for being who they are.

But surely the same argument should apply to people sharing the current left
sociopolitical theory, which uses terminology such as "privilege" (with
various qualifiers such as "white privilege", "white male privilege",
"straight white male privilege", etc.), or "unconscious bias", which also
implies that a certain section of the population should not have an equal
voice for merely being who they are. And yet it's not how it works, somehow.

~~~
mcv
That's rather the issue. According to the sociopolitical left, everybody
should have an equal voice. That's the entire point. The problem is that in
practice, some voice are louder while others are often ignored. And that's
something to be aware of when your voice is one of those that does get heard:
try to be aware of those that tend to get ignored.

~~~
azangru
> According to the sociopolitical left, everybody should have an equal voice

There are well-documented cases when that's patently not true. For example,
when "those whose voices are louder", to go with your description, voice an
opinion that no-one is stopping others to be as loud as they wish, they are
told that their opinion does not count, because they have privilege, and that
they should keep quiet and learn. And yes, they may be accused of misogyny (as
well as other evils) in the process.

~~~
mcv
I'm saying "should", not "does". Obviously there are inequalities, and there
will always be, for a variety of reasons. The goal is to reduce those
differences and keep them from getting out of control.

Saying someone's opinion does not count is generally unproductive and
needlessly hostile. The only cases where that might be defensible, is if the
opinion that's under attack is itself attacking other opinions. For example:
if someone claims that women's opinions don't count, I can see how you could
argue that such a clearly bigoted opinion is not worthy of attention: it's
arguing for the exact situation we should be getting away from.

Another case might be where an opinion is obviously badly informed; sometimes
you see people voicing weird opinions based on wrong assumptions about other
people they know nothing about, and refuse any correction on those wrong
assumptions. (In politics, those misinformed opinions are often still the
loudest, though. See the abortion debate for some bizarre examples.) In those
cases, shutting up and learning may indeed be the best idea.

But in most cases, all opinions deserve to be heard, and nobody should be
excluded from the debate for who or what they are. Of course that also means
they shouldn't exclude others for who they are.

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hogFeast
Totally misunderstands "psychological safety".

The reason why people are afraid of speaking up is because of an excess of
"psychological safety", not a deficit. It is because the boss needs to feel
"safe". That culture comes from and is for the senior staff.

It is funny because I have seen companies understand this and try to hire a
diverse group. But they do everything else in a very rigid, hierarchical way.
So most junior people end up leaving, and the senior people go on as before.
One particular firm has been doing diverse hiring for close to three
decades...their senior staff is still composed of the good old boys who have
their come to Christ moment about diversity every few years but never change
themselves.

You really have to focus on those senior people to understand this. Everyone
says they want diversity, they may even hire diverse...but when a junior
person is telling them why they are wrong, they will utterly lose their shit.

I do know places that have comfortably achieved diversity too. But the
thinking required is basically antithetical to everything that people are
taught about how to behave i.e. think things through for yourself, don't think
emotionally, be prepared to be wrong and change your mind when that occurs,
etc.

