
The Value of Grey Thinking (2016) - UrbanPiper
https://fs.blog/2016/06/value-grey-thinking/
======
Ozzie_osman
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.

A good read on this is “The Cognitive Distortions of Founders” by Michael
Dearing
[https://link.medium.com/Ri20AKKuL2](https://link.medium.com/Ri20AKKuL2).

~~~
claudiawerner
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).

~~~
reggieband
You hit on some good points and it spurred my thought to his definition of
grey. To have a concept of grey you really need a black and a white. You need
to define the polls of your continuum. That implies some set of functions that
transforms over the continuum. Compared to defining your polls and choosing
your transformation functions .... I'm not sure selecting one grey over
another really has the same impact.

For some reason this makes me think of Hegel and dialectical (subjects I have
limited understanding of).

I also agree that quantitative reasoning has usurped qualitative reasoning and
this might be due to quantitative reasoning actually being easier. If you
define a scale with which to measure then it is really just a matter of
defining how you score something, gathering the inputs and turning a crank to
get to an answer. IMO, choosing the scale (and maybe to a less extent the
scoring mechanism) seems to be the truly difficult part of the puzzle.

~~~
abernard1
What exactly would the quantitative "score" be to measure between the
qualitative systems of Capitalism and Socialism? Between Buddhism and
Christianity? Between Keynesianism and Modern Monetary Theory?

I would submit there isn't one. Furthermore any objective "facts" useful for
such a metric have some basis on one theory or interpretation or another.

The article says:

> This is why quantitative and scale-based thinking is so important. But most
> don’t realize that quantitative thinking isn’t really about math; it’s about
> the idea that The dose makes the poison.

To adopt their words in response to your comment, what exactly is the
numerical "dose" between qualitatively different systems? Could one have
identical numerical "doses" in different combinations of those systems? It's a
useless, reductionist, and counterproductive way of thinking in my opinion.

~~~
reggieband
> What exactly would the quantitative "score" be to measure between the
> qualitative systems of Capitalism and Socialism?

Well, isn't this exactly what people try to do when comparing these systems?
Number of deaths, number of people in poverty, number of products on the
shelves in stores?

> Between Buddhism and Christianity?

You can count the number of atrocities perpetrated by each. The number of
scandals involving their priests. The total number of adherents.

> what exactly is the numerical "dose" between qualitatively different
> systems?

That is the whole point of my post. Defining _how_ to turn a qualitative
measure into a quantitate measure is the real and only trick. I chose some
arbitrary ones in response to your examples. You may choose different ones.
Maybe you choose to measure capitalism and socialism based on some
psychological happiness score defined as responses to some survey. Maybe you
measure it by GDP. Choosing your measure is the real power.

~~~
claudiawerner
>Well, isn't this exactly what people try to do when comparing these systems?
Number of deaths, number of people in poverty, number of products on the
shelves in stores?

Not necessarily. Qualitative models have been increasingly adopted, and most
arguments from the socialist side of the debate concede that capitalism has
greatly improved quantitatively measured standards of living, it is
responsible for a huge range of products, and that 20th c. socialism lead to
many deaths. Qualitative criticisms are the most popular today in political
economy, namely, the work of Sen, Roemer, Vrousalis and others on qualitative
(with some quantitative basis) concepts of "exploitation", "domination",
"alienation", and "fetishism". Nevertheless, quantitative arguments are also
abound, in particular debate over what classifies as "poverty", and the
transformation of values to prices of production (usually formulated
mathematically). The road to defining axiomitically concepts like
"exploitation" still has "a million miles to go" (Veneziani and Yoshihara).

This area of criticism, in my opinion (and the opinion of Honkanen[0]), needs
_more_ quantitative reasoning, and qualitative thinking cannot simply brush
aside the use of statistics, which is relevant in many (but not all)
instances.

[0] Honkanen P. (2020) The Transformation Problem and Value-Form:
Methodological Comments. In: Silver M. (eds) Confronting Capitalism in the
21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
20th century capitalism also led to many deaths.

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/commun...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/26/communists-
capitalism-stalinism-economic-model)

[https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-
communism-...](https://www.quora.com/What-has-killed-more-people-communism-or-
capitalism)

And the death count for "socialism" usually includes Stalinist Russia, Maoist
China, and Nazi Germany, all of which were primarily nationalist governments -
in the same way that North Korea is actually a very old-fashioned hereditary
absolute monarchy decorated with Stalinist branding.

The closest economies to real socialism are the high-taxation, high-spending
Scandinavian social democracies, which score higher than the US on educational
attainment, business opportunity, life-expectancy, and educational attainment
- but don't do nearly as well at generating billionaires.

The real foundation of social democracy is aggressive wealth redistribution
and broad democratic access to policy - not state control. In reality
capitalism is far more controlled than social democracy because it operates as
a plutocracy that privileges a small demographic. This demographic has
exclusive control over policy through lobbying, "funding" of representatives,
and the creation and propagation of economic (i.e. "moral") narratives that
benefit them - irrespective of party labels.

Against this background, the fact that academics may be debating what
exploitation means is very much a side issue.

~~~
claudiawerner
>The closest economies to real socialism are the high-taxation, high-spending
Scandinavian social democracies, which score higher than the US on educational
attainment, business opportunity, life-expectancy, and educational attainment
- but don't do nearly as well at generating billionaires.

Close, but I would say that socialists don't see it as close enough. Sweden
holds a strong form of liberal egalitarianism, as propounded by Rawls in his
less 'socialist' writings. But even then, the socialism is beyond its horizon.
There is a 'property-owning democracy', and no egalitarian distribution. The
capitalist parts of Rawls, without the public ownership of MoP socialist
stuff.

The championing of liberal egalitarianism as "good enough" leaves other
questions unanswered. Is social democracy still exploitative? Dominating?
Alienating? Environmentally damaging? Inefficient? Those questions hold for
any form of capitalism, defined as a society in which capital's self-
valorization is predominant, and where there is wage labour.

So the question is what kind of argument would justify not only going beyond
old school 20th c. death capitalism, but social democratic capitalism, too.
Only if you look into whether (1) capitalist societies are exploitative (2)
there is a normative reason to do away with it, and the same with alienation,
domination and environmental concerns - then there is a good reason for
socialism.

------
programmertote
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.

~~~
coffeecat
> 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.

------
nordsieck
There is a dark side to grey thinking:

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...](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-
gray)

~~~
wenc
> 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.

~~~
SolaceQuantum
I agree with this broadly with a caveat I'm curious about: What do we do when
these factors also have factors? Does it increase the contribution of a factor
if it applies to both the measured factor's dependencies and also the
dependencies' dependencies?

Let's say pay gap is 5% "anti-black racism" when it comes to a black man being
paid in software development. Pay gap is also 40% job performance, 20%
visibility, 15% negotiations, 10% unknown, 5% underpaying due to being black.

What happens if visibility is 10% antiblackness, due to a manager have just a
small amount of bias when delegating visible work? Does this increase the 5%
antiblackness by the 10% of 40% (to like 5.4%?)

EDIT: I'm not trying to be socially just in this analysis, so we can also
replace being black with being openly conservative for example, or being from
a different college, or not liking the same sport or same beer as one's peers.
Pretty much anything can fit into this, I'm just trying to analyze this
viewpoint.

~~~
wenc
So the way I think of it in my head (and I was really trying hard to avoid
being all mathematical because most people don't need this level of detail) is
really to think of things, as a first approximation, as a conceptual
regression problem. Let's say y = gender pay gap and x_1, x_2, .., x_n are
factors. You can think of y as follows:

y ~ x_1 + x_2 + ... + x_1 * x_2 + x_2 * x_3 ...

etc. where you have interaction terms like x_1 * x_2 (say x_1 = being part of
a non-dominant-culture, x_2 = gender) and so on. Then you can see stacking
issues show up, e.g. if you're a woman you're -40% and if you're a woman of
color you're -45% etc. (numbers are made up of course).

It's possible to get into more rigorous modeling methods like Bayesian
networks (DAGs) and hierarchical regression models (where the coefficients are
dependent) but I think the added rigor/refinement in most cases is unnecessary
because it often washes out due to the inherent uncertainty in the data and in
most cases does not add value to the goal at hand: _that is to understand the
major contributors to an issue in order to design an intervention._

If more folks could bring themselves to think in simple percentages, we would
have moved the needle toward that goal.

------
stareatgoats
> 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.

~~~
username90
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.

------
givinguflac
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.

~~~
mrsmee89
I had the exact same reaction.

------
taneq
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.

Also, only a Sith deals in absolutes (generally).

~~~
alasdair_
>Also, only a Sith deals in absolutes (generally).

Anyone uttering the phrase "only a Sith deals in absolutes" must therefore be
a Sith.

Dammit Obi-Wan. You fooled us all.

~~~
taneq
Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves them occasionally, I guess.

------
cjslep
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.

------
zwieback
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.

------
mrandish
Paul Graham just posted a directly relevant blog today on the challenges of
being a "moderate" in polarized times.

[http://paulgraham.com/mod.html](http://paulgraham.com/mod.html)

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
Interesting link, but this line is just absurd:

"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.

~~~
david927
I'll give Paul credit for trying to be a thinker in a time period where fewer
make that effort.

The problem that he faces is that he's an exemplar of the thinking of his
location; he's the embodiment of the Silicon Valley mindset, which is both
narrow and flawed. Like others in the valley, he has a habit of giving new
labels to previously well-explored ideas and refusing to consider any economic
model that isn't skewed towards the very wealthiest.

------
AcerbicZero
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?

~~~
whokal
Why is water wet?

;-)

------
TeMPOraL
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.

\--

[0] -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metastability)

------
feanaro
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.

------
cvolzer3
“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.”

~~~
nordsieck
> 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.

------
gmuslera
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.

------
phn
I call it keeping an open mind and try to be empathetic, but it does feel like
sailing in the wind at times.

I think people in general tend to avoid that kind of uncertainty in their
life.

------
zallarak
Interesting because to me, “Grey Thinking” is the norm in governments. That’s
how they get away with being so wasteful.

~~~
nradov
So wasteful compared to what?

------
iazid
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.

------
zuhayeer
"I talk grey, I don't keep it white and black"

[https://rapbits.com/s/662](https://rapbits.com/s/662)

------
throwaway72873
I think most "thinking" today is just sort of clickbaitish: _You are good
person right? So you must do XYZ..._.

Often "that sucks" is perfectly good answer.

------
Koshkin
AMC's The Walking Dead series presents many good examples of grey thinking
(and the struggles that lead to it).

------
samirillian
This reads more like the power of not thinking much at all. Capitalism has
good parts and bad parts is not a thought. Which parts are bad which parts are
good and why. It's as if you saw kant taking a walk at the same time every day
and thought that thinking consisted in taking regular walks. It's not the fact
that he took walks that matters, it's the things he thought on those walks.
It's not just brainlessly saying "a little of column a a little of column b,"
it's what you have to say about column a or b in particular that matters.

What's being described here is much more like avoiding splitting which is for
your emotional well-being but which has little to do with the actual quality
of your thoughts.

------
mrsmee89
In spirit of this article, I wonder why grey thinking is so uncommon. I get
it’s hard but it feels like it’s only hard because it’s uncommon. When did
removing nuance become such a common way of upbringing? What’s the driving
force behind removing nuance?

Curious what the HackerNews community thinks.

~~~
ssivark
The most plausible overarching factor is being flooded with so much
information that one is perennially stuck in triage mode. And in triage mode,
you _need_ quick decision making, which leads to adopting black and white
thinking.

Another reinforcing factor is the zeitgeist that fetishizes attitudes like
“getting things done” and “velocity of decision making” — where you’re
essentially deliberately trying to place yourself in triage mode. Black and
white thinking enables one to proceed quickly because there are no grey areas
where I’ve needs to stop and think; greyness/uncertainty is seen as a
cognitive tax.

The common theme underlying all these is a perceived scarcity of time
(busyness). For those not used to thinking, it’s easier to be lost in action
rather than lost in thought. Time spent thinking is consciously perceived
(therefore conscious of wasting) compared to time spent acting.

It is interesting to ponder whether this drive to busyness (note the
similarity with business) stems from the “Protestant work ethic”, but I’m out
of my depth and I don’t have a definite answer ;-) (refer Weber’s classic “The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism”)

------
abernard1
A perhaps unpopular opinion: "grey thinking" is a particular type of laziness
for people in the educated class.

In my experience, it's much more common for people to wave away fundamental
problems with their worldview by saying "it's a grey area" than it is for
people with strong (and "incorrect") views to admit that their model is
incomplete.

The obvious failure of grey thinking is that there are clear, objective
differences in results in the real world when white/black thinking is applied.
If we were to take a 1980s Hong Kong "Capitalism is magic and the answer to
all our problems!" and compare it to a 2010s Venezuela "Socialism is magic and
the answer to all our problems!", it's very hard to square away the grey and
say that one of those models wasn't fundamentally true in a practical sense.

~~~
username90
Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking.
Grey thinking is obviously good, ignoring the merits of the other side is just
wasteful and ignoring the demerits of your own side is dangerous.

It is just that every good advice will get misused by people who don't
understand it. There is no piece of advice that can help such people, they
will just turn it around and use it to defend their current way of thinking.
Teach them about logical fallacies and they will use it to "poke holes" in
perfectly fine arguments, etc.

~~~
abernard1
> Referencing the concept when defending your ignorance is not grey thinking.

Who actually believes that they have all the answers? Everybody except truly
deluded people make claims without having to put asterisks on everything they
say. Imagine how burdensome it would be to qualify everything with confidence
intervals all day long.

Which is really the problem with this article: it's attacking a straw man.
Nobody actually believes contrary. The only reason I can imagine they'd attack
that particular straw man is to imply that they or their readers are of this
class of people who engage in grey thinking, and therefore are somehow better.
This is where the laziness/arrogance comes in in my opinion.

Saying that things in the world are a "grey area" provides no useful
information. It's the equivalent of saying: "something might happen, somewhere
between multiple extremes." At best, it's a form of laziness. At worst, it
shows lack of courage to attempt to explain something, even if it's wrong.

~~~
nradov
Professional intelligence analysts qualify everything with confidence
intervals. When conducting formal business or technical communications we
ought to follow their example. It would greatly reduce errors and
misunderstandings.

