176. Knowledge guides and misleads at the same time
Knowledge is power, and power is never innocent. Power always has an agenda.
In practical terms, it means that often, you think you're getting good, useful information when, in fact, you are being deceived -- to enrich someone, of course.
Example:
Malcolm Gladwell is a skilled writer, to be sure, and his best-seller The Tipping Point is ingenious and even instructional for marketers. But his other book, Blink, is quite misleading. The subtitle of the book is, The power of thinking without thinking. You can actually learn a great deal more by reading anything Charlie Munger wrote, or any book on Warren Buffett, or any book by Edward de Bono.
I was pretty glad when another author published a book recently, titled Think, to directly challenge Gladwell (click HERE.)
Yet, the media has extensively covered the book Blink, like as if it had something meaningful to say.
The famous intellectual Alvin Toffler once wrote in Business 2.0 magazine that the means of deception today are multiplying much faster than the means of verification. He was talking mostly about identity theft (10 million Americans every year have their identity stolen through fraud).
I think deception can extend beyond credit card fraud; there are companies and individuals who deceive people in order to profit from the credulity of the masses.
John K. Galbraith calls it "innocent fraud" in his book The economics of innocent fraud.
I don't know whether the fraud is innocent or not, but I do know that millions of people are being deceived every day the minute they turn on their television set.
I was trained as a journalist myself, in 1993, and I can tell you that the best journalists are extremely skilled in the art of story design and story telling. They master story-telling because their livelihood depends on it. They MUST get you interested in a story, in order to boost ratings.
But news stories offer very little value, other than to make us feel vaguely in touch with the world around us.
The news media, like advertising, is just a way for people in power to "manage public response," to borrow an expression from Galbraith's book.
All this discussion about the public being deceived is important, because success depends not only on how skillful we are, but also on how skillful others are in deceiving us. In a war situation, this kind of deception is called Psy Ops (psychological operations) and is designed to preemptively disable the enemy's will to fight (through the spreading of fear, for example).
The success secret is to realize that the more ambitious you are, the more opposition you will find from people (that you may or may not know personally) who intend to stop you.
The character Hannibal, played by Anthony Hopkins, said it best: "People don't always tell you what they think, but they see to it that you don't advance in life."
In practical terms, it means that often, you think you're getting good, useful information when, in fact, you are being deceived -- to enrich someone, of course.
Example:
Malcolm Gladwell is a skilled writer, to be sure, and his best-seller The Tipping Point is ingenious and even instructional for marketers. But his other book, Blink, is quite misleading. The subtitle of the book is, The power of thinking without thinking. You can actually learn a great deal more by reading anything Charlie Munger wrote, or any book on Warren Buffett, or any book by Edward de Bono.
I was pretty glad when another author published a book recently, titled Think, to directly challenge Gladwell (click HERE.)
Yet, the media has extensively covered the book Blink, like as if it had something meaningful to say.
The famous intellectual Alvin Toffler once wrote in Business 2.0 magazine that the means of deception today are multiplying much faster than the means of verification. He was talking mostly about identity theft (10 million Americans every year have their identity stolen through fraud).
I think deception can extend beyond credit card fraud; there are companies and individuals who deceive people in order to profit from the credulity of the masses.
John K. Galbraith calls it "innocent fraud" in his book The economics of innocent fraud.
I don't know whether the fraud is innocent or not, but I do know that millions of people are being deceived every day the minute they turn on their television set.
I was trained as a journalist myself, in 1993, and I can tell you that the best journalists are extremely skilled in the art of story design and story telling. They master story-telling because their livelihood depends on it. They MUST get you interested in a story, in order to boost ratings.
But news stories offer very little value, other than to make us feel vaguely in touch with the world around us.
The news media, like advertising, is just a way for people in power to "manage public response," to borrow an expression from Galbraith's book.
All this discussion about the public being deceived is important, because success depends not only on how skillful we are, but also on how skillful others are in deceiving us. In a war situation, this kind of deception is called Psy Ops (psychological operations) and is designed to preemptively disable the enemy's will to fight (through the spreading of fear, for example).
The success secret is to realize that the more ambitious you are, the more opposition you will find from people (that you may or may not know personally) who intend to stop you.
The character Hannibal, played by Anthony Hopkins, said it best: "People don't always tell you what they think, but they see to it that you don't advance in life."
posted by Super Peter at 8:10 PM
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