Be Curious
🧑🏻⚖️ Not Judgmental 👩🏻⚖️
“Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
“Josh, instead of getting mad, get curious.”
For two years, I worked with a wonderful coach named Ariana, who wanted to help me slow down my thought process when dealing with difficult situations; this was her mantra. Following this advice is easier said than done.
But watching Ted Lasso helped.
In the first season of Ted Lasso,1 Ted plays darts against Rupert Mannion, who is the closest thing this show has to a villain. Prior to defeating Rupert at darts, Ted delivers a monologue grounded in a perhaps apocryphal quote from Walt Whitman that one should “be curious, not judgmental”:
Whether or not Whitman actually said this, one could argue that the entire lesson of Ted Lasso is that one should be curious, not judgmental. The more people seek to understand Ted, the better they perform. The more people resist curiosity, the more they stumble. However, much as I’d like to think that I am more like Ted Lasso, I know that there are far too many moments where I am more like Rupert.
This week, we are going to explore two topics that relate to our gaps in knowledge and our resistance to recognizing that we do not have all of the answers. In one case, a gap in knowledge might lead us to judge the Jewish choices of others unfairly. In the other case, we might think that we have expert-level knowledge in organizational leadership, only to be surprised by improbable possibilities staring us in plain sight. In either case, our best hope of wading through these waters will come when we stay curious about the mental blindspots surrounding us at all times.
Bounded Rationality
Before making a big decision, how much information do you gather?
If you’re like me, you gather every piece of information you can find. When I want to get something right, no amount of information is too much. Once I’m done, that means I can make a decision knowing everything I need, right?
By now, you know it’s not that simple.
In theory, there is an infinite amount of information out there about any topic, especially when that problem involves people. As a result, no matter how much information I acquire, I am limited by what I know. This knowledge gap is known as bounded rationality.
In 1955, economist Herbert Simon wrote that traditional economics assumes that people “have knowledge of the relevant aspects of his environment, which, if not absolutely complete, is at least impressively clear and voluminous.”2 Simon knows this is absurd; when I buy a pint of ice cream (which I enjoy), I am not analyzing my purchase in relation to every ice cream flavor in the world. If people actually adhered to this standard, no one would decide anything.
Instead, Simon argues that we need to replace the idea of “global rationality” with a “kind of rational behavior that is compatible with the access…actually possessed by [people].”3 Over time, Simon’s work on this subject becomes known as “bounded rationality,” the idea that people make decisions with incomplete information, and thus a person makes a rational decision when they make the best possible information with the information they have.
Bounded rationality comes up all the time in Jewish life, particularly when comparing the Jewish institutions we serve versus “the competition”:
If you are deeply involved in your day school, nonprofit, synagogue, camp, etc., hopefully, you have a relatively strong understanding of best practices in that segment of Jewish life. As such, when you judge the quality of your specific institution, you are likely judging it in comparison to most, if not all, the other potential institutions someone could choose
For example, I am a congregational rabbi, but over my career, I’ve learned a great deal about all kinds of spiritual communities; as such, when judging my synagogue’s success, I cannot help but compare it to every other synagogue I know (which is a lot)
However, most people I am trying to recruit to my congregation do not possess this knowledge. Why would they need to? When a typical person picks a synagogue, they are not comparing that synagogue to every synagogue in the world, only the synagogues within their frame of reference
As a result, most Jewish institutions are run by people who have a much wider frame of reference trying to recruit people who have a more narrow frame of reference. Since most of my readers are leaders more than consumers, bounded rationality is an important reminder to be curious, not judgmental, when examining the decisions of typical consumers.
The Black Swan
Perhaps you read the previous section and buy Herbert Simon’s argument. You should, as Simon won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978. But being the practical person you are, you are interested in understanding how to develop a competitive advantage based on your newfound knowledge of bounded rationality. To achieve this, I would encourage you to read The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, specifically focusing on Taleb's concept of “epistemic arrogance.”4
Taleb focuses on why people consistently “show hubris concerning the limits of our knowledge,”5 particularly about highly improbable events that seem predictable in hindsight. By way of example, let’s use my favorite rhetorical punching bag: Me.
The most meaningful work I’ve done in my career was serving as the Senior Director of USY. Every second I spent doing work for them was worth it. And when I started as Senior Director, I was confident that I knew as much about USY as anybody. And perhaps I did.
But you know what I never thought about until it stared me in the face?
How USY would be impacted by COVID-19 shutting it down.6
In my defense, I am hardly the only person who never thought about how COVID-19 would impact their work. Few people did.7 This is why Bill Gates looked so prescient in predicting COVID-19 in this 2014 lecture:
In 2019, I suspect that if you combed through the archives of major Jewish news sources, you would not find a single article where someone warns Jewish leaders that they need to start thinking about how they will need to innovate the next time there is a global pandemic. Instead, you would find articles on the known issues organizations constantly try to solve, and many of these issues are the same today as they were before the pandemic. While the lack of Jewish leaders anticipating COVID-19 puts them in good company, it’s a good reminder that many of the debates we have today will not disrupt our communities nearly as much as the things we haven’t thought of until it is too late.
Taleb does not consider COVID-19 to be a black swan event; in fact, Taleb argues that COVID-19 was not a black swan event precisely because people like Bill Gates and others were predicting for years that a pandemic of some kind was likely to occur. Instead, The Black Swan is Taleb’s cautionary tale about the consequences of thinking that we can predict future events:
“...we are demonstrably arrogant about what we think we know. We certainly know a lot, but we have a built-in tendency to think that we know a little bit more than we actually do, enough of that little bit to occasionally get into serious trouble.”8
But here’s the good news: If you are a competitive person, most people with whom you will compete will not cultivate epistemic humility. On the contrary, most people will continue to make the same mental mistakes over and over again because they believe it is possible to have all the information. And while you should stay curious for any number of reasons, the best reason might be that it will put you in a select minority.
(Just don’t let it get to your head.)
Tyler Cowen interviews Taleb
I love Tyler Cowen’s brain.
10,000
Estimated number of naps the chinstrap penguin takes every day.
What I Read This Week
Rebuilding Your Organization for AI: We have yet to know how AI will rupture organizational life, but the odds are good that it will rupture things we take for granted. Be prepared.
Why Randomness Doesn’t Feel Random: How do we know if a pattern is random? Turns out, we’re really bad at answering this question.
The Politics of Never Attenders: As fewer people regularly attend religious services, politics continues to be impacted in unusual ways.
The Art of Making Good Mistakes: It’s harder than it looks…
Using Data to Boost Fundraising: Better fundraising? Yes, please.
I’m hoping for a Roy Kent spinoff.
Ibid.
Ibid. 218.
Really, I should have just paid more attention to The West Wing (which I suppose would be difficult.) In season 3, episode 9, “The Women of Qumar,” there is a concern about an outbreak of mad cow disease in the United States. In a conversation with Leo McGarry, President Bartlet says:
“The most costly disruptions...Always happen when something we take completely for granted stops working for a minute.”
One of the things that USY does is send teenagers and young adults to Israel. In fact, prior to 2020, USY managed to keep participants in Israel through two intifadas, two wars in Iraq, and countless small security threats facing Israel. Given this track record, one might assume that USY and similar organizations thought of everything necessary to ensure that nothing would get in the way of sending people to Israel.
Not so fast…
COVID-19 was a completely different kind of disruption than the one I mentioned above. Prior to 2020, all of the planning went into managing the known potential disruption (i.e. security threats to Israel.) But when an airborne virus circled the globe, all of a sudden, none of those protocols were even remotely useful in ensuring that unbroken streak of Israel travel.
Again, this is not to be too hard on USY or me. I could easily pick dozens, perhaps, hundreds of organizations that made the same epistemic mistake.
The Black Swan, 218.