One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying. -Joan of Arc
The world will end tonight.
Don’t believe me?
You should.
I’m a rabbi who publishes a mediocre newsletter.
If you believe me enough to read the newsletter, you should believe my predictions about the future. And tonight is the end of days. As Dave Matthews once sang, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we’ll die.”1
If the clock strikes midnight, and the world is still here, what are the odds that I will say that my prediction was wrong?
In theory, it should be 100%. My prediction is easy to understand, and it did not come true. However, like most people, I hold onto certain beliefs:
Derek Jeter is the most overrated baseball player of my lifetime2
The West Wing is the most impactful TV show of my lifetime
Synagogues will outlive every person who foolishly predicts their demise
Crockpots are the best way to cook chicken on the bone
“We need a vision” is often an excuse by leaders to avoid fundraising
If Bob has a problem with everyone, chances are Bob is the problem3
Any dog under 50 pounds is a cat, and cats are pointless
Oops…that last one was Ron Swanson:4
Right now, it’s irrelevant whether or not my beliefs are right or wrong. I’m unsure if one could even find evidence that would conclusively confirm or disconfirm any of the statements above. However, I want to explore how I would react if someone showed up and conclusively refuted one of these beliefs.
As someone who values identifying mental biases in leadership, I’d like to believe I would not fall into a cognitive trap of continued confirmation bias.
But I’m human, and it’s not so simple.
Belief Perseverance
Every year, someone predicts that this year will bring the apocalypse.
Spoiler: Nothing happens.
Sometimes, a prediction is made, and no one notices. Other times, a charismatic leader attracts followers who will follow this prophet and prepare for the end of days. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter (FRS) examine these groups in their 1956 classic When Prophecy Fails, a book that many credit as the first research done into this week’s heuristic, belief-perseverance.
Doomsday predictions are a perfect case study of how people maintain certain beliefs in the face of contradictory evidence. Consider:
Say I predict that the world will end on February 28, 2024, by 11:59 pm5
If 12:00 am arrives on February 29, 2024, and the world is still there,6 I would admit my prediction was wrong, right?
Not so fast…
The conclusion should be obvious: Either the world exists after the deadline or not. But what FRS finds is that doomsayers and their followers consistently find ways to maintain their original beliefs in spite of contradictory evidence, typically revising the prediction instead of admitting they were wrong. These patterns persist across cultures and faith traditions, including Judaism’s favorite false messiah, Shabbetei Tzvi.7
FRS brings these historical examples into the present by examining the 1954 case of Dorothy Martin, who claimed she saw a flying saucer and recruited many followers who believed a group of aliens called “The Guardians” would return to take them into outer space (here’s a great summary from Julie Beck of The Atlantic.) While it may seem obvious to all of us why Martin’s prediction was wrong, FRS argues that when groups like Martin’s experience disconfirming evidence of their prediction, they have a choice: tolerate the dissonance in their core belief, or admit they were wrong. Most prefer the former over the latter:
“…frequently the behavioral commitment to the belief system is so strong that almost any other course of action is preferable. It may even be less painful to tolerate the dissonance than to discard the belief and admit one had been wrong. When that is the case, the dissonance cannot be eliminated by giving up the belief.”8
FRS notes that there is a point at which certain beliefs are no longer about facts but about identity; what does it mean to be a person who makes a fantastical claim with great confidence only to be wrong?9 Depending on the nature of one’s identity, beliefs can persevere long after they should be discarded because a person makes a natural tradeoff; they’d rather be misunderstood than someone who talked a big game and eventually surrendered.
Seen through this lens, I feel Dorothy Martin’s pain. I have some beliefs about Jewish life that are held by many, and some beliefs where I feel like I am alone on an island. Either way, I want to be on the right side of history. The boundary between seeing what others don’t and holding on to a false belief is thin and treacherous. And we have no choice but to check ourselves before any one belief gets out of control.
Which brings us to Elon Musk.
Elon Musk
I’m unsure whether I would recommend reading Walter Isaacson’s latest biography, Elon Musk. The book is fine, but the subject is mildly loathsome.10 Musk is a perfect example of the paradox of belief perseverance:
On the one hand, the technologies Musk brought to the world through Space X, Tesla, PayPal, etc., were things I could never have imagined in my wildest dreams; I’m sure when he started many of them, belief perseverance was the only thing that kept him going
On the other hand, Musk openly spouts hateful nonsense about things that are demonstrably false about Jews, vaccines, and the transgender community, to name a few.11 Ample evidence eviscerates Musk’s fantastical claims, yet he won’t back down
Thus, while I’m not an Elon Musk fan and consider him a perfect example of why people who complain the most about “cancel culture” have the biggest microphones and never seem to shut up,12 Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson is an excellent case study of how a person’s belief perseverance can be to their benefit and detriment. Isaacson’s best explication of this tension is found in Musk’s radical approach to deadlines, the poison pill of many leadership projects.
We’ve previously explored that corporations, governments, and individuals have a poor track of predicting how long it will take to complete a project (also known as the “planning fallacy.”) Isaacson’s biography devoted considerable space to Musk’s insistence on “setting unrealistic deadlines even when they weren’t necessary,” such as hearing that a timeline for a successful rocket launch would be 12 months and insisting it be done in 6.13 However, Musk stands out because possesses what Ben Tarnoff describes as an “all-devouring drive to optimize industrial processes,”14 and oftentimes succeeds.
In an interview with Tom Mueller, one of the founding employees of Space X, Mueller describes Musk’s approach as often “corrosive” and “demoralizing” because it forced highly trained professionals to start a path they knew would fail.15 However, Isaacson also argues that,
“A maniacal sense of urgency is our operating principle,” he [Musk] repeatedly declared. The sense of urgency was good for its own sake. It made his engineers engage in first-principles thinking.”16
Isaacson notes that Musk’s approach was similar to Steve Jobs, who also set unrealistic deadlines for his employees. Mueller begrudgingly acknowledges that “Even though we failed to meet most schedules or cost targets that Elon laid out, we still beat all of our peers.”
While I’m not an Elon Musk fan (and I suspect I’m not alone), Musk’s strategy of creating hyper-urgency resonates with me. If Musk is a master of something, he is a master of creating urgency, and John Kotter argues that all great change begins when a leader “establishes a sense of urgency.” And while some of Musk’s projects have significant benefits to humanity, we would be naive to forget that Musk stands to benefit financially from that urgency.
None of this absolves Musk, who I can only hope will continue to receive his comeuppance; many people have transformed our world without leaving so much wreckage. Instead, like any quality, Musk’s belief perseverance is an important reminder that no quality of human thought is inherently good or bad. What matters is how we use them.
Kara Swisher & Walter Isaacson
Kara is the best.
500,000
Total number of workers in the United States who went on strike in 2023, according to the Labor Action Tracker of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
What I Read This Week
Cry Once a Week: I’m not much of a crier, but I think that crying is beautiful. And here’s an amazing newsletter on the value of crying and mild inducements to do it more.
Multitasking During Meetings?: I don’t lose much sleep when people multitask during meetings; if I want them to stop, I need to run a better meeting. But if you’d like a plan, Nir Eyal’s is pretty good.
The Bottleneck Boss: One of my biggest worries as a boss was slowing my colleagues down from doing their best work. This article sparked my thinking.
Shifting Values of Going Out to Dinner: As someone who loves takeout too much, this speaks to me.
When Philosophers Become Therapists: No, I’m not looking for a career change. Read it anyway.
Or maybe it was Kohelet.
וְשִׁבַּ֤חְתִּֽי אֲנִי֙ אֶת־הַשִּׂמְחָ֔ה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אֵֽין־ט֤וֹב לָֽאָדָם֙ תַּ֣חַת הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ כִּ֛י אִם־לֶאֱכֹ֥ל וְלִשְׁתּ֖וֹת וְלִשְׂמ֑וֹחַ וְה֞וּא יִלְוֶ֣נּוּ בַעֲמָל֗וֹ יְמֵ֥י חַיָּ֛יו אֲשֶׁר־נָֽתַן־ל֥וֹ הָאֱלֹהִ֖ים תַּ֥חַת הַשָּֽׁמֶשׁ׃
Sorry, I had to.
But each link takes you to the profile of a shortstop who had a higher lifetime JAWS than Jeter; similar to WAR, JAWS measures a player’s full value to their team, only JAWS limits it to the peak of their career. Not only was Jeter not even close to the best shortstop of all time, he wasn’t even the best shortstop on the Yankees.
Michael Jordan deservedly got a 10-part documentary from ESPN for being the best basketball player of my childhood (possibly lifetime), and Jeter got a 7-part documentary while not even being the player on his own team. I’ll never understand it.
No, not Bob Leventhal. This is John Maxwell's principle known as the “Bob Principle.”
You had me at “Meat Tornado.”
Why the world would end on my birthday, I have no idea.
Cue every person who was born on February 29th, saying, “Of course, the world would end on my birthday that I only get to celebrate every four years.”
I know I know…so many choices.
Bar Kokhba, Moshe of Crete, Abraham Abulafia, Jacob Frank, etc. But Shabbatei Tzvi will always be my favorite because, in addition to his prediction not coming true, he converted to another religion.
In other news, this could also be why people like Pat McAfee, Stephen A. Smith, and others keep yelling ridiculous things on TV no matter how many times they are wrong.
If you are interested in a biography by Isaacson of someone who is more worthy of admiration, I suggest reading his previous book on Jennifer Doudna, Code Breaker. Doudna is a much more kind and generous figure, and I have a hunch CRISPR will be far more impactful than anything Musk achieves. She is a scientific hero.
I can’t take credit for this idea; it comes from Kara Swisher. But if you reach millions of people via social media and are the wealthiest person in the world, you have clearly not been “canceled.”
If you’d like to learn about what really constitutes being canceled, consider watching Monica Lewinsky’s documentary 15 Minutes of Shame.
Elon Musk, 114.
Ibid.