## Metadata - Author: [[Scott E. Page]] - Full Title: The Difference - Category: #books ## Highlights - Internal languages that fail to create structure do not aid problem solving or understanding. To be of functional value, perspectives must embed meaningful relatedness. ([Location 804](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=804)) - perspectives are ways of seeing solutions, and heuristics are ways of constructing solutions, ways of moving around the space of possibilities. ([Location 1389](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1389)) - Perspectives and heuristics encapsulate some of what is meant by a scientific paradigm. A paradigm can be thought of a collection of widely shared perspectives and heuristics aimed at a common set of problems. Within academic fields, the construction of new heuristics is a constant enterprise. Mathematics, physics, statistics, economics, and accounting—all have a set of core perspectives, and each of those core perspectives has associated with it an enormous set of heuristics that professionals apply regularly. ([Location 1398](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1398)) - Innovations can arise from rearranging the box (new perspectives) or from exploring parts of the box that have been ignored (new heuristics). But innovation also arises from creating finer partitions, from dividing whole numbers into halves, quarters, and eighths, and from looking at dimensions that everyone has ignored. To explain this type of diversity, we need a third framework, one we will call interpretations. ([Location 1421](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1421)) - The perspectives framework, to make things easier, assumes that people have a different word for every thing. They have a “one-to-one mapping” of reality in their heads. Although that framework provided us with a useful foundation for our discussion of perspectives, it turns out that people make coarse distinctions among the things they see. We don’t have separate names for each possible outcome or solution. Instead, we create categories. We lump things together, just as A-Square does. He lumps by ignoring a spatial dimension. We might lump by ignoring color or size. ([Location 1454](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1454)) - An interpretation is a map from objects, situations, problems, and events to words. In an interpretation, one word can represent many objects. ([Location 1533](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1533)) - A projection interpretation ignores some dimensions of a perspective. ([Location 1554](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1554)) - A clumping interpretation creates categories of similar objects, situations, problems, or events that are not simply projections of attributes. ([Location 1558](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1558)) - A predictive model tells us what we think will happen: “It looks like rain.” A heuristic tells us what to do: “It’s raining, let’s run for cover”—or what not to do: “We get just as wet by running, so let’s walk.” Predictive models are thoughts. Heuristics are actions. ([Location 1702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1702)) - One only needs two tools in life: WD-40 to make things go, and duct tape to make them stop. ([Location 1840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1840)) - Our toolboxes differentiate us: any two people are likely to have different toolboxes. One person may know how to apply Bayes’s rule from probability theory. Another person may know how to distinguish species of birds. One person may know how to represent numbers in base two. Another person may know heuristics for combining herbs and spices. Our toolboxes define us, constrain us, and guide us. ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1853)) - IQs and toolboxes are both interpretations. Each interprets a person as a set. In the case of IQs, the sets have numbers. In the case of toolboxes, the sets are combinations of tools. ([Location 1912](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=1912)) - Talent hits a target that no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see. ([Location 2220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2220)) - We should not expect any one type of diversity to be beneficial in all contexts any more than we should expect friction to hinder performance in all contexts. When we want to stop the car, we like friction. ([Location 2228](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2228)) - Diverse perspectives are more likely to lead to breakthroughs and to create communication problems. Diverse heuristics are more likely to lead to smaller, more iterative improvements. ([Location 2347](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2347)) - the necessary condition for making a contribution is trying something different. And being different, as should be obvious, is not the property of an individual in isolation but a property of an individual relative to others. Try as he might, a person standing alone in a forest cannot be diverse. ([Location 2773](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2773)) - When people have different perspectives, communication can be difficult. When one person finds a better solution, she may not be able to explain to others what that solution is. Recall Emerson’s famous quotation, “To be different is to be misunderstood.” If Barry’s wife were to suggest that they choose an “earthier” color of yellow for the room they’re painting, he might have only a crude idea of what she means. (He would, of course, still agree with her.) If a person who sees a problem differently lacks the ability to communicate his perspective, he may be ineffective. Others may ignore his ramblings about making the rear fender of the car “less male” and more “evocative of a beach lifestyle.” ([Location 2827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2827)) - Diverse perspectives also reduce incentives to construct elaborate heuristics. A heuristic that works in one perspective may not be useful in another. ([Location 2840](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2840)) - These two problems, difficulty communicating and reducing incentives to create sophisticated heuristics, might lead to the conclusion that efforts to increase diversity should emphasize heuristic diversity, but this intuition is flawed. Diverse heuristics tend to be more modest changes, more iterative. A new heuristic is not likely to make a problem simple. So if the common perspective creates a rugged landscape, a collection of people may be far better off considering alternative perspectives than wasting their time climbing the abundant local peaks. And though it is possible to mimic a perspective with a heuristic, that heuristic might be complicated. It might not be a heuristic that anyone would arrive at without backward engineering it from a perspective. ([Location 2842](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2842)) - the ability to work across diverse perspectives may be the one big advantage that humans have over computers. We possess remarkable abilities to communicate across diverse perspectives through artifacts, physical representations of solutions. These artifacts reduce communication errors. Imagine a team confronting a design problem—how to design a chair, a car, or a laser printer. Each person in the team probably thinks about the problem differently. Each has a different perspective. Suppose that the team uses artifacts, that they build prototypes. They may make cars out of Styrofoam and clay or sketch chairs on paper. These artifacts create a common perspective for communication and allow people to maintain their individual diverse perspectives, ignoring the deep philosophical question of whether we all see the same reality. In this way, we can exploit artifacts. They give us the same solution in our heads. They allow us to leverage our differences. ([Location 2849](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2849)) - A second message is that the benefits of diversity also apply within individuals. People should acquire diverse sets of perspectives and heuristics so that they can make larger contributions. These tools should be diverse—but not too diverse; otherwise they can’t be combined. We may be collectively better off if we’re collectively diverse. We probably do best with a diversity of diversities—with some people being diverse and others specializing but with everyone having lots of tools. With more tools, a person is more capable of being diverse, of amassing more interesting perspectives, heuristics, and combinations of perspectives and heuristics. Paradoxically, the best way to be diverse is to be able— to have lots of tools. ([Location 2861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2861)) - A final, and less pragmatic, application of this logic relates to fun. Diverse perspectives and heuristics can be engines of joy. One reason that children bring such happiness into the world is that they employ diverse perspectives and heuristics. They attempt to solve problems in ways that are unimaginable to an adult. ([Location 2870](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B003TFELFI&location=2870))