The Uses of Adversity, Can underprivileged outsiders have an advantage?

Write Malcom Gladwell in NYT, Annals of business gives an interesting perspective of how adversity can be used to become successful.. Here is an excerpt from the article:

"The rags-to-riches story—that staple of American biography—has over the years been given two very different interpretations. The nineteenth-century version stressed the value of compensating for disadvantage. If you wanted to end up on top, the thinking went, it was better to start at the bottom, because it was there that you learned the discipline and motivation essential for success.....
...
Today, that interpretation has been reversed. Success is seen as a matter of capitalizing on socioeconomic advantage, not compensating for disadvantage. The mechanisms of social mobility—scholarships, affirmative action, housing vouchers, Head Start—all involve attempts to convert the poor from chronic outsiders to insiders, to rescue them from what is assumed to be a hopeless state. Nowadays, we don’t learn from poverty, we escape from poverty..."

More of this here: [the link]

Impact of sterotyping ourselves..

An interesting article from Scientific American about "How Stereotyping yourself contributes to your success (or failures)"

People's performance on intellectual and athletic tasks is shaped by awareness of stereotypes about the groups to which they belong. New research explains why— and how we can break free from the expectations of others.

Here are some key concepts from the article:

Sterotypes and Success

• Faults in performance do not necessarily signify a dearth of skills or abilities, social scientists have found. Instead the failures may arise from awareness of stereotypes that others hold about the groups to which we belong.
• Social identity research examines not only how we both take on (internalize) and live out (externalize) identities that are shared with our peers but also how these things can change.
• This research can help us identify ways of responding to others’ stereotypes so that human talent and potential are not squandered. Although stereotypes can promote failure, they can also lift a person’s or group’s performance and be tools that promote social progress.

More of this here: [The Link]

To globalize or not: An optimistic thought experiment

It seems there are few trends in the global scene that makes globalization a good bet:

In the long run, there are no good bets against globalization (to put it differently: There are no good investments in a twenty-first century where globalization fails)

Almost every financial bubble has involved nothing more nor less than a serious miscalculation about the true probability of successful globalization.

Financial bubbles and exaggerated stories about globalization are nearly synonymous because the greatest uncertainties about the future of the world have involved questions about the rate and the nature of globalization.

More of this by Peter Thiel at hoover institution's policy review: [the link]

How much information can you absorb continously?

Here is an article in washingtonpost about what happens when a person is fed with information continuously for 24 hrs? Is it worth it, can it be done, are we any wiser with a 24/7 instant feed to information?

Read more of it here: [the link]

Do All Companies Have to be Evil?

Here is an interesting article from Scientific American, by Micheal Shermer, about how the foundations of a company which sets the office environments has an impact on the ethical issues. Personal-responsibility and openness is key to creating an environment of trust.


"Humans are by nature tribal and xenophobic, and thus evolution has enabled in all of us the capacity for evil. Fortunately, we are also by nature prosocial and cooperative. By studying how modern companies work, we can gain insights into the evolutionary underpinnings of our morality, including concepts such as reciprocity, altruism and fairness. When we apply these evolutionary findings to economic life, we learn that Enron and the Gordon Gekko “Greed Is Good” ethic are the exception and that Google’s “Don’t Be Evil” motto is the rule. Two conditions must be present to accentuate the latter: first, internal trust reinforced by personal relationships, and, second, external rules supported by social institutions. The contrast between Enron and Google here serves to demonstrate what in corporate environments creates trust or distrust.
"....

More here: [The Link]