Saturday, February 25, 2017

Why We Work by Barry Schwartz, Chapter 4

Book: Why We Work
Author: Barry Schwartz
ISBN: 978-1-4767-8486-1
U-$1.00-B-0.003856699-BE-260

Go to Why We Work Table of Contents
Go to 2017 Directory of Books & Authors

Chapter 4: The Technology of Ideas

Page 62

1. Discoveries tell us things about how the world works.

Page 63

2. Inventions use those discoveries to create objects or processes that make the world work differently.

Page 64

3. Though discoveries often have moral implications, they do not, by themselves, have moral dimensions.
4. Inventions characteristically have moral dimensions

Page 65

5. And like fish that don't know they live in water, we live with such ideas about human nature that are so pervasive that we don't even realize there's another way to look at ourselves.
6. Social Science has created a "technology" of ideas about human nature.

Page 67

7. There are two things about idea technology that make it different from most "thing technology."
8. First, because ideas are not objects, to be seen, purchased, and touched, they can suffuse through the culture and have profound effects on people before they are even noticed.
9. Second, ideas, unlike things, can have profound effects on people even if the ideas are false.

Page 69

10. Professionals who bill by the hour, like lawyers and consultants, start putting a price on their time, even when they aren't at work.
11. So a person who bills by the hour becomes a different person than she was before she started working in that way.

Page 71

12. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt
13. The naive realist is someone who thinks that "I see things as they are; people who disagree with me are distorting the truth."

Page 72

14. What this means is that a theory that is false can become true simply by people believing it's true.

Page 73

15. How does ideology become true in this way?  There are three basic dynamics.
16. The first way ideology becomes true is by changing how people think about their own actions.
17. The second mechanism by which ideology becomes true is via what is called the "self-fulfilling prophecy."

Page 74

18. The phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy" was coined by sociologist Robert Merton in 1948.

Page 76

19. "Pygmalion Effect" created by Robert Rosenthal and Lenore Jacobson

Page 77

20. Mindset by Carol Dweck
21. Children with performance goals avoid challenges
22. Children with mastery goals seek challenges
23. Children with performance goals respond to failure by giving up.
24. Children with mastery goals respond to failure by working harder.
25. What this means is that children with mastery goals learn more, and get smarter, than children with performance  goals.

Page 81

26. The "norm of self-interest" in American society by Psychologist Dale Miller.

Page 82

27. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith

Page 84

28. A Conflict of Visions by Thomas Sowell
29. The constrained vision, put forth by philosopher Thomas Hobbes, focuses on the selfish, aggressive dark side of human nature, and assumes that we cannot change human nature but must instead impose constraints through an all-powerful state, the Leviathan.
30. As Anthropologist Clifford Geertz observed, human beings are "unfinished animals."  What we can reasonably expect of people depends on how our social institutions "finish" them.


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