Flexible "Waters"

If one is of the few happy go lucky optimists, then it seems quite absurd to otherwise have such rigid thinking patterns when approaching the complexities of modern life.

As in, why would someone who naturally sees possibilities everywhere suddenly become inflexible when it comes to how they process information?

I think I've exhausted my creative juices just trying to find a good enough mental model to explain to people why flexibility matters in our thinking.

Selective Hearing

People can be hell bent on a particular framework of thinking so much so that when you try introduce an "and" into their framework of thinking, they'll still view it as a "but", which means discarding half of what you're trying to say.

The world has changed and technology has reshaped how we work.

Before 2020, many managers operated from a framework that said "productivity requires physical presence."

And when the pandemic forced remote work, some adapted by thinking "productivity requires physical presence and people can be productive from home under certain conditions."

Others simply flipped to "remote work is always better!". Still binary thinking, just reversed.

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Money has become digital and abstract and wealth inequality has grown wider.

Before digital currencies and online banking, wealth was largely tangible. In that, you could see it, hold it, count it. Those whole lived in that world had a framework that said "money equals physical assets and cash you can touch."

Now, when digital transactions started became dominant, some adapted by thinking "wealth includes physical assets and digital value stored in accounts, investments, and as of recently, cryptocurrencies."

There are many whom I've come across that simply flipped to "everything valuable must be digital", especially amongst younger tech enthusiasts and new crypto advocates.

A case in point is how some dismiss traditional investments like real estate or commodities as 'outdated,' while others refuse to acknowledge that digital assets can represent genuine value creation.

Again, missing the nuanced reality.

Newer Values And Principles

In practical terms however, values and principles need to bend without breaking, say, compared to beliefs or rigid ideologies that snap under pressure when reality challenges them.

I feel that all of them are built from the same set of human experiences but with different purposes and levels of flexibility built into their design.

Just like borrowed conviction, there are blind beliefs, values and principles are more often than not adopted from our families, communities, or sometimes from the loudest voices around us without much critical examination.

As a thought experiment, can you think of new values or principles that have emerged in recent years that have little to no bearing from traditional moral frameworks?

I'm tempted to mention digital privacy, which in some ways fits the bill as a completely modern concern.

But privacy itself has been a fundamental human value before the dawn of the digital era. I think people have always wanted control over who knows what about them.

Fighting Battles Without Understanding The War

Nowadays, trying to uphold digital privacy from an individual perspective can feel like fighting a losing battle against systems designed to extract and monetize our personal information at every turn.

Perhaps then, "algorithmic fairness" could be the one that truly represents new moral territory.

This can be defined as the principle that automated systems should treat people equitably, regardless of their demographics or circumstances.

The reasoning for this one mostly comes from imagining when a hiring algorithm screens job applications and picks individuals based on criteria that aren't aligned with actual job performance.

The traditional concept of fairness assumed human decision-makers who could be held accountable, questioned, or appealed to.

Algorithmic fairness kind of operates on something entirely different.

The philosophical question of whether we can even agree on what fairness means when applied to machines making decisions about human lives at unprecedented scale and speed is a challenge in of itself to unravel.

In any case, trying to uphold digital privacy as a principle seems easier and much less complex than algorithmic fairness.

But I presume there will soon come a time when humans get so accustomed to algorithmic decision-making that we lose the skill of questioning these systems altogether.


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