contradict

What did Nietzsche mean by “we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is the tone”

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I’m not sure how to write this so as not to be unpleasant, but Nietzsche was right. Yeah, he had a weird mustachehe was loaded with opium and loved to take long walks in the Alps; but he was right. At least when it comes to one of his most apparently innocuous, but most radical ideas: that it often doesn’t matter if someone is right or wrong, that we make the decision to agree with them beforehand, that what matters most to us is the tone, the forms. The rest, although it doesn’t hurt to admit it, doesn’t matter. 150 years after Nietzsche, cognitive science has proven him right. What did Nietzsche mean…? In 1878, in the midst of a break with Wagner and Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche published ‘Human, too human‘. It was his first book of aphorisms and in it he abandons romantic aesthetics and sets out to find a new way of observing the world. In that book, the Austrian philosopher makes a complete x-ray of the psychological junk of human beings. “Opinions are born from passions,” he says in aphorism 637. “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of the truth than lies,” he writes in 483. But the one that interests us is 303. Where Nietzsche discovered confirmation bias. “Often, we contradict an opinion when in reality what we find unpleasant is only the tone in which it was expressed,” says that aphorism. And that sounds a lot like what modern cognitive science calls ‘confirmation bias‘: the tendency to search for, interpret and remember information in such a way that pre-existing beliefs, expectations or hypotheses are reinforced. First we form an idea from the tone of the person speaking to us and then we justify it. Simple, clean and perfectly confirmed by the evidence. Ultimately, what Nietzsche did is anticipate many of the ideas that Kahneman and Tversky They earned him the Nobel Prize. But that matters little, what matters is what we can learn. And, under that sullen and savage reputation, Nietzsche has a lot of useful ideas. This intuition, without going any further, has a direct and everyday application: when someone addresses us with a tone that we perceive as aggressive, condescending or arrogant, our brain activates defense mechanisms that prevent us from rationally processing the content. We do not evaluate what they tell us, we evaluate how they tell us. Reactanceconfirmation bias and post-hoc rationalization: the perfect combo to act automatically without paying attention to reasons or consequences. In the same way, Nietzschenian reflection helps us think about how we address others. And that is worth it. Image | Xataka In Xataka | “A place of joy with pain”: the phrase that summarizes the Aztec philosophy to be happier in this life

The trial against Meta increasingly resembles that of tobacco. Zuckerberg has sworn things that his internal documents contradict

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Mark Zuckerberg has been testifying under oath in Los Angeles in what is already considered the largest trial in history against a social network. And each session leaves uncomfortable headlines for Meta. What is happening. A Los Angeles court judges whether Instagram is a platform designed to hook minors. The plaintiff, a 20-year-old woman identified as KGM, alleges that she became addicted to Instagram when she was nine years old and that it ruined her mental health during her adolescence. It is not the only case, since behind this trial there are more than 1,600 plaintiffshundreds of families and more than 250 school districts with similar complaints against Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap. These last two reached a financial agreement before the trial began. Meta and Google are still in. Tobacco. The parallel that is most repeated in the American media is that of the tobacco companies in the nineties, since the companies that knew about the damage caused by their products hid it and paid for the consequences decades later in court. Here the accusation holds that Meta designed features like the infinite scroll‘likes’, push notifications… All with the deliberate objective of maximizing the time that users spent in the app, including minors. The company’s internal documents are being the heaviest ammunition in the trial. What those documents say. During cross-examination, the plaintiff’s attorney, Mark Lanier, was presenting emails and internal messages from Meta before the jury. One of the most striking: a researcher from the company itself wrote in an email that “Instagram is a drug… we are basically traffickers,” according to shared the Financial Times. Another document, from 2018, estimated that in 2015 there were four million users under the age of 13 on Instagram, which was equivalent to approximately 30% of all American children between 10 and 12 years old. Zuckerberg had declared before Congress that minors under that age could not use the platform. Where the testimony squeaks. Zuckerberg insisted before the jury that Meta never aimed to maximize the time users spent in the app, that the company focuses on long-term “value” and “utility.” The problem is that the accusation brought to the table emails of his from between 2013 and 2022 in which this increase in screen time appears explicitly as an internal goal. He also presented documents from Adam Mosseri, director of Instagram, with specific objectives: reaching 40 minutes of daily use in 2023 and 46 minutes in 2026. Zuckerberg responded that these data are “milestones” to measure results, not objectives in themselves. lyou filters. One of the most tense moments of the statement came with questions about Instagram filters, you know, the ones that users can apply to their face through the camera. In 2019, Meta temporarily suspended them to study its impact. 18 experts consulted by the company itself concluded that they caused well-being problems, especially among adolescents, with effects linked to body dysmorphia. Zuckerberg decided to lift the restriction as well. At the trial he explained that he preferred “to err on the side of giving people the opportunity to express themselves” and that the restrictions seemed “paternalistic” to him. The prosecution also showed the jury an email from Margaret Stewart, then vice president of product design at Meta, warning that, although he would comply with Zuckerberg’s decision, he did not believe it was “the right decision given the risks.” Between the lines. What makes this trial especially delicate for Meta is not only what Zuckerberg says now, but the distance between that story and what has been revealed over time through internal documentation and emails. The accusation opts for a strategy in order to show that the company knew about it, that it discussed it internally and that it still prioritized the growth of its platform. What is at stake? Goal. An unfavorable ruling in Los Angeles would not only be an economic blow, as it would set a precedent for thousands of similar lawsuits that are waiting in courts across the country (and around the globe, perhaps). For now, there are similar cases planned for this summer in Northern California, focused on the impact on schools, and another trial already underway in New Mexico where the state attorney general accuses Meta of failing to protect minors from sexual predators on its platforms. “For the first time, Meta’s CEO will have to sit before a jury, under oath, and explain why the company launched a product that its own safety teams warned was addictive and harmful to children,” counted Matt Bergman, attorney representing hundreds of plaintiffs. And now what. The trial is expected to last until the end of March, according to they count from Bloomberg. Meta maintains its defense on two fronts: that science does not prove that social networks are addictive and that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act exempts them from responsibility for the content that users publish. The prosecution, however, insists that the case is not about content, but about deliberate decisions about how the application is built. Cover image | Solen Feyissa and Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | TikTok’s infinite scroll has just entered the EU’s crosshairs: Brussels marks it as “addictive design” and demands changes

He paid his managers to contradict him, not to obey him.

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We tend to think of the CEO of a company or the leader of a team as the person in charge, who imposes its criteria and, basically, that person is the one who orders what his team should do. According to Steve Jobs, that is one of the worst mistakes of a leader. In the 90s, Steve Jobs shared a lesson 72-minute masterful presentation of his vision of what a management team should be like in a talk at MIT. Jobs paid his managers not to do what he said, but he paid them so that they would contradict him when I was wrong. 33 years later, his theory is still as valid today as it was in 1992. He didn’t pay them to prove him right. In his talk in front of MIT students, Steve Jobs explained that during his time at the head of NeXTafter his expulsion from Apple, hired very talented managers not to tell them what to do, but to get them to contribute their judgment about what decisions to make really. Steve emphasized that the value of the management team It’s not that he strictly abides by the CEO’s criteria.but to suggest other alternatives, even if these contradict the leader’s opinion, thus avoiding teams that limit themselves to saying “yes, boss” to everything. “I had never believed that if you are on the same management team and you think differently about something, then one has to convince the other to change their mind. Because look, when you do that you are paying someone to do what they think is right, and then you try to convince them to do what they don’t think is right. Sooner or later a conflict ends up breaking out,” Jobs assured the MIT students. According to Jobs, the best strategy to reach the correct decisionIt is not about managers giving in to others’ arguments about whether they are wrong or not. The key is to get them all together in a room and make a consensual decision in which everyone gives in a little, smoothing over the edges, but without giving up what they think is right. This idea is based on recognizing that well-paid managers must think independently, generating debates that avoid costly mistakes and promote better collective results. The NeXT Eight At NeXT, Jobs formed a team of eight managers who were in charge of precisely that: opposing him when his point of view was not appropriate and debating the important decisions of the company. This group did not debate minor day-to-day issues, where they had full decision-making capacity, but rather focused on critical issues for the company that allowed them advance aligned. “We pay people a lot of money and we expect them to tell us what to do. So you shouldn’t do certain things if there are people who don’t agree with it,” Jobs reflected to the students. According to Jobs, the “NeXT eight” They didn’t spend the day together debating decisions, but rather focused on the really important ones. “We can have about 25 things to decide on in a year, that’s not many,” Jobs insisted, because they knew exactly what decisions should be made by unifying common points of view, not the opinion of a single person, no matter how much that of the boss. In this way, they avoided future conflicts by ensuring that everyone involved in the execution shared the vision, strengthening the commitment and involvement of the group. His best school was Apple Although Apple was not Jobs’ only business success (he was in charge of convert to Pixar into the animation giant that it is today), without a doubt the company with the bitten apple logo was his best business school. During his time at Apple, Jobs learned to adopt a long-term leadership vision with your team. To do this, he had to repress his famous tendency to micromanage his employees by resisting the impulse to correct errors immediately so that the teams they made mistakes and they would learn for themselves. “When I see something that is not being done well, my first instinct is not to fix it. In other words, we are building a team that is going to do great things over the next decade, not just this year,” said the Apple founder. John Fitzgerald Kennedy summarized in one sentence what Steve Jobs wanted to convey to the MIT students who attended that conference in 1992: “An intelligent man is one who knows how to be smart enough to hire people smarter than him”, although Jobs had probably added the tagline “…and he listens to them.” In Xataka | Steve Jobs was always very critical of Microsoft designs. His recipe to improve them: that Bill Gates took LSD Image | Bernard Gotfryd (The United States Library of Congress)

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