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Life strategy: never being wrong VS breaking new ground

#1 · September 21, 2020, 6:22 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on September 21, 2020, 6:22 am
I copy-paste here a paragraph from Seligman's book.
I think it's enlightning on the strategies to acquire status within hierarchies.
One strategy is not to seek revolutions and leading changes, but to acquire status by "staying safe" and adding incremental values.
Instead of risking big changes and breaking things, you largely stay within the status quo and build a reputation for an impeccable player.
Seligman calls it "never being wrong", and this is how it helps in academic circles:
We published the resultant article in the journal Science. It was the only one bearing my name—out of about ten lifetime submissions—that made it into this prestigious venue. Perhaps this was the price of being an adventurous interloper. I have a lifetime batting average (articles accepted by the top journals or grants funded) of about .333. That’s a good average for baseball but not for science. In contrast, my colleague Bob Rescorla, a scientists’ scientist, has a batting average of 1.000. As far as I know, he has never had either an article or a grant request rejected.
How to explain this vast difference, Seligman asks?
I think it goes back to Peter Madison’s admonishment at Princeton about not being wrong versus not being boring.
I’ve attended faculty meetings with Bob for decades.
He has very strong opinions, but he rarely talks, and when he does, everyone listens because he almost never says anything false. He founded the modern field of Pavlovian conditioning and is the best Pavlovian ever, better even than Pavlov.
But his field has shriveled and is now dying. Bob retired, resting on his laurels. He did unimpeachable, conclusive science.
Few Pavlovians would get into the ring with Bob, and he never tried to reach beyond his grasp. He never tried to extend Pavlovian conditioning beyond its narrow confines. Bob chose not to be wrong. One of his critics said, “Bob is the brightest dull person I ever met.”
Instead, Seligman:
I am forever reaching beyond my grasp. I want to know the furthest boundary of my idea. I often turn out to be wrong, but I am resilient and an optimist about my own work. One of my critics said of me, “Marty is not afraid to be wrong or to sound silly.” I chose not to be boring.
The price of breaking new ground:
The price of being an interloper who tried not to be boring was not just a lot of rejection but also a lot of being ignored.
However, I think Seligman is being overly-flattering to himself and he is missing a crucial mistake he's done:

I copy-paste here a paragraph from Seligman's book.

I think it's enlightning on the strategies to acquire status within hierarchies.
One strategy is not to seek revolutions and leading changes, but to acquire status by "staying safe" and adding incremental values.

Instead of risking big changes and breaking things, you largely stay within the status quo and build a reputation for an impeccable player.

Seligman calls it "never being wrong", and this is how it helps in academic circles:

We published the resultant article in the journal Science. It was the only one bearing my name—out of about ten lifetime submissions—that made it into this prestigious venue. Perhaps this was the price of being an adventurous interloper. I have a lifetime batting average (articles accepted by the top journals or grants funded) of about .333. That’s a good average for baseball but not for science. In contrast, my colleague Bob Rescorla, a scientists’ scientist, has a batting average of 1.000. As far as I know, he has never had either an article or a grant request rejected.

How to explain this vast difference, Seligman asks?

I think it goes back to Peter Madison’s admonishment at Princeton about not being wrong versus not being boring.
I’ve attended faculty meetings with Bob for decades.
He has very strong opinions, but he rarely talks, and when he does, everyone listens because he almost never says anything false. He founded the modern field of Pavlovian conditioning and is the best Pavlovian ever, better even than Pavlov.
But his field has shriveled and is now dying. Bob retired, resting on his laurels. He did unimpeachable, conclusive science.
Few Pavlovians would get into the ring with Bob, and he never tried to reach beyond his grasp. He never tried to extend Pavlovian conditioning beyond its narrow confines. Bob chose not to be wrong. One of his critics said, “Bob is the brightest dull person I ever met.”

Instead, Seligman:

I am forever reaching beyond my grasp. I want to know the furthest boundary of my idea. I often turn out to be wrong, but I am resilient and an optimist about my own work. One of my critics said of me, “Marty is not afraid to be wrong or to sound silly.” I chose not to be boring.

The price of breaking new ground:

The price of being an interloper who tried not to be boring was not just a lot of rejection but also a lot of being ignored.

However, I think Seligman is being overly-flattering to himself and he is missing a crucial mistake he's done:

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#2 · September 21, 2020, 6:26 am

Quote from Lucio Buffalmano on September 21, 2020, 6:26 am
Cooperative Frames Can Help Break New Ground Without Blowbacks
Says Seligman:
I mentioned before that my learning theory colleagues never thanked me for learned helplessness or for preparedness, and they mostly reacted by ignoring the findings. (...) I thought it was stunningly important, but it was barely followed up (ranking only ninety-fourth in citations of all my three hundred articles), and it forked no lightning.
I think Seligman, for the great psychologist he is, is simply missing out on the applications of real-life psychology.
By breaking new ground, he was trying to prove people wrong.
And he was very vocal about it.
Seligman was unwittingly falling into competitive frames of "me VS you".
A win for Seligman meant a loss for his colleagues.
And, guess what, people don't want to see their authority and power being diminished.
Furthermore, he was co-opting "truth" for himself, rather than for science. And that means that others had to be "untruthful", and lose to Seligman.
He says in another passage:
I looked for the most basic premise of the prevailing theory and asked what would follow if it were entirely wrong? I was learning not to expect popularity, but in my heart I knew that truth would out.
No wonder he was being snubbed and disliked among his colleagues.
I'd have done the same, with such an attitude.
Still clueless of real-world psychology and power dynamics, Seligman he later expected congratulations for his win, and expected people to apologize for their mistakes.
He says:
By 1973, I had been in the ring for three heavyweight boxing matches with the dominant stimulus-response-reinforcement theorists.
(...)
I suppose I expected the Skinnerians to stand up and concede that they were wrong and we were right, but they did not.
(...)
I was surprised by the reaction from our learning theory colleagues—there was none. Dick Solomon, perfect gentleman that he was, never said a word to me about this paper.
In my opinion, it's a dickhead move from Seligman to now publicly shame others for not having "admitted being wrong" when it was Seligman who was setting up confrontational frames of "us VS them".
Instead, he should have framed his position as "refining other people's contributions", or "placing them within a larger framework for a greater understanding of psychology".
And he should have said that he could be wrong, and that he was open about it. That he'd love being proven wrong because that means science would win -not him-.

Cooperative Frames Can Help Break New Ground Without Blowbacks

Says Seligman:

I mentioned before that my learning theory colleagues never thanked me for learned helplessness or for preparedness, and they mostly reacted by ignoring the findings. (...) I thought it was stunningly important, but it was barely followed up (ranking only ninety-fourth in citations of all my three hundred articles), and it forked no lightning.

I think Seligman, for the great psychologist he is, is simply missing out on the applications of real-life psychology.

By breaking new ground, he was trying to prove people wrong.
And he was very vocal about it.

Seligman was unwittingly falling into competitive frames of "me VS you".
A win for Seligman meant a loss for his colleagues.

And, guess what, people don't want to see their authority and power being diminished.

Furthermore, he was co-opting "truth" for himself, rather than for science. And that means that others had to be "untruthful", and lose to Seligman.
He says in another passage:

I looked for the most basic premise of the prevailing theory and asked what would follow if it were entirely wrong? I was learning not to expect popularity, but in my heart I knew that truth would out.

No wonder he was being snubbed and disliked among his colleagues.
I'd have done the same, with such an attitude.

Still clueless of real-world psychology and power dynamics, Seligman he later expected congratulations for his win, and expected people to apologize for their mistakes.
He says:

By 1973, I had been in the ring for three heavyweight boxing matches with the dominant stimulus-response-reinforcement theorists.
(...)
I suppose I expected the Skinnerians to stand up and concede that they were wrong and we were right, but they did not.
(...)
I was surprised by the reaction from our learning theory colleagues—there was none. Dick Solomon, perfect gentleman that he was, never said a word to me about this paper.

In my opinion, it's a dickhead move from Seligman to now publicly shame others for not having "admitted being wrong" when it was Seligman who was setting up confrontational frames of "us VS them".

Instead, he should have framed his position as "refining other people's contributions", or "placing them within a larger framework for a greater understanding of psychology".

And he should have said that he could be wrong, and that he was open about it. That he'd love being proven wrong because that means science would win -not him-.

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#3 · September 23, 2020, 7:29 am

Very interesting analysis.

Bob Rescorla is politically smarter than Seligman. He was both advancing his field and his career.
Breaking new ground is what I'm aspiring to. It can be done. However it has to be done in a politically smart way I believe. Just by saying "I'm breaking new ground" you lost for the reason like you said it puts you against the others. Let them say: "you broke new ground".
Definitely lacked collaborative approach (right vs wrong). Sometimes we are competitive without realizing it and it hurts us.
Lacking real-world psychology and power dynamics is definitely a killer in any career path.

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#4 · September 24, 2020, 5:39 am

Quote from John Freeman on September 23, 2020, 7:29 am
Breaking new ground is what I'm aspiring to. It can be done. However it has to be done in a politically smart way I believe. Just by saying "I'm breaking new ground" you lost for the reason like you said it puts you against the others. Let them say: "you broke new ground".

Great way to put it. Could be turned into a mantra/quote.

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#5 · November 15, 2020, 1:20 pm

A huge point from Peter Thiel's book Zero to One, which is reviewed on this website.
It is often ineffective to find new ways of delivering a new service/product/perspective through a lens of disrupting the status quo.

In fact, avoiding competition is a good idea.
Address gaps to create synergies with existing businesses.
People in the market and industry will respond much more favourably.

In the sales context, trying to prove the customer wrong rather than finding out how you can work together.

Or, in the corporate world, pushing a new initiative that competes with the plans of senior management rather than finding synergies to build upon their plans.

I recall that all these contexts are mentioned on this website and course.

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