2min chapter

The Next Chapter by American Express Business Class cover image

Malcolm Gladwell on “Revisionist History” and Pushkin Industries

The Next Chapter by American Express Business Class

CHAPTER

The Hirschmanian Solution to the Problem of the World

Even if we say the point of school is to get you into a good college, that causal chain is completely fictitious. There's no data. In fact, the data suggests that for some people, a good college helps you get a good job for other people. So Hirschman has allowed me, permitted me just to shrug about most of these questions and that's the most wonderful and freeing thing.

00:00
Speaker 2
So as opposed to looking at whether or not a school will help you get good scores on standardized tests and get you into a good college which then gets you into a good job and so forth. But even that. It turned out that you got a lot out of your school because of the joy you got from your friendships. Yes.
Speaker 1
Right. But even that, even if we say the point of school is to get you into a good college and then to get you into a good job, that causal chain is completely fictitious. There's no data. In fact, the data suggests that for some people, a good college helps you get a good job for other people. It does the opposite. There's a whole school of class. I wrote about this in David and Glaith, a whole school of people who are debilitated by quality schooling environments. They get discouraged and they lose their motivation and they give up. Do you know which group your child belongs to? Maybe, maybe not. So Hirschman has allowed me, permitted me just to shrug about
Speaker 2
most of these questions and that's the most wonderful and freeing thing. That seems like an idea you absolutely have internalized. Like one that you have thought about repeatedly and have applied. Is that accurate?
Speaker 1
It ties in with another idea that I have internalized, which is I am now more and more a believer in lotteries as a solution to virtually everything. I think we should choose our leaders by lottery. We should assign places and lead institutions by lottery. I think the NIH should dispense research grants by lottery. I think everything should be lottery. Because the lottery is the Hirschmanian solution to the problem of the world, which is you're pretending to make a prediction about something about which no prediction is possible.

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