This article is from the WeChat public account: Man and God work together (ID: tongyipaocha) , picture from: Visual China
1. Big companies, right and wrong
Every once in a while, some big companies are always caught in the whirlpool of public opinion, from Baidu to Tencent Ali to JD.
As an outsider who does n’t understand the details, I ca n’t judge the right or wrong of the specific problem. I ’m more interested in:
Why is there such a big gap between the perceptions of large enterprises and ordinary people on many common sense issues?
How is the conflict of interests of various parties covered by a strong corporate culture, and how does it erupt?
How do the executives of big companies view the various contradictions within the company?
This question, I used to use a micro perspective. For example, decision makers have their own interests. ( ” A question to see if you have the intuition to be a leader “ ) , Such as the internal suspicion chain ( ” Is really “adults only Talking about the pros and cons, can children be right or wrong? ” “ ) , such as the lag of bureaucratic response ( ” When the crisis is at its worst, it is the best solution Good Time “ ) , and more.
In this article, I will take a new perspective on “reflexivity” and talk about why the things that have done you will lead you to the opposite.
The reason why this is a “reflexive phenomenon” is because Many of these “smart investors” were calm when the bubble first appeared, but when their prediction “the bubble burst” and When it did n’t come, but instead caused a larger bubble, they began to doubt their thoughts and began to use some logic to prove that “this is not the same as before, this is not a bubble” and convinced them to re-engage in this “giant illusion. “in.
For example, how many people believe that China’s house prices will only rise and will not fall, because China is an exception?
Newton is one of the “smart investors”. When he participated in the speculative speculation of the “South China Sea Bubble”, he was already aware of the crisis and exited the market with a profit. However, it was later discovered that the stock price did not reverse, but continued to rise, and all the friends around him made a profit, so they overturned the previous judgment and entered the market again. As a result, they lost 10 years of salary, leaving the only sentence and science. Irrelevant quote:
I can calculate the trajectories of celestial bodies, but I cannot predict the madness of human nature.
So what does “reflexivity” have to do with the crisis of these big companies?
3. Foaming of corporate culture
Employees of large companies often feel that some of the company’s practices are not correct, but the reality is that the company’s performance is very good and the corporate culture is very exciting. The company is sought after in the media. The most important thing is The thing is that everyone’s income is very high, everything is questioning your doubts.
Why is this also related to “reflexivity”? Because professionalism requires us to separate “personal thoughts” from “duty behaviors”, ourselvesApproach meets certain requirements of the company, not from the heart. When the result proves that we are doing the right thing and our thinking is wrong, we will convince ourselves that maybe we think wrongly, maybe things will not be so bad.
In fact, your idea is not strange. If you communicate privately with colleagues, you will find that many people think so. Like you, they also experience “self-doubt”.
In the end, everyone felt that there was a problem, but they were all driven forward by the collective interests. Questioning is still in our subconscious, but it is just getting harder to put into action.
I call it the “bubble of corporate culture” .
Sorros’s “Reflexivity Theory” benefits from his mentor, Philosopher Carl Popper’s falsifiable theory, which holds that science cannot be proven, but only falsified. There is a reflection on scientism in Soros’s thoughts: what seems right often goes to extremes and turns into error.
So, great companies will go to the opposite side of it, and the combined efforts of a group of smart people will eventually destroy themselves. Soros is vigilant about any prosperity, has negative thinking about any trend, and is studying the fragile side of anything powerful.
“Reflexivity” is so deeply human. As a result, when we focus on “Reflexivity Theory” because of Soros, we are also affected by reflexivity.
Let’s observe this proposition: “Soros is a successful investment master. Soros puts forward the philosophy of reflexivity, so we think this investment philosophy is the reason for his success.”
But is the philosophy of reflexivity really the reason why Soros invested successfully?
Some time ago, some people took things out of Soros’s failure to short the Hong Kong dollar during the Asian financial crisis. In fact, this incident just proves the biggest reason for Soros’s success- Without a hit, he retreats from his body, and never touches the eggs with the stones.
There are too many people who earn more than Soros, but most people have not kept the fruits of victory. Investing in this industry is more than just making more money, it depends on who loses less.
From this case, Soros’ success is firstly due to the professionalism of his investors, which also has considerable luck. As for his “reflexive” philosophy, it is not critical.
Soros advises everyone: “Everyone who has read my book can never make money.” When you try to find “investment cheats” from the principle of reflexivity, you are already in the reflexivity trap. In.
But the problem is that any objective world must be subjectively projected. How can we judge whether the result we see is the real world or the beautiful illusion caused by “reflexivity”?
4. Common sense and consensus
There is a very interesting movie called “Dream of Dreams”, which uses the way of entering other people’s dreams to steal the information in other people’s brains, but one of the most important things about dream stealers is to distinguish between reality and dream Otherwise, you risk losing yourself.
There is also a saying in China, I don’t know who I am in the dream, I am playful. In fact, this is also a question of reflexivity- You can’t judge whether it is a dream or reality based on the authenticity of the things around you.
In order to solve this problem, the actor in the movie carries a spinning top with him. In real space, it will fall when it turns. If it does not fall, it is a dream. What a wonderful metaphor, big Some entrepreneurs think their business will never fail.
Are there any gyros that judge “reflexivity” in the real world?
Water cannot change into oil. This is common knowledge in life and the law of conservation of energy. This is common knowledge through scientific demonstration. So some people say that they invented “water into oil”, and of course you would not believe it. But if he publishes a dissertation in an authoritative magazine through counterfeiting and vigorously promotes it through the media, you may believe it because the latter has created a “consensus” environment.
Here are two concepts in philosophy: Common sense and consensus. Most things in life can be judged by common sense, and when common sense cannot judge, consensus is also very important, such asSome legal issues and decision-making problems that are in a dilemma.
Consensus is easy to produce “reflexivity”, and it is easy for people to decide their opinions based on the attitude of others. After many “reflexions”, it will make you forget common sense-a scam means All use “forged consensus” to blind your common sense.
The highly centralized architecture of an enterprise is also very easy to make consensus “Remarks”> (Humanity) .
Everyone believed in common sense at first, so at first people could still find some deviations from reality and common sense. However, due to professional requirements and the pursuit of interests, the reality further deviated from common sense. After this kind of deviation has reached a certain level, it will form “reflexivity”, so that all participants have a consensus-a story that violates common sense.
When these consensuses deviate more and more from common sense, some people think that this is common sense, while others adopt a “pragmatism” attitude and think that “there is no common sense in this world”; there are also many strange Psychological activities, such as There is a theory of “self-serving bias” in psychology: people often base themselves on themselves as an exception-
99% of people cannot surpass industry trends, but I am the 1%
This is a miracle, but we are doing it.
…
Many successful companies like to do one thing, create a theory to explain their success, then expand it to explain all the problems, and finally let themselves fall into “reflexivity”. I don’t know what is right and what Is wrong.
Worst of all, there are many theories that business leaders were originally unbelieving, just to unify employees. But unfortunately, people are always vanity. In the end, the story they wrote is actually the one who believes most.
The most expensive investment in the world is “I am an exception.” Common sense is common sense. Common sense is something that has stood the test of time. The end result must be “consensus collapse and return to common sense.” People began to think about why they were so irrational. .
So, the more successful you are, the more you have to carry this consensus with you