Discover more from Overcoming Bias
Back in April I asked readers to help me imagine:
[Your] community was … so successful … that one hundred exact copies of [it] were made then and spread around the world. They copied all the same people, work and play roles and relationships, even all the workspaces and homes. … Consider … your attitude toward the other copies of your group. On one hand, … you might want to have nothing to do with those other copies. … On the other hand, you might be eager to maximize your chances to share insights and learn from the other groups. (more)
Today let me ask for help imagining a different situation.
A copy of you was made when you were ten years old. That was a century ago. Since then many thousands of (exact) copies have been made from that one copy. Most of these copies have grown up to do one of the few jobs where there is a big demand for copies of you. (Copies of you have tried other jobs, but so far they’ve not been competitive.) Every year a few dozen more copies are made and trained for these same few careers, but using slightly newer methods, to adapt to changing customers, techs, etc. Older versions of you often help to train younger versions.
Now here are my key questions:
As an older copy, how free would you feel to push advice on younger copies? You could advice them on work, friends, love, etc. When there were consequences for you, how strongly would you want to insist that they follow your advice?
As a younger copy, how much would you trust the advice of older copies of yourself? How eager would you be to get and follow such advice, even when you didn’t understand it? How willing would you be to get into situations where you had to do what they told you?
Today as parents, teachers, mentors, etc. we often give advice to kids, students, and junior co-workers. But our eagerness to advise is tempered by knowing that they are often quite different from us, and in addition times can change, reducing the relevance of our earlier experience. Our eagerness to listen to such advice when young is also tempered by the same reasons. Even so, the two sides often find themselves in conflict, with older folks pushing more advice than the younger folks want to take.
When the advisor-advisee relation is between an older and younger copy of at the same person, instead of between two quite different people, is there more or less conflict in the relation? Is more or less advice given and taken to heart? Do people feel more or less free and autonomous?
Added 5p: Today if asked in the (far-view) abstract, people say they’d want to take advice from those more experienced than they. But they often feel different when they get a specific (near-view) piece of advice that they don’t want to follow, or when they feel a rivalry with the person giving the advice. Then people look for excuses not to follow the advice. I’d think the same processes would happen even with copies of yourself. So I ask you to imagine particular near-view situations, and not just to consider the question in far-view.
Help Me Imagine 2
I think the accepting of advice can be very difficult. In the EO network (entrepreneur organization) people are taught to share relevant experience not advice. In my experience this avoids the issues noted related to advice giving and getting as well as acknowledges no two situations are the same.
As I do with my kids I would do with my other self's.
Share the personal experiences that are related to the issues, listen to others experiences and integrate that into my decision.
In real life, I am usually generous and give advice to people, but exceptions are made when I am potentially in competition with those people. If I'm at a sporting event or playing in a chess tournament, I will not give my opponent advice on how best to beat his opponent (namely, me). However, if I don't perceive them as a threat (e.g., I'm teaching an inexperienced player how to play a game), then I am much more generous with the advice.
The converse is also true. If my opponent tries to talk to me during a competition, I'm going to be wary of their advice. In a teaching environment, great.
In a cooperative environment, the drive to give and receive advice is even stronger. If our goals are better achieved by working together, then yes, come with the advice!
What is interesting is when one side believes the environment is competitive and the other side believes the environment is cooperative. A scenario might be two people working for the same company -- are they both cooperating because they both want the company to do well, or are they competing for one job opening?
I think overall, whether the environment is cooperative or competitive matters a lot more than whether the other person is a genetic copy of me or not. Of course it does matter to some extent -- even though I share 90% of my genetic information with a housecat, I'm not very likely to give or receive advice from it.