 |
|
|
|||||
Theres an old myth that Inuit cultures have as many as a hundred words for snow. I remember learning about it in school, and there was just something wonderful about the idea that peoples perceptions can be so deeply rich and different. I guess thats why, although it has been debunked many times, the story keeps getting repeated. There is also a lot of truth to the underlying concept. As anybody who has ever learned another language or lived in a different culture knows, peoples perceptions vary widely. In The WEIRDest People In The World, Harvards Joseph Henrich documents how important and interesting these differences can be. So if the Inuit snow myth highlights an important concept, many would argue that theres no real harm in repeating it, in much the same way we continue to tell the apocryphal story of George Washington cutting down his fathers cherry tree. Yet truth matters. Once we start degrading it, we lose our ability to understand what is often a messy and nuanced world. What do you call a square? What makes the Inuit snow myth compelling is that it so viscerally illustrates how language can reveal deeper truths. For example, in German the word for square is Platz and in neighboring Poland, it is Plac, a word that is pronounced very similarly. In Russian, the word is Ploshchad, so again, you can see the family resemblance. In Ukraine, however, which is geographically and linguistically in the middle of all those countries, the word for square is completely different. It is Maidan and comes from Turkish, which gives you hints about Ukraines history with the Crimean Khanate, its historical ties to Byzantium, and lots of other interesting things. Slavic languages are filled with these fascinating historical remnants. The word slav comes from the same root as word (slov). So Slavs considered themselves people of the word. The word for German in slavic languages is Niemiec, which roughly translates to doesnt speak, and shows how the Slavs considered the Germanic tribes Barbarians. Languages, of course, continue to evolve. Since the early 1990s, the Independence Square in the center of Kyiv, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, has been the place where people go to protest, especially during the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. So today, when Ukrainians say that its time to go to the Maidan, they mean its time to revolt. The Inuit snow myth alerts us to the possibility of examining languages in this way and many would argue that we shouldn’t let the truth get in the way of a good story. Still, once we abandon truth, we start down a troubled path. The myths of Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox PARC We tell stories because specific narratives can often point to more general principles. For example, when pundits want to show the dangers of complacent corporate giants getting caught sleeping, they often point to Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox. Yet, much like the Inuit snow myth, these stories arent really true. Lets look at each one in turn. Blockbuster is supposedly a cautionary tale because it ignored Netflix until it was too late. Yet as Gina Keating, who covered the story for years at Reuters, explains in her book Netflixed, the video giant moved relatively quickly and came up with a successful strategy. The real problem was that those changes tanked the stock price and the strategy was reversed when CEO John Antioco left after a compensation dispute with investor Carl Icahn. In a similar vein, were often told that, after inventing digital photography, Kodak ignored the market. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, its EasyShare line of cameras were top sellers. It also made big investments in quality printing for digital photos. The problem was that it made most of its money on developing film, a business that completely disappeared. Another popular fable is that Xerox failed to commercialize the technology developed at its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), when in fact the laser printer developed there saved the company. What also conveniently gets left out is that Steve Jobs was able to get access to the companys technology to build the Macintosh because Xerox had invested in Apple and then profited handsomely from that investment. I recently got the chance to discuss each of these with Paul Nunes, who for years headed up thought leadership at Accenture, on Aidan McCullins Innovation Show and what we noticed was that, in each case, the pundit version would lead you exactly the wrong way. Blockbusters problem wasnt that they ignored external threats, but failed to account for internal resistance. Digital photography would never have replaced Kodaks film developing business and Xerox PARC is actually a success story that other firms would do well to emulate. Feynmans Law History is full of brave souls who defied the status quo. In the 1840s, Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered handwashing in hospitals, only to be rebuked by the medical establishment. In the early 20th century, William Coley pioneered cancer immunotherapy, only to be ignored. Barry Marshall was pilloried for his work that showed peptic ulcers were caused not by stress, but by the bacterium H. pylori. Yet being contrarian doesnt make you right. During Soviet times, Trofim Lysenko’s pseudoscientific agricultural theories led to crop failures and contributed to famines that killed millions. More recently, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s vaccine skepticism has coincided with a resurgence of measles. So how do we engage in healthy skepticism of the zeitgeist without descending into quackery? The physicist Richard Feynman, one of the greatest minds of the 20th century, offers helpful guidance. He said that science begins with a guess. Thats not only allowable, but necessary. To discover something new, you need to let your mind roam free. Impossible, even ridiculous ideas, are how we break new ground. Yet the second step is crucial: you have to test your ideas. Or, as Feynman put it, If it disagrees with experiment, its wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesnt make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesnt matter how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is If it disagrees with experiment, its wrong. Thats all there is to it. The Narrative Fallacy The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio believes we encode experiences in our bodies as somatic markers and that our emotions often alert us to things that our brains arent aware of. Another researcher, Joseph Ledoux, reached similar conclusions. He pointed out that our body reacts much faster than our mind, such as when we jump out of the way of an oncoming object and only seconds later realize what happened. Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman suggests that we have two modes of thinking. The first is emotive, intuitive, and fast. The second is rational, deliberative, and slow. Our bodies evolved to make decisions quickly in life-or-death situations. Our rational minds came much later and dont automatically engage. It takes conscious effort to activate the second system. The problem is that when something feels right, humans have a tendency to build stories around them. False fables like those about Blockbuster, Kodak, and Xerox, purport to teach us important lessons, but the truth is that they rob us of the opportunity to unlock deeper insights. Thats why Ive learned to be suspicious of good stories, especially those that I want to be true because they just feel right. We need to constantly interrogate our feelings, especially in areas for which we do not have specific training or relevant expertise. We need to understand what exactly our emotions are alerting us to, and that requires us to engage our rational mind. Thats why, sometimes, you need to let the truth get in the way of a good story.
Category:
E-Commerce
A growing number of Amazon employees have signed onto an open letter issuing some dire warnings about the companys sprint toward AI. The letter, signed by more than 1,000 workers and published this week, calls out Amazon for pushing its AI investments at the expense of the climate and its human workforce. The letters supporters come from a wide array of roles at the company, including many software engineers, and even employees focused on building AI systems. We believe that the all-costs-justified, warp-speed approach to AI development will do staggering damage to democracy, to our jobs, and to the earth, the letters authors wrote. Were the workers who develop, train, and use AI, so we have a responsibility to intervene. In the letter obtained by The Guardian, the Amazon employees argue that their employer is throwing out its climate promises in the scramble to win the AI race. Amazon has pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, pointing to efficiencies from electric delivery vehicles and reduced plastic packaging in its climate commitment. In spite of its stated promise to reduce its carbon footprint, Amazons carbon emissions rose last year, a trend tied to pollution from its ubiquitous fleet of delivery vehicles and its major push into data center construction.Resource intensive data centers like the ones Amazon is pouring billions into building out are a hot topic in 2025. The buildings, built to power tech giants AI ambitions, pump in loads of electricity to keep servers humming and suck up water to cool off all of that energy use. Data centers, usually placed well beyond urban hubs, promise rural communities a boom of steady local jobs for many of the worlds most valuable companies, but the reality is often less inspiring. In spite of their massive footprint and a short term burst of work during construction, very few people are actually necessary to keep things up and running. In light of the downsides, rural communities around the country are beginning to reject big techs big AI buildout. AI at all costs Climate isnt the only concern among the Amazon workers who signed onto the open letter. The group of anonymous employees accuses the company of forcing AI on its workforce while openly plotting to get rid of human workers as soon as technologically possible. In the meantime, the letters authors say that timelines are getting shorter and output demands are on the rise as the company tries to squeeze every last drop of productivity out of its employees. Last month, Amazon announced that it would lay off 14,000 employees, a massive round of cuts focused on its corporate workforce. In a memo to employees, Amazons Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology Beth Galetti said that the cuts were aimed at reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure were investing in our biggest bets namely the companys enormous spending on AI. The world is changing quickly, Galetti wrote. This generation of AI is the most transformative technology weve seen since the Internet, and its enabling companies to innovate much faster than ever before (in existing market segments and altogether new ones). Amazons AI spending this year has topped $125 billion and the company plans to invest that much and more into artificial intelligence in 2026. A call for guardrails The letter also points to Amazons major lobbying push against AI regulation and its role in spreading surveillance and military technology as major areas of concern. To address the worries it raises, the letter calls on Amazon to abandon dirty energy in order to recommit to its climate goals, loop non-manager employee voices into AI decision making and reject surveillance and deportation applications of its technology. The letter only represents a tiny sliver of Amazons more than 1.55 million employees, but that hasnt deterred a thousand people at the company from voicing their concerns, and potentially risking their jobs. Beyond Amazons own workforce, around 2,400 people including students and workers at other major tech companies issued their own letter of support. All of this is daunting, but none of it is inevitable, the Amazon letters authors wrote. A better future is still very much within reach, but it requires us to get real about the costs of AI and the guardrails we need.
Category:
E-Commerce
In the latest sign that the Trump administration isnt so concerned about asbestos, the Food and Drug Administration this week withdrew a proposed rule that would have required testing for the toxic asbestos in talc-based cosmetics. The rule, which was proposed by the Biden administration less than a year ago, would have required manufacturers to test cosmetics for asbestos and keep records demonstrating compliance. Exposure to asbestos has been linked to lung cancer, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and laryngeal cancer, which is why various health agencies have determined theres no safe level of exposure to this natural mineral. Johnson & Johnson has been the subject of numerous lawsuits related to reports that the company knew about the risk of asbestos in the talc found in its baby powder. Talc is found in many cosmetics because it can be used to absorb moisture, prevent caking, and create a silky feel for these products, according to information on the FDA website. But the current administration seems to have yielded partly to the highly scientific and technical issues addressed in the 49 comments received during the mandatory public comment period, according to a legal notice posted to the federal registry and signed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Good cause exists to withdraw the proposed rule at this time, the order stated. We are withdrawing the proposed rule to reconsider best means of addressing the issues covered by the proposed rule and broader principles to reduce exposure to asbestos, and to ensure that any standardized testing method requirements for detecting asbestos in talc-containing cosmetic products help protect users of talc-containing cosmetic products from harmful exposure to asbestos. The FDA didnt immediately respond to a request for comment from Fast Company. WITHDRAWING FROM BIDENS BANS Withdrawing from this proposed rule doesnt necessarily mean that manufacturers will suddenly start adding asbestos to cosmetics, but rather a guardrail for ensuring the deadly toxin isnt present in these products is now being reconsidered. The FDA plans to issue a proposed rule related to the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act of 2022. A spokesperson for the agency confirmed as much to The New York Times, saying that the FDA will submit a new proposed rule that offers a more comprehensive approach to reducing exposure to asbestos and reducing asbestos related illness, including identifying safer additives as alternatives, especially when they are less costly. But both Trump administrations have demonstrated some willingness to walk back protections from this deadly carcinogen, allowing asbestos to make a comeback. By contrast, the Biden administration finalized a ban on ongoing uses of chrysotile asbestos in 2024 and also proposed the aforementioned rule for detecting and identifying asbestos in cosmetics. The current Trump administration has now taken a swipe at both of these efforts to ban asbestos. In June, the Environmental Protection Agency in June planned to withdraw a proposed ban on chrysotile asbestos, before reversing course less than one month later. OUTRAGE AT ROLLBACK The U.S. continues to be out-of-step with much of the rest of the world, where asbestos is completely outlawed in more than 50 countries. Notably, asbestos is not outlawed in China, where many cosmetics are manufactured. This latest move by the FDA is both baffling and troubling to some consumer advocates. Nothing could make America less healthy than having a cancer causing product in cosmetics, Scott Faber, vice president of government affairs with the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit thats lobbied for stricter regulations around talc, told The Guardian. Its hard to understand why we would revoke a rule that simply requires companies to test for asbestos. And it marks another horrific rollback that should outrage consumers, Linda Reinstein, president and chief executive of the Asbestos Disease Awareness Organization, told The New York Times. It puts the onus on Americans to have to try to identify consumer products that might be contaminated, and the average person cant do that because you cant know without testing, she said.
Category:
E-Commerce
All news |
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||