Counterfactual Thinking
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KR Ravi | Aug 18, 2009
An internationally acclaimed management guru writes that Harvard Business school is like a doorway through which if a bright youngster passes he or she will emerge a bright person anyway!
The point he was making was that there is no great value addition at Harvard!
I recall writing a letter to a newspaper in response to the boast of a school principal that his college ‘produced’ a particularly renowned cricketer. I argued that my knowledge of that college indicated that that college had contributed precious little to that cricketer’s rise to eminence.
I once met the CEO of a top company as soon as he emerged from the campus of a renowned B-school in eastern India and asked him what was special about the graduates of that B school since he had chosen to ‘place’ a dozen of their students in his organisaion. He replied that the selection process for admissions to that school ensured that the finest youngsters in the country were admitted to the MBA programme. His company wanted some of these fine youngsters who had been ‘pre- selected’ by the B- school. “What they learn at the school has little significance for us because they will have to learn the real world of business after they join us,” he added.
In each of these cases one can see a very insightful form of thinking called ‘counterfactual thinking’. This mode of thinking calls for us to ask the question: what would have happened if the variable under scrutiny did not take place? Thus in the instances cited above a possible conclusion may be (I admit you can have a different viewpoint) that the institutions had little contribution towards the final outcome. Harvard students are already among the best and the brightest and would have reached positions of eminence anyway — Harvard may have little to do with their success in life.
The cricketer who is now a legend would have become a master no matter which college he went to. In recent years boys who never went to college at all have become cricketing heroes.
The B school graduates would have done well in the corporate sector even if they had gone to a humble B school or to no B school at all—barring the status attached to being an alumnus of the well known school. Surveys have shown that graduates from that school are occupying high positions in India’s corporate sector.
A research report from MIT on the working of the much lauded micro-finance concept shows that these institutions may not be making significant contribution to poverty alleviation. Applying counterfactual thinking in a series of ingenious experiments they showed that those who received micro-financing and did well would have prospered in any case, given that they had entrepreneurial qualities anyway and were already on the way out of poverty.
Let me propose a hypothesis:
With a few honorable exceptions the Indian education system fails in imparting even basic skills – both the so called hard and even more so the soft skills. The question arises: If our education is that abysmal how can we account for Indians’ success all over the world in almost any field of human endeavour? Counterfactual thinking suggest that these ‘successful’ Indians would have been successful anyway given their innate intelligence and survival instincts.
Remember the Indian immigrant abroad is — barring exception – -an economic refugee who is running away from an oppressive regime that has stifled his ingenuity and denied him opportunities and actively impeded his growth. Such people do well no matter where they hail from. Education in India may have little to do with their success — that’s the sad news. Where does that leave us as far as education is concerned ? It will be the corporate sector that will have to fill the gap by training their recruits even in the basics. This is happening already — that’s the good news
Filed Under: Miscellaneous
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It’s a well written article as usual as by Mr Ravi. I also share his concern on the Indian educational system. I also fully subscribe to the point successful people would have been successful anyway given their innate intelligence and survival instincts. Why only single out Indians, I feel in fact every human being would be so. I am sure with the background that Mr Ravi has, he and probably Tickled by Life as a group should be able to influence people at the right levels to bring in a positive change in the educational system. I have a ten year old son. Looking at the way his studies go today, I am able to witness a lot of positive change,improvement and also a bit of application orientedness coming into the education system. It’s definitely very different from what I learnt in school. Things are moving in the right direction. With “Lateral Thinking” gurus involvement and contribution, I am sure there could be better days in future with respect to education. I think at this point of time the educational reforms need encouragement and right guidance so that we can see the change we want.
Curious column.
How about another proposition: there are so many Indian immigrants (as well as Chinese, Russian, etc.) that their success stories are multiple and hence rather visible. On the other hand, there aren’t enough, say, Latvian immigrants (native popolation of Latvia in about a million people) to make the same impact on our attention. What do you say?
Also, somehow the anonymous MIT study doesn’t ring true to me. Yunus’ genius was to create the close support system (support groups of five) that helped those who wouldn’t make it on own as micro-entrepreneurs to succeed. The availability of the money was just part of the equation.
But, as a former research professor I’ll agree on the implication of low value of formal education on bright youngsters. Indeed, those who are curious and want to know something would study and find teachers anyway and almost anyhow. The ones who don’t care to learn and are in college just for the piece of paper with his academic degree inscribed on it, won’t learn even in Harvard. George W. Bush – a Yale and Harvard graduate – is the best case study in this.
I don’t know about Indian education much (although Indians I meet here, in America, are invariably bright and well educated) but American education – schools for kids and colleges – are stagnating and perhaps even moving backward. The previously excellent Russian education definitely is.
I have a question: could anybody point me to the name or whereabouts of the MIT study Mr. Ravi quoted? anvoro@gmail.com
Gautum,
I just joined Linkin as the Founder of The Order of Earth and currently inviting seven diverse co-founding partners for the “self-generative funding mechanism V3W ~ Velocity in the Third Wave” to support the long term objective of bringing forth an elder wisdom platform and channel in the world. Those interested can hook up with me on Linkin Patric Roberts.
My assessment is the American reductionist educational processes is wrongheaded and I offer to examples that are relevant to our current global situation. GM’s Sloan School of Management was once hailed as the bedrock for corporate leadership where pride as an MBA sheep skin inferred you had all the answers. Yet, the reductive deadening educational arrogance of superior knowledge intersected the real global world where networks of social conversations by masses of people attempting to address domains of permanent human concerns and there entire knowledge base was irrelevant and there leadership was blind to the global conversations emerging. Another example is the recent Wall Street global financial crisis where educational institutional reductionist educators taught the brightest how to design ‘esoteric arcane credit default swaps’ that boggle the mind of ethical virtuous global citizenry. And in America we blame the poor who were seduced into this financial predatory casino chaos as the responsible parties for the economic breakdown and they are going to pay for it in human suffering.
I could go on and respond to my current assessments of Healthcare, lawyers and lobbyists and the totalitarian systemic systems arising now as we have passed the moral hazard dialog and create a government corporate elite plutocracy “to big to fail.” When in fact, my honest assessment is we have already failed ourselves and the world and we are living in a self-deceptive imperial coercive democracy ~ a Trojan Horse. My invitation in writing a response is to stimulate a conversation of “What is Missing” because we are all in some very deep global breakdowns that are going to require innovative solidarity for least among us not just the priests, politicians, lawyers and merchants.
The Opportunity in Learning in the Midst of Predatory Chaos
The Order of Earth is pointing to a new configuration that already always exists in the swept~along~drift of “party lines” in the constellation of units of humanity that is ready to explode. Elder wisdom is about to explode in a world gone crazy. “I don’t want some thing from you & I want to BE with you & others who explore primordial genetic wisdom embodied in our flesh not systemic discourses, institutions and practices. What I am pointing to as a reflection is Not something new better, cheaper, faster rather the possible possibility of “hasten slowly” to recover in human realization, our humanness, what is essential & common-sensical in our living together even if we strangers.” I appreciate Indian culture although I have never visited India because I studied the “Bagavad Gita” and appreciate the conversation of Krishna and Arjuna. I have witnessed and listened to Gandhi and learned through contemplative practices the wisdom of Buddha who is your greatest saint. Your people and culture is spiritual even in the midst of poverty, caste systems and problems of governance. The world is in need of a new symbolic value system in designing a future world together.
What I see missing is global conversational platform & channel for elder wisdom. I mean real nuts & bolts ~ shock & awe ~ human wisdom that effects the roots of our own humanness ~ empowerment ~ responsibility ~ family ~ social relations ~ work as a joyful concern & global community! A state-of-the-art business process INTERACTIVE management system that is a learning community based in securing individual identity, capable of developing hastily formed networks to intervene in mission critical breakdowns in permanent human concerns of our humanity, and transcending reductionist knowledge doubling every two years with primordial wisdom embodied in our flesh and being.
WE are in a profound creative destruction period in the USA where the wisest people are sidelined in families, workplaces, neighborhoods, communities & corporate entertainment media. Breaking the party lines is forbidden & normally punished severely by being marginalized and isolated. The opportunity is the bullet train of faster, cheaper and better has left the precipice and is heading to the ocean with velocity. And it’s outside global partners that can assist and change the trajectory, and its in their interests because America has been an innovative presence over the past two hundred years and can mature, become whole, and transcend our disabilities.
In 1940 Winston Churchill raised his voice knowing Hitler was planning an invasion by the year end. This single elder voice changed the outcome in Europe & geo-political realities in the world we enjoy today. There was sacrifice of human life to a lofty elder ambition. Our Elders today are slipping away, people who lived through a depression & WWII with integrity, accountability & human dignity. Being an elder isn’t dependent on one’s age ~ elders are people connected to real life genetic wisdom & many times its dead people who teach us the most about living ~ they demonstrated wisdom in living real life with courage & we reflect on it forever as a legacy and model for our own ethical behaviors.
Who do see in the world today that’s an elder voice globally? Or in your life who is the hero/heroine dead/alive that you admire & choose to learn from in guiding your character and mission in the world? These questions offer a different way of seeing and nurturing our human identities as a value proposition in designing a world together. They are not about how you earned money rather what do stand for in living life today.
There are elders in diverse domains of expertise that are wise offering tough love, political incorrectness to modernities current “subjective relativism.” Where everyone’s beliefs is equal and we turn the world into a Jerry Springer Show of insane human behaviors! The critical mission in this moment of education and learning IS to build an open global platform & channel for elder wisdom to ensure ~ inspire ~ actualize our collective individuated consciousness as human beings inhabiting one planet and designing a future world for unborn generations in the web of life. To do this requires Not Knowing and opening to a “New Listening” with the Man~N~Mirror!
“We have all the time in the world & not a moment to waste.” Our current situation is a 1000 fold more critical than Churchill’s 1940 because elders are not listened to. The breakdowns in this moment offers us the opportunity to redesign human values in the wisdom of love = legitimacy-in-coexistence within the living web of life. It’s not technology ~ engineers & mathematicians, nor MBA’s and Lawyers, that are going to solve are human relations problems! We are going to have to face our self-deceptive human behaviors individually and change our beliefs & values TO deepen & disclose the profound ethical virtues embodied in our flesh in a mood of global solidarity.
The structure of the human psyche is a Great Elder Code of Wisdom that has navigated to the Center of Being consistently in are 2~million~year~old DNA historic swept~along~drift. WE are Homo sapiens amans amans ~ wise wise social loving animals. Our choice is simple do we desire to live in power or social revelatory relations? I am optimistic in are present situation especially with new awarenesses in physics ~ biology ~ cognition ~ linguistics ~ cosmology that transcends are current beliefs and value systems, and points to an Emerge~N~SEE dynamic unified singularity in an emergent age of activity that has always constituted ~ sustained ~ maintained all the units of our humanity.
I offer these two short videos to interested participants that point to the notion The Order of Earth is bringing forth.
“The Biology of Love” (2 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCp1JdEmeZc
“The Lakota Paradigm” (9 minutes) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nysi8S8R1Uo
I desire committed human conversations, partnerships & resources to design & build this intentional elder global network. The stimulation of this educational conversation is appreciated and a blessing. I invite you and your circle of influences to join me in designing a new possible configuration that bundles our differences in committed actions to designing a future world together.
Linkin http://www.linkedin.com/in/patricroberts
It is an interesting way to look at great events or outcomes!
Institutions such as Harvard facilitate like a catalyst, towards a BIGGER growth, FASTER process of change or achievements, most often a bigger canvas/horizon and an expanded initial, powerful contact sphere….
There is a saying, when good people meet together ( regularly) good things start happening. So such facilitations have its own key role.
best regards,