HOISTED FROM THE ARCHIVES: Why Gillian Tett's Anthropological Take on the World Is Very Useful
Why you should listen to her; a N2PE event from 2021-11-18 Th…
Social-science interdisciplinary centers—like the Berkeley Center for Science, Technology, Medicine, & Society, which hosted “The AI Con” book event I went to yesterday—gain perspective and insight from the multiple frameworks and toolkits that people trained in different social-science traditions bring to the problem. Yesterday I was annoyed by the absence of an economist with the economics toolkit from the event, and I vented:
But there was another social-science perspective that was absent: the perspective of the anthropologist. So let me hoist from the archives my (expanded) notes and drafts for, and a few of my an Gillian Tett’s responses, from an N2PE Berkeley event from back in 2021:
Why Gillian Tett’s Anthropological Take on þe World Is Very Useful
Why you should listen to her; a N2PE event from 2021-11-18 Th…
N2PE: Gillian Tett (@gilliantett) Discusses Her New Book “Anthro-Vision: A New Way to See in Business & Life”. Amid severe digital disruption, economic upheaval, and political flux, how can we make sense of the world? Leaders today typically look for answers in economic models, Big Data, or artificial intelligence platforms. Gillian Tett will discuss her new book that points to anthropology—the study of human culture. Anthropologists learn to get inside the minds of other people, helping them not only to understand other cultures but also to appraise their own environment with fresh perspective as an insider-outsider, gaining lateral vision. Moderated by Brad DeLong (@delong) with Comments from Julia Sizek (@JuliaSizek). RSVP for Zoom Link: <https://t.co/D7jbqQ1KL4 https://t.co/BO2v3Tk37v> <
https://twitter.com/N2PENetwork/status/1461061581685460998
>
My Proposed Intro: One of the cheesier and more adolescent of the sub-genres of science fiction I must admit I still read what is one in which some plucky human hero is confronted with an anthology intelligence: millions of organisms, each of them small and mindless on its own, yet somehow adding up to a human or more than human intelligence with Ailien and hard-to-understand belief and purposes.
But it is we humans who, looked at collectively, are this alien anthology intelligence.
Due to our extraordinary propensity to gossip, what one of us knows—or rather believes—pretty soon all of us know—or, rather can believe. Alone, each of us is nearly totally incompetent at managing our environment: put one of us out naked and alone even in as green and pleasant a land is the home counties of England, and he or she would be likely to die. But assemble us and allow us to form a division of labor, and we can undertake mighty works of nature manipulation to challenge the gods. Certainly that extremely large red-bearded guy with serious anger-management problems, that guy who likes to drink and whose hammer is the lightning called “Thor”, has nothing over us.
But in order to become an anthology communicative intelligence, we have to share not only a language but also an underlying mental map of how the universe works. And in order to become an anthology productive intelligence, we have to have trust in others—that you do your and they do their part in the division of labor, and then that the products of labor by hand and brain will in fact be shared. But how do you extend a language and a mental map beyond a very few people who have grown up together“? And how do you extend trust that your part in the division of labor will be reciprocated beyond your close kin and immediate neighbors?
What happens when we extend our division of labor from our immediate circle of neighbors and kin to encompass all 8 billion of us—that is the province of economics.
What happens when we construct at least semi-shared mental maps so that communication can succeed—that is the province of sociology.
What happens when our anthology intelligence attempt reflection on its purposes and structure—that is the province of political science.
But the processes by which we do these—those are the domains of anthropology, which is in this sense the ur-social science on top of which all else is built.
So let us pay attention this afternoon to Gillian Tett, of the tribes of the Financial Times and of the anthropology community, author of the very recently published Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life <https://www.amazon.com/Anthro-Vision-Anthropology-Explain-Business-Life/dp/1847942881/>.