Experts know.
Authorities know and apply that knowledge credibly, sharing the application habitually and liberally with others it might benefit, building a relationship of trust.
Implicit in that application of knowledge is POV and the risk of focusing your and others’ attention — on the issue, the problem, the solution set.…
Watching pundits deploy other people’s research is like watching kids play with lit M80s: the best outcome to hope for is that nothing bad happens and it’s over quickly. Every other outcome is much, much worse.
Which is to say: Bret Stephens’ recent column for The New York Times citing a discredited study (cowritten by at least one author with white nationalist sympathies) advancing (as the Times’ correction put it) “a genetic hypothesis for the basis of intelligence” among Ashkenazi Jews is exceptional only in the stupidity of its cherry-picked research, not the fact that it cherry picked.…
Natalia (whose public scholarship I wrote about earlier this year, and who will be one of my podcast’s first guests starting early next year) has two POVs: one for her long-form public scholarship, and one for the podcast she co-hosts (Past Present) and her Twitter account, @nataliapetrzela.…
Summing up the much-higher-than-normal responses I got to my post yesterday on James Clear’s shift in email POV — roughly sifted, they fall into two buckets:
Most of us think of points-of-view as things we assume and then invite other people to share.
That’s limiting at best. POVs only have meaning and value as social agreements, as an important defining term in a relationship with someone else.…
We all have opinions — an almost infinite number. Having opinions is an arguable definition of being alive.
The problem for research-driven organizations that want to create wide impact isn’t that their researchers lack opinions. The problem for research-driven organizations that want to create wide impact is that they’re probably not giving their researchers incentives and modeling for expressing those opinions publicly in persuasive ways.…
The usual chatter about POV among savvy consultants is…that you need one. By which they mean: a strong and distinctive opinion about something important to their clients’ businesses. (Consultants without strong opinions just fix your problem instead of giving you a strategy.…
The Ghost of Christmas Past makes Scrooge remorseful.
The Ghost of Christmas Present makes him curious.
And the Ghost of Christmas Future scares the bejeezus out of him.
That’s the power of speaking from the future, if you’re believable.
(BTW: This new version of “A Christmas Carol” on F/X with Guy Pearce as Scrooge looks great.…
I see four POV axes for researchers who generate insight content for non-specialists:
Why have so many residents in Detroit’s communities of color turned down the city’s offer to plant free trees in front of their homes?
Because no one asked them if they wanted the trees.
They should want them — at least, that’s how a researcher might think.…