Original link: https://blog.devtang.com/2022/07/24/reverse-book-summary/
The article was written on 2015.8.22 and updated on 2022.7.24.
1. Preface
Zigong asked, “Who is the wise teacher and the merchant?” The master said, “The master has passed, but the merchant is not as good.” He said, “However, the master will get better and better?”
—— “The Analects of Confucius Advanced”
I recently finished reading the book “Reversal” by Gladwell. Two other books by Gladwell, the author of this book, are relatively more famous, namely “Tipping Point” and “Outliers.”
The writing styles of these three books are similar, and the author is a very good storyteller, so the whole book is a variety of stories, plus some author’s points of view in the stories.
In this book, the author’s point of view is very simple, and can be summed up in the words “too far too far”. The author believes that if any advantage is strong to a certain extent, after that critical point, the advantage will be reversed. From another perspective, the advantage even becomes a disadvantage.
In order to confirm this point of view, the author told a lot of interesting stories, and I would like to share with you a few of the more interesting ones.
2. The Story That Changed the Gameplay
Story One: The story of David and Goliath. David was small in stature and Goliath was tall, but in the duel, David defeated Goliath by taking advantage of his fast movement and ability to throw stones from a distance.
Story 2: The full court pressing story in basketball. An engineer father, in order to win the basketball game for his skinny daughter, through strengthening physical exercise and full-court pressing strategy, he finally won.
The above two are stories in which the weak overcome the strong by changing the gameplay. Luo Ji’s thinking explains it better, that is, the rules of the game are actually very simple, but the strong in society usually wrap a layer of rules on top of the rules. For example, in a duel, whoever lives will win, but many societies require the “fairness” of duels. If David really competes with Goliath “fairly”, he will definitely lose.
In fact, in the recruitment of talents in the Internet industry, there have been many similar stories that change the gameplay. For example, due to the large number of startup companies and the large investment of venture capital, many startup companies take advantage of the weakness of the BAT salary increase that cannot make decisions quickly, and dig these BAT people with a treatment higher than 50%. This makes BAT quite passive in terms of talent mobility, as their compensation system prevents them from making quick decisions to adjust their salaries.
3. The more resources, the better?
Story 3: The story of small class education. In order to improve the quality of education, some areas in the United States implement small class education of about 10 students. It was found that because it is difficult for everyone in a small class to form a small group with similar interests and complementary personalities, the social skills of these students have become weaker. The lack of social interaction can cause some students to be even more tired of learning.
Story 4: The story of the education of the rich. It is more difficult for rich people to make children feel the lack of resources in home education, so that they cannot make effective choices and decisions, and it is easy to waste resources. There is an old saying in China that “richness cannot last for three generations”, which is exactly what it means.
Because the “rich second generation” is educated by the “rich first generation”, there are still some values that can be passed on. However, after the third generation, it is difficult for the fourth generation to have the feeling that the first generation is not easy to make money and life is difficult. It is relatively more difficult for him to learn the ability to choose, give up, thrift, and cooperate in education.
My wife is an education student, and she also told me a story. Many parents think that the more toys they buy for their children, the better, but that’s not the case. When a child is young, the cultivation of concentration is particularly important. If he is given too many toys at once, he will feel at a loss and cannot concentrate on one toy.
And if concentration is not effectively cultivated at a young age, it will affect children’s learning. Because in learning, children need to stay focused for dozens of minutes. A professor of educational psychology at Oxford University in the United Kingdom also pointed out that the intelligence level of children from superior families and mountains of toys is often lower than that of children of the same age who have fewer toys.
This is the closest story I’ve heard about the reversal of too many resources.
Fourth, the less resources the worse?
The book tells the story of Boyce, an American lawyer, who has had mediocre grades because of dyslexia since childhood. But because of his dyslexia, he has developed an amazing ability in listening.
In Beuys’s classic case, Beuys could understand the tension of the other party from the tone and speed of the other party’s witnesses through on-the-spot questioning and communication with the other party’s witnesses, so as to pursue the details that he felt concealed. This ability is so powerful that it is equivalent to an accurate artificial “lie detector”, so Boyce can find out what the other person’s witness has concealed.
In the author’s book “Heterogeneous”, he mentioned a story in which a weak advantage has become a huge advantage through years of selection and accumulation. But the story in this book shows that some huge “deficiencies” (such as dyslexia) can also force a person to continue to strengthen on the other side to develop an advantage.
I also think of an example: if there are two actors, one is more handsome and the other is ugly, then the handsome actor can be an idol group or an acting group, and the ugly person can only be an idol group. Acting school. Will such an imbalance of resources make ugly people more focused on improving their acting skills, so that they are more likely to succeed in acting? I think from a probabilistic point of view, it should be.
5. The struggle using the principle of reversal
The book focuses on the story of Martin Luther King, a black leader in the United States. In order to fight for the rights of blacks, Martin Luther King consciously used various methods to intensify the contradiction between blacks and whites, and finally made the United States Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “. There are even a lot of “not-so-brilliant” techniques in there. In Albany, the local police chief saw through Martin Luther King, Jr.’s tricks and used a very restrained approach that left him with no progress for nine months. But Martin Luther King Jr. switched states, and ultimately intensified the conflict in Birmingham.
6. Summary
In the past two years, there have been more and more stories of reversal. Today you are still the first brother of the Internet celebrity, because everyone pays attention to you, and tomorrow you may be banned for accidentally making mistakes. You’re in a hot industry today, and tomorrow you might be left alone for environmental reasons.
Conversely, like Luo Yonghao and New Oriental, you may fall to the bottom today, and if you don’t give up, you may succeed again tomorrow.
If I want to say what the book “Reversal” has taught me, I think it is to look at things from a dialectical perspective. The more perspectives you think about, the easier it is to restore the truth of things.
In addition, it is the current way of survival to focus on doing every valuable thing well and be a long-term valueist.
This article is reprinted from: https://blog.devtang.com/2022/07/24/reverse-book-summary/
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