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I’ve been thinking a lot about the correlation between volume and power.
A few months ago I recorded a conversation where I referred to the model of capital agglomerators in venture as “the loudest models.”
“As venture capital evolves it often tilts not in the direction of what you think it should be, but what the loudest people with the most capital decide they want it to be.”
While this was the first time I think I framed it as “the loudest models,” I’ve thought before about this idea that the louder something is, the more power it has. When I wrote a piece about parenting, I thought about this as a reality across most aspects of life that the loudest is most certainly not always the best:
“Life is too noisy to leave you alone. If parents don’t help their kids get exposure to a broad variety of experiences, then life will put something in front of them. And the loudest, flashiest thing is unlikely to be the best experiences life has to offer.“
Since then I’ve dug in again and again on the idea of volume’s correlation to power. And I’ve got to say, its pretty consistent.
This week, I was thinking about some of the voices I see online. Often, I find myself listening to these arguments and I think to myself, “man, these people know way more about this than I do.” I look at how many followers they have or the number of subscribers to their YouTube channel or the rankings of their podcast globally. I shrug and think to myself, “I guess they know what they’re talking about.” And sometimes I leave it at that. But sometimes I dig in, and I realize, “Oh… they’re not smarter than me, they’re just louder than me.”
And granted, some of the responses to my tweet were things like “I think the people I see on the internet are dumber than dirt.” And that’s true too. But it’s not a function of the times people are demonstrably dumb; its the times when they’re deceptively convincing.
As we’ve progressed deeper and deeper into an Attention Economy, our biggest problem is we’ve lost our inoculation to BS. We equate influence with informed. When you see someone with a large following, a big subscriber count, a large fund, or an endless stream of high-profile speaking engagements, you start to think, “how wrong could they be if that many people think they’re right?”
But here’s the rub. The volume of your inaccuracy does not change the veracity of your beliefs.
What is true is true. I’ve written about this before in a piece called Oh Say, What Is Truth?
“The idea that truth is relative is very Nietzschean; that ‘truths’ are often fabrications, or ‘illusions about which one has forgotten that they are illusions.’ Another way its been put, history is written by the victor. But what these ideas are really describing are stories, not truth.
Facts are starting to be colored by preference, but we need to not lose sight of a really important thing: There are facts. There are discernible, measurable facts. But what we, as a society, have gotten worse at is both (1) determining the facts, and (2) accepting the facts.“
The thing that would-be power aggregators have caught on to is that, despite the existence of objective truth, the power of narratives makes truth malleable. You can wield it to your whims. If people believe your outlandish claims, or that your big follower count / fund size / subscriber base are reasons to follow you, then that belief system grants you power.
I’ve never watched Game of Thrones, but I’ve seen this clip come up enough that it has stuck with me:
“Power is a curious thing. Three great men sit in a room: a king, a priest, and a rich man. Between them stands a common [mercenary]. Each great man bids the [mercenary] kill the other two. Who lives? Who dies? [The mercenary] has neither crown nor gold nor favor with the gods. He has a sword; the power of life and death. But if it’s swordsmen who rule, why do we pretend kings hold all the power? Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”
I’ve written here and here about how much we’ve become programmable. It’s another framework for thinking about how susceptible we’ve become to the loudest people, the loudest ideas, the loudest models.
Now, unfortunately, I have no solutions. The currency of the Attention Economy will continue to be loudness, regardless of the quality of the underlying ideas. We can’t stop that. It’s out of our control.
What we can control is the personal commitment we have to what is true.
But for those of us who are playing a wildly interconnected game where we’re dependent on forces who have not made the same commitment, and are susceptible to the loudest models? We will find ourselves forced to “play the game on the field” as they say. Whether we like it or not. Truth be damned.
God speed my friends.
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