The End of Average

Another reason people’s behavior feels trait-like is that you are a part of their context.

We like to believe that facts speak for themselves, but they most assuredly do not.

We live in a world that encourages—no, demands—that we measure ourselves against a horde of averages and supplies us with no end of justification for doing so.

An example might help illustrate the practical consequences of the ergodic switch. Imagine you want to reduce the number of errors you make when you are typing on a keyboard by changing the speed at which you type. The averagarian approach to this problem would be to evaluate the typing skills of many different people, then compare the average typing speed to the average number of errors. If you do this, you will find that faster typing speeds are associated with fewer errors, on average. This is where the ergodic switch comes in: an averagarian would conclude that if you wanted to reduce the number of errors in your typing, then you should type faster. In reality, people who type faster tend to be more proficient at typing in general, and therefore make fewer errors. But this is a “group level” conclusion. If you instead model the relationship between speed and errors at the level of the individual—for instance, by measuring how many errors you make when typing at different speeds—then you will find that typing faster actually leads to more errors. When you perform the ergodic switch—substituting knowledge about the group for knowledge about the individual—you get the exact wrong answer

How can a society predicated on the conviction that individuals can only be evaluated in reference to the average ever create the conditions for understanding and harnessing individuality

In 1924, the American journalist H. L. Mencken summarized the state of the educational system: “The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States . . . and that is its aim everywhere else.”

Only equal fit creates equal opportunity.

Instead of focusing on the “essence” of the employee, the context principle suggests that a better starting point is to focus on the performance that we need the employee to perform, and the context in which that performance will occur.

Shoda’s research embodies the second principle of individuality, the context principle, which asserts that individual behavior cannot be explained or predicted apart from a particular situation, and the influence of a situation cannot be specified without reference to the individual experiencing it.

one-dimensional thinking