This is the fifth in a series of micro-essays I developed from a talk I gave in 2018. The talk and essays explore foundational truths I’ve learned during the first half of my statistically-expected life.
Large organizations lie more than small ones
This isn’t a rant about any particular organization, it’s just a heuristic. Like most heuristics, it is true enough, on average, to be helpful, but shouldn’t be assumed to be true in any specific situation.
The larger the organization promoting an idea, the less likely the idea is to be true. This doesn’t mean that big orgs are all liars, only that they’re more likely to lie than smaller organizations. We’ll walk through the logic shortly, but first, let’s define a few things so we don’t get hung up on semantics later:
For our purposes, the truth is simply a model that accurately and precisely predicts the future within some domain and a lie is a flawed model that makes (often intentionally) poor predictions. Communicating truth enables those around the communicator to make generally better predictions, which results in better decisions, strategy, and outcomes. Communicating a lie introduces error into the models that those around the communicator use to craft strategy and influence decision-making, resulting in generally worse outcomes. Lying is commonly employed in zero-sum interactions, with one party intentionally distorting the model of the other in order to gain an advantage.
With me so far? Good. Now let’s take a quick dive into some history….
Portrait of Galileo by Justus Sustermans (Wikipedia)
You may have heard of a guy named Galileo. He was a physicist and astronomer, born in 1564 in what’s now Italy. in 1615, he was investigated by the Roman Inquisition for having published works describing how the Earth revolved around the Sun (originally theorized by Copernicus). The Catholic church—the most powerful organization of the time—forced him to recant and confined him to house arrest for the rest of his life (where he continued writing papers defending his heliocentric views).
What’s important here isn’t the absurdity of the church’s position or the severity of the punishment. It’s that the church, with its vast resources and power not only wasn’t the source of the scientific advance, but that it (1) actively promoted a flawed model, and that (2) the church successfully prevented Galileo’s ideas from becoming common knowledge—at least for a while. The takeaway is that the church’s dogma temporarily defeated Galileo’s science, not because the church’s model of the universe was correct, but because the church was large and powerful. Its strength and power made the question of correctness virtually irrelevant. Galileo, on the other hand, absolutely had to be right in order to have any chance at all.
Galileo’s situation is a classic example of how most battles of ideas have nothing to do with right vs wrong. When a dispute consists of nothing more than two sincere-but-contradicting theories, the truth generally surfaces pretty quickly. The only times where conflict persists is when correctness is pitted against power. Allow me to explain:
Large organizations, by definition, have more resources and power than small ones. We should expect a large, sophisticated organization to be among the first to adopt any newly-discovered truths—so long as that new data doesn’t threaten the organization in some way. Organizations incorporate benign and/or helpful truth immediately. People tend to do the same, but more slowly than organization, since the scale of an organization amplifies the value of even minor improvements.
But what happens when an organization finds an emerging truth to be … well … inconvenient? At that point, the leadership has to make a decision. Do they embrace the truth and bear the organizational costs? I see three potential courses of action:
- Obviously, some leaders will pursue truth purely on principle.
- Small and relatively powerless organizations will have no choice but to recognize the new reality and adjust accordingly.
- Some organizations will try to promote a competing model of “truth” which supports the organization’s objectives.
The important concept to grasp here is that the only people/organizations who can even attempt option #3 are those with the power to wage a protracted battle of ideas. Yes, there will be costs to the organization when they finally succumb to the truth, but those organizations benefit from public acceptance of the flawed model for as long as they can synthesize support for their narrative.
Not all large organizations lie. Not every idea promoted by a small organization is true. But being wrong tends to exterminate the small very quickly, and has relatively little impact on the large. Statistically, if you’re being lied to by an organization, it’s probably a large one.
TAKEAWAY: Large organizations lie more than small ones because they can and because it benefits them. If you’re not a large, powerful incumbent, you had better be right and you had better prioritize discovery and adaptation over persuasion.
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