Re:Don't Feed the Thought Leaders
by gumby on Thursday June 10, 2021 @09:48PM
(#27468457)
A side point: the hedgehog/fox analogy originated with philosopher Isaiah Berlin.
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Re:Don't Feed the Thought Leaders
by zimpenfish on Friday June 11, 2021 @03:23AM
(#27470294)
Technically, I suppose, it was Archilochus: "The fox knows many things; the hedgehog one great thing."
Tetlock seems to have a slightly different interpretation to Berlin - (paraphrased from [1]) "hedgehogs have one grand theory; foxes are skeptical about grand theories".
[1] https://longnow.org/seminars/02007/jan/26/why-foxes-are-bett...
I was immediately reminded of the fable of the Fox and the Cat (in which the Cat wins because following its one heuristic takes no time while the Fox has to deliberate to find the best of its many smart solutions – and the dogs are coming fast). Apparently the tales are related https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fox_and_the_Cat_(fable)#Th...
(while Aesop's https://aesopsfables.org/F89_The-Fox-and-the-Hedgehog.html is completely unrelated, though also interesting!)
Re:Don't Feed the Thought Leaders
by FriedrichN on Friday June 11, 2021 @06:50AM
(#27471603)
One thing to note is that Berlin does not consider the fox as all around better than the hedgehog. Usually you'll see that people have a preference for the fox but Berlin considers some great people as hedgehogs such as Plato, Nietzsche, and Dostoevsky. He also stresses the fact that it's merely a metaphor and shouldn't be applied strictly.
The book is absolutely worth a read if you're into the subject.