The Marshmallow Test
~ if you behave like a four-year old, are you the Leader? ~
There was a classic research paper, years ago: The Marshmallow Test. Researchers set a marshmallow on the table in front of a little kid. They told the kid: “We’re going to leave the room, and when we come back? If the marshmallow is still there, then we give you ANOTHER marshmallow, and you get to eat BOTH of them.”
Most of those kids, as soon as the researcher left the room, were stuffing marshmallow in their mouth-hole. Derp. SOME kids? Sat patiently until the researcher returned, and those kids got TWO marshmallows.
The first group, consistently, grew-up to have poor Impulse Control and poor Planning. They were easily tricked into self-destructive behaviors, because they would constantly grab-at whatever ‘looks good right NOW.’ The second group built themselves, valuing their future abilities and accomplishments and abundance.
Same concept, different scenario: The Monkey Trap. You make a sturdy box, with a small opening in the front of it like a bird-feeder. Find a stiff fruit which only BARELY fits into that hole. Peg and tie that ‘bird-feeder’ to a tree, easy access for monkeys. Monkeys see the box, sniff, notice the fruit inside!
That monkey reaches inside to grab the fruit! Once his fist is wrapped around it, unfortunately, then his hand is TOO LARGE to exit that box-hole. The monkey, sadly, is too dumb and short-sighted and greedy to notice. It lacks all strategic thinking and insight! The monkey KEEPS trying to pull the fruit out of the box, even AFTER it saw that its fruited-fist is too large for the hole! They start to whine in frustration, which is your alert-mechanism that you just CAUGHT a dumb-monkey. Whack it on the head, and enjoy dinner. Your orchard has one less monkey, which means MANY times more fruit to enjoy, months from now. Smart Human!
Another example: Zimbardo’s Fundamental Attribution Error. When a coworker is late to work, the monkey scoffs and says “That worker MUST be lazy, wasteful, unprofessional, incapable of functioning properly. They are BAD inside themselves.” Meanwhile, when that same superior-FEELING monkey is themselves late for work? “Oh, but it wasn’t ME who was late! It was the traffic, and the coffee pot being broken, and my alarm wasn’t loud enough to wake me until it rang for twenty minutes! Every time that *I* fail, it MUST be because of outside circumstances!”
That MONKEY is the one who is incapable of functioning properly. They never realize where they screw-up, and they never take the time to learn HOW to solve the problems which they themselves caused!
More vivid examples:
“Ha! You are so DUMB for wasting time digging a fire-pit and gathering stones around it and piling debris and dead branches to make a fire! It barely provides you any warmth, tonight! I, in contrast, MUST be so much smarter than you, because I only had to spend ten minutes to BURN-DOWN my entire house; I was SO much warmer, tonight, compared to you. Idiot.”
“Oh, look at that ripe pear high on that tree! I know, obviously, the best way to get it; I’ll chop the tree down. Once it falls to the ground, then I’ll have an easy time grabbing that ONE ripe pear. …dang, now that it fell, and I bit the pear, I realize that only PART of it was ripe. I’ll just eat that half of the pear, and throw the rest on the ground. Dang. Gotta find a whole new tree, to nibble a chunk of pear.”
“I think I’m a genius, because I heard about an idea someone else came up with, which I imitate, proving how smart I am for imitating others! The plan: I lie to the dumbest people, tricking them into believing me, so that I can steal from them until they all hate me! I could probably get $10 from each dumb person, before they realize that they cannot ever trust me again. I’m gonna get to waste all my theft on booze and luxury-kitsch, so that I can LOOK amazing while other people build what generates real value. Genius!”
“I was wandering in the woods, and I noticed on the ground: FOUR gummy-bears! What luck! I ate them immediately, and started looking around that area to see if someone else had carelessly dropped more of them. Heh — that person must be so stupid and inattentive, to drop so many gummy-bears and not even realize it. Oh, look! THREE more gummies, over there! Yay. Munch. Hmmm… any more FREE stuff that I can just GRAB for my own pleasure? Ah. Here — TWO more gummies. This is a pattern, for sure. I’m so smart for looking around to grab anything I can steal. Yay! Another gummy! …aw, that looks like the last one. Now, uh… wait. How did I end-up in this PIT? Hey, somebody, tell me how to get out of this PIT! Someone else is responsible for solving the problems I caused — the smart people should obey me, as my slave, for my own benefit, so that I don’t suffer the consequences of my own greed!”
Does any of this sound familiar, yet?
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Yup. The folks who you call ‘elites’ are exactly that sort of nincompoop. They imagine that they are qualified to command society, while they specifically NEED to trick-dumb-folks into their exploitation-trap, only to waste all that thievery on their own self-indulgence. That Dictator says “Look at how efficient I am! I only needed to spend forty second to tell my henchmen: ‘go around the countryside, slaughtering my own farmers and craftsmen, so that you can feed their meat to me.’ I only spent forty second of effort, and in return, I was able to cannibalize THOUSANDS of productive, essential workers’ corpses. I’m such a Wise and Powerful Leader!” That’s Epsw*ne. That’s Zuckerborg. That’s the Influencer-Seminar sh*tshow.
Rigor
Imagine an alternative society: all the 13 year olds in school are gathered, to be tested across numerous instances and domains. We know from plenty of research that peoples’ personalities rarely change, and they almost never change by that much. By the time you are a middle schooler, we can already tell the sort of person you will be for your entire life. And, that age is when it is most VALUABLE to make the following determination, as well as making the ARGUMENT which follows it, because that gives those kids an entire lifetime to act upon those insights. Here:
Each kid is presented with a Rule Book for a Strategy Game, each of them sitting in their own partitioned space separately. They all have the same amount of time to read the rules and think-through how that might impact play; how do you achieve victory? How do you have to position yourself to get there, working backwards from that goal toward the beginning? What counterfactuals and alternatives exist, which would create problems or vulnerabilities for your own strategy? Aren’t those same vulnerabilities in your OWN strategy simultaneously the BEST ploys for disrupting your opponent? Ah…
Then, those kids are randomly clumped into a group of four players. Each kid plays two matches of that Strategy Game against one of the other people in their group. After three such pairings, then each kid in that group has played against all other kids in their group, twice. Take the accumulated score of each kid, across all six matches that they played, to rank them within that group. The top two kids from that group move-on to the next bracket. This is a Tournament.
At the end of that Tournament, you have a ranking which sorted ALL the kids, showing you with high precision and accuracy WHO was best-able to read-the-rules and deduce-strategies, implementing them effectively. Do this for MANY new Strategy Games, on boards or with cards, dice, et cetera.
NONE of those Strategy Games involve ‘lying and charming to trick dumb people.’ They all involve ‘thinking-through the rules, each player with the same rules applied to the same set of pieces, turn-based, timed.’ You cannot win by being a manipulator; you win by being a thinker, a planner.
Similarly: you give those kids a list of items as an inventory. Each item has a dollar-amount that it costs. All the kids start with the same dollar-budget. They each pick a set of items from that inventory, budgeted, as their Survival Kit. Now, give each kid their budgeted kit, and set them in similarly-resourced locations in the wilderness. You’ll need drones circling, and a smartwatch on each of them, to monitor them for any sign of distress or medical emergencies. Kids can tap-out whenever they want; track their duration of self-sustain and their final level of accomplishment.
The kids who are accustomed to ‘tricking others into slaver’ have no one to enslave. The kids who relied upon ‘looking cool for social approval’ have no audience voting on their style. The kids who throw tantrums until someone gives them everything and does all the work for them? Nope. Rank them all across each parameter of success.
Dive deeper than self-sufficiency and strategic planning! Ask each kid to listen to another person describe their problems, to try their best to discern what the core emotional and physical needs of that other person are. Then, the kid must think of creative solutions to the other person’s problems! After that, they must write a description of HOW to solve those problems, for that other person to read. They’ll have to present the concepts in a way that the other person is not mis-led or confused! Watch the efficacy of that empathic-listening, creative problem-solving, and instruction, when the other person tries to implement that kid’s ‘solutions’.
After all these sorts of tests, repeated and various, we have a systemic demonstration of the real, core competencies of Leadership.
Now, with that composite rank of all those middle schoolers, we have a roster of competency. SHOW all the kids that roster, with the names and faces of the folks at the top, and emphasize repeatedly: “THIS is where YOU stand on that roster, as a Percentile among the group. THIS is how far your own total score was, BELOW the top-performers, as a quantitative measure of ‘what you achieved compared to the best.’ This is the real, demonstrable quality of your ability to plan, implement, and understand other people’s needs and problems.”
The ONLY ‘elites’ are the ones who are demonstrably L33T. No one else can claim such; it would have been seen in their results!
Now, explain to those kids: “Either you invest your time and attention to improve across these kinds of tasks, or else you are NOT fit to lead. If we allow scammers and idiots to make decisions, then they ruin everything for everyone. The BEST result for yourself, in your own life, is to follow the guidance of Leaders who prove two things: they are telling you HOW to solve the problems that matter to YOU, meeting YOUR needs, NOT their own self-indulgence; they THINK-ahead properly, creative and strategic and diligent, without giving-up or wasting resources, without seeking ‘someone else to do all the work’ or ‘ways to trick folks into BELIEVING that I am better than I really am.’ You can choose to follow these Leaders, or you can suffer the consequences of your pretense, imagining that you are wise-enough to solve the problems you cause, discerning-enough to tell on your own WHO knows best. You don’t, so you shouldn’t. It’s up to you.”
Let those kids pick, at that point! “You have three places you can choose amongst: either walk over to the L33T-group, where those who demonstrated real competencies will listen to YOUR problems and find solutions which YOU value; or, rush toward the folks who are LURING you with cool-popularity and nice-sounding-scams full of marshmallows; or else, wander alone and pretend you are fit to rule yourself.”
When you can see vividly, by real results, WHO is competent, then your own choice afterwards is entirely your own fault. The Kingdom of the Wise survives.
