James Altucher: Most people are idiots. What to do?

How the majority are wrong

"United Russia" will go to the elections under the slogan "The majority is not mistaken." The use of argumentum ad populum at the beginning of the 21st century seems like a joke, but it is not a joke. For a more or less educated person, such a slogan looks like an outright challenge to experience, science, the cultural and ethical foundations of society, and finally, common sense. For a person with a good memory, it evokes unpleasant associations: something similar was said by Mussolini and Hitler and repeated by Marine Le Pen, Castro and Chavez.

The meaninglessness of the slogan begins with the word “majority.” Most of whom? If this is the majority of the world’s population, then what does “United Russia” have to do with it and what to do with the fact that the majority of countries in the world have officially repeatedly condemned Russia’s policies from the UN rostrum recently? Maybe we are talking about the majority of the Russian population? But is Russia homogeneous? What if we divide this population into, say, men and women and compare their opinions (Christians and Muslims, Muscovites and non-Muscovites, young and old would also work)? And if the opinions of these two parts turn out to be different in some way, whose majority will be right and what to do with the other, wrong majority? And when a civil war breaks out, like 100 years ago in Russia, where do you always look for this right majority? Or do two majorities appear in this situation - on both sides of the front? Which one is right? The one who won? And when the majority often and without reason changes its opinion (and this happens regularly), when is it right - first or later?

But even if we discard the above considerations as “nit-picking,” the idea “the people are always right” directly contradicts Russian religious principles, the foundations of philosophy, and the basic ideas of psychology. Therefore, it is natural that from a historical, as well as from a sociological, point of view, it does not stand up to the most elementary scrutiny. Yes, it seems to us that there is no one to convince us of this: the current government in Russia categorically does not believe in this slogan itself and constantly demonstrates it openly.

Christianity (and Orthodoxy is still considered Christianity by its hierarchs) puts the individual at the forefront, not society, and denies both sinlessness and absolute wisdom of both. But if a person, in the view of a Christian, can still, through spiritual effort, become better and more capable of making morally correct decisions (and then only in dialogue with God), then society as a whole, in principle, does not know such a path. The Bible is clear in its contrast between personal decisions and the decisions of the majority. The majority inhabit Sodom and Gomorrah, rush back to Egypt, create the golden calf, constantly deviate from the faith and the Covenant, persecute and curse the prophets, finally demand the crucifixion of Jesus, and then persecute the holy martyrs and passion-bearers. Opposed to this majority are individuals - forefathers and prophets, teachers and preachers, saints and martyrs (who accept their torment from the majority).

Philosophy quite clearly defines the role of the majority in the process of social development. The new, more progressive, is created by a small minority and is initially always rejected by the majority, which intensively fights to preserve the old. Gradually, the new gains more and more supporters, and when there are enough of them, the new finally begins to dominate - and at that moment it becomes obsolete and becomes a brake on the next new. This is just a social implementation of the law of “negation of the negation,” one of the foundations of modern dialectical philosophy. “The tribe often thinks that the seer has turned his back on them, when, in fact, he has simply turned his face to the future,” as Ray Davis said. The majority is not just wrong, it is always wrong, because it is always a brake on the path of progressive development.

The majority are carriers of stereotypes and outdated norms. In the process of human development, the majority consistently supported cannibalism and human sacrifice, fratricidal wars, belief in the ability of prayer to cause rain and in the ability to predict the future from the entrails of animals, theories that the Earth is flat, mice are created from dirt on linen, from copulation of the devil with a woman children are born, and the plague is God's punishment. The majority not so long ago required men to wear stockings, earrings, hats and face paint, and then began to demand the same from women; the majority accepted slavery until the end of the 19th century, the monarchy until the beginning of the 20th. The majority in different countries already in the 20th century is known for accepting segregation and apartheid, fascism, communism, Maoism, National Socialism and other products of the demonic mind. The majority advocated jailing gays and banning women from wearing pants—oh, and not long before it advocated banning women from higher education. Many historical figures who were not accepted by the majority (Galileo or Giordano Bruno are the most commonplace examples) complete the pantheon of Christian martyrs. In this sense, of course, the “Christian majority” was no different from any other: sales of indulgences, witch hunts, church-sanctioned slavery, intra-Christian religious wars - these are only part of the “achievements” supported at one time by the Christian European majority. Stefan Zweig describes his horror at the support of the idea of ​​​​the outbreak of the First World War by the absolute majority of the population of Christian Germany.

The history of Russia is also full of mistakes of the majority - from the period of the Time of Troubles (when the majority supported either Godunov, then the Polish protege of the false Dmitry, then his enemy Vasily Shuisky, or bandits) to the revolution of 1917, when the majority supported radical political bandits. Historical figures revered today (justly and not so) by the Russian authorities - Rurik, Vladimir, Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, Stolypin and others - all went against the opinion of the majority, and sometimes did it with incredible cruelty. At the same time, the heroes of the past who tried to rely on the majority (such as Lenin or Yeltsin) are clearly not held in high esteem by official agitators today.

In practice, the authorities in Russia publicly demonstrate their rejection of the election slogan they have chosen. In all aspects of its activities, it consistently strives to minimize the role of self-government, decision-making by the majority, and the promotion of public initiatives. Most electoral processes, including gubernatorial elections, have been cancelled; regulation in all areas has reached a level unprecedented even in the USSR, the initiative of society is completely suppressed; the country's governance system has actually been reduced to personal manual administration through the orders of the president; the number of regulatory organizations, police officers, and employees of other law enforcement agencies per capita is higher than in most countries of the world; the level of “openness” and accountability required is also unprecedented; In fact, the freedom of any public action, primarily meetings, is limited. It is obvious that the government is not ready to entrust either the majority or any part of society with making more or less significant decisions, except perhaps the decision to once again support this very government.

Strange as it may sound, the real and not propaganda position of the Russian government, which denies the majority the right to make decisions, is in some sense reasonable. To err is human, the ancient Romans said. It is all the more common for society, the social majority, to make mistakes, say psychologists and sociologists.

The simplest (but insufficient) explanation for this phenomenon must be sought in the composition of the “majority”. Unfortunately for our world today, the majority in it are those to whom we would not like to trust responsible decisions. The majority of people both in the world and in Russia do not have higher education, and professionals in decision-making processes, economics, political science, and history make up a fraction of a percent. But what about higher education? In Russia, the average score on the basic (!) Unified State Exam in mathematics in 2015 was less than four on a five-point scale - more than 50% of graduates turned out to be C students even at the basic, primitive level of testing knowledge of mathematics. In Russia, a significant majority of men smoke (and together with women who smoke, this is 37% of the population). Most people in Russia put themselves at risk of early death from cardiovascular disease by leading an unhealthy lifestyle, and more than 60% of deaths from non-communicable diseases under the age of 70 in Russia are the result of this lifestyle (about 30% are alcoholism, and more 30% - cardiovascular diseases). According to statistics, more than 50% of people in Russia are not able to make an effective choice of a long-term partner and more than half of marriages break up (in 2014, the ratio of divorces to marriages reached 83%).

Most people have significant perceptual errors that affect decision making. The main ones are “anchoring” - accepting the proposed quantitative level or qualitative characteristic as a starting point, regardless of its meaningfulness (sellers in eastern markets know this very well, immediately quoting a price many times higher than the desired one); agreement with false induction, that is, accepting as true a logically correct construction based on an incorrect premise; revaluation of one’s own experience and available information (a rare, but experienced or well-known event seems to us more probable than a more frequent, but unknown to us from experience). Finally, most people tend to significantly overestimate their abilities and capabilities. Simple surveys show: about 70% of people believe that they drive a car “better than average”; Experiments in which subjects are asked to answer questions with "90% accuracy" usually produce responses that are no better than 50–60% accurate. These phenomena are especially pronounced in the professional sphere: more than 90% of investment funds show results worse than indices; more than 50% of startups do not survive a year, more than 90% die without bringing profit to the creators and investors; the average investor in the market loses to inflation; people tend to participate in competitions in which less than half of the participants win, more often one of several wins (accordingly, the majority overestimates their chances). The majority (statistically) believes commercially motivated falsifications, such as homeopathy or financial pyramids, without taking into account the negative results of scientific tests and statistical data (not to mention logical considerations); most are easily swayed by publicity stunts, make irrational financial decisions, act to their detriment in group interactions because they are unable to adequately calculate potential outcomes, and/or engage in emotional rather than rational actions. A clear indication of the limited ability to make rational decisions is the religiosity of the majority of the world's population - adherence to religion obviously cannot be explained by rational considerations.

But the majority makes poor decisions not only because it consists mainly of individuals who are unprepared for rational decision-making. Society is under pressure from groupthink - the effect of the desire for conformity and the illusion of a lack of personal responsibility in the process of joining a group decision. The fact that a group thinks worse than individuals individually, and that the “majority” is more dangerous than an individual, is well known to legislators since the times of Ancient Rome. The commission of an act by a group is an aggravating circumstance (about the same as committing it while intoxicated) in a large number of criminal codes: legislators try to balance the decreasing ability of a group to think adequately by increasing the severity of the punishment so that group members are no less careful than individually.

Majority group decisions are usually not informed and deliberate, but are induced by a combination of the actively promoted ideas of a small number of group leaders (pursuing their own interests) and the strong desire of the majority of group members to conform to the majority and avoid conflict. “In a group of people...conformity or the desire for social harmony leads to incorrect or irrational decision making,” writes Irving Janis, the originator of the concept of groupthink. The results of numerous experiments confirm that even large groups of professionals who make decisions with a majority vote, as a rule, demonstrate a downward trend in the quality of their decisions, very soon “sinking” to the level of decisions that are less rational and effective than those of non-professionals making the same decisions individually.

“Group members try to minimize conflict and reach a common solution without sufficiently critically evaluating alternative points of view, actively suppressing deviant opinions and isolating themselves from outside influence. In such a situation, like-mindedness becomes more valuable than following logic and rational thinking. In this case, the level of conformity increases significantly, information essential to the group’s activities is subject to tendentious interpretation, and unjustified optimism and belief in the unlimited possibilities of the group are cultivated. Information that does not agree with the accepted line is ignored or significantly distorted by group members. The result is an impression of unanimous decision-making. Groupthink can have far-reaching social and political consequences: history is replete with examples of tragic mistakes made as a result of such decisions,” argues Irving Janis.

He also identifies eight signs of the development of the phenomenon of “groupthink” in a group.

1. The idea that all decisions made are correct, which creates unjustified optimism and encourages taking a high level of risk.
2. Belief in the group’s understanding of “real” moral truths and, as a result, group members ignoring the real consequences of their actions.
3. Ignoring information from outside if it may cast doubt on the conclusions made by the group.
4. Presenting the group's opponents as weak, self-interested, evil and stupid.
5. Self-censorship by each group member of his own ideas that may contradict the general opinion of the group.
6. The illusion of unanimity, when silence is accepted as a sign of agreement.
7. Direct pressure from the group on each of its members, accusing any group member of disloyalty who questions its decisions.
8. The emergence of “thought controllers” of various types (“informers”, “ideologists”, “fanatics”) - members of the group who protect the group from information that contradicts the general opinion of the group and from opinions that differ from the accepted one.

The modern developed world is quite consistently moving towards greater democratization, which at first glance looks like a movement towards increasing weight in decisions made by the “majority”. Many famous scientists and politicians even accused democracy of striving for “subordination to group decisions,” including Francis Galton, the greatest psychologist (he was also Charles Darwin’s cousin). “To become disillusioned with democracy, it only takes five minutes to talk to the average voter,” said Winston Churchill, a consistent supporter of democracy, meaning, of course, not democracy itself, but its vulgar understanding - the so-called “ochlocracy”, the direct rule of the majority. Of course, the “skew” towards the group side is more likely a dangerous deviation, a temporary stop on the path of democratic development, than the norm, and democratic leaders understand this well.

The real achievement of a developed democracy is not the adoption of the position of the majority or the creation of mechanisms for group decision-making, but the protection of the rights of the minority and the successful suppression of the groupthink effect, while maintaining the ability of all members of society to influence the governance of the country. Developed democracies have created a whole arsenal of measures and mechanisms that protect society from the dictatorship of the majority and the effect of groupthink:

• granting individuals the right to individual, rather than group, decisions in the widest possible range of issues (significant expansion of a person’s right to make their own decisions and tolerance, departure from group standards, individual decisions when voting);
• the natural division of society into competing groups (including parties) not for the purpose of choosing the best one by the majority, but for the purpose of forming a palette of different opinions that prevent the emergence of a conformal consensus;
• freedom of access to information, which provokes the emergence of different opinions;
• freedom to criticize society and government and even provoke such criticism in the process of political struggle;
• mandatory frequent turnover of leaders;
• taking into account minority opinion in a variety of forms;
• the creation of bicameral decision-making bodies, with the formation of chambers according to different principles, and sometimes one of the chambers is not formed at all by the method of majoritarian elections;
• formation of mandatory expert filters for any significant decisions;
• the creation of a rigid structure of basic laws (such as a constitution, a bill of rights) that protect the foundations of democracy and the rights of minorities and cannot be repealed simply by a decision of the majority;
• distribution of powers - in government bodies, in systems of decision-making, control, lawmaking;
• federalization with the provision of the right to make a large number of decisions at the local level;
• finally, maximum individualization of the decision-making system even within the system of power, including by endowing the official with maximum freedom of decision-making (naturally within the framework of the law) and the right to initiative.

Finally, a special layer of citizens, sometimes called the “intelligentsia,” plays a huge role in protecting society from groupthink in democratic countries (and in others too). These people, as a rule, are highly educated and professional in their fields, have an exaggeratedly individualistic character and take the position of critics of society, existing reality, and power - a position that sometimes seems destructive (“what are you suggesting, why are you only criticizing?”) , but is extremely important in protecting society from the effects of groupthink, as well as in stimulating constructive development. Intellectuals are highly respected in democratic societies and, of course, are persecuted in societies where groupthink serves the interests of power supported by the majority.

With all this, one cannot help but admit that democracy periodically falters - and in the most developed democracies, argumentum ad populum and groupthink break through barriers from time to time - this is how fatal mistakes appear, leading to dire consequences. Democracy, for example, did not protect Germany from Nazism, and (an example of a different scale, but indicative) Great Britain from being on the brink of leaving the EU. Moreover, in the latter case, we see how the protection mechanisms in a democratic system begin to work: despite the referendum decision, the United Kingdom is not yet in a hurry to act.

A democratic society, both structurally and in terms of processes, is contrasted in this sense with primitive groups led by autocratic leaders. It is in the latter (as strange as it may seem at first glance) that decisions are ultimately made by the majority, the crowd: the majority always has the physical opportunity to change the leader, and public institutions destroyed (or not created) in autocracies do not protect him, as in democracies. Of course, autocratic leaders do not believe in this possibility, but only due to the same errors of perception - overestimating their own strengths and underestimating the likelihood of negative events. According to statistics, the vast majority of authoritarian leaders are replaced in the process of popular confrontation, the majority of such leaders still end their lives either as a result of murder or in prison. The slogan “The Duce is not mistaken”, which, as a rule, is accepted by the majority in a primitive group - be it Mussolini himself, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, the leader of a small gang or the leader of a destructive cult - is just a reflection of the slogan “the majority is not mistaken” in the matter of choosing this leader; The “not mistaken” majority often changes its opinion.

Autocratic leaders seek to induce groupthink in the society they govern in order to protect themselves from competition. The leaders of such primitive groups, in the struggle to maintain their status, play on the simple desires and vices of the majority. Flattery to society, flirting with primitive emotions, including the use of overestimation by members of society of their capabilities and their desire for conformity, to join the majority, whose opinion is presented as the opinion of the authorities, are standard attributes of the policies of authoritarian and autarkic leaders. But their irremovability, the formation of a ossified circle of the elite, the active struggle against criticism under the guise of fighting “enemies of society”, the isolation of a significant part or the entire society from contacts with the outside world lead not only to the dominance of groupthink, but to the formation of “nested groups”, a situation , in which groupthink becomes the basis for decision-making not only in an “obedient society”, but also in power itself, at every level of the hierarchy, including the highest.

Much has already been written about the fact that the ideology of the “primitive group” has won in Russia, including by me. It should not be surprising that the ruling party (and in fact, a technical structure that allows one group to retain power in the country and confirm its right to it through elections) takes for self-promotion a slogan that reflects the very essence of the thinking of a primitive group. The only strange thing is that this slogan is pronounced too openly: as a rule, members of a primitive group instinctively hide their position and their morals, and frankness rather frightens them than attracts them. Apparently, the level of quality of work with society (as, indeed, of all other activities) in power is falling; power itself is becoming a victim of the destructive consequences of groupthink and the promotion of primitive, ineffective and even self-destructive ideas to the fore. Or maybe it’s even simpler: this slogan is generated by the subtle irony of contractors creating the “image” of “United Russia”. Cynical professionals who, for a lot of money, are ready to organize PR even for the hell of it, seeing the frankly low level of customer requests, allow themselves to enjoy open trolling.

The appearance of this slogan here and now has its own moral. The further the situation in Russia develops, the more obvious the attempt becomes to build a kind of replica of the USSR, with its pseudo-ideology of “dictatorship of the majority.” The experience of the USSR, as we all remember, began, continued and ended tragically. It seems that Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel is right again: history, repeating itself twice, appears the first time as a tragedy, the second as a farce. Perhaps this transition - from tragedy to farce - is the main achievement of Russia in the last 25 years, and the appearance of such a slogan is a good sign: living in an era of farce is not very pleasant, but still better than in a tragic era.

Kub-Life

Author: Yuri Palamarchuk

On the one hand, as Aristotle said, man is a social being, that is, he is part of something larger. On the other hand, according to Henrik Ibsen, “The minority may be right, the majority is always wrong.” There is a conflict - if you are a social person and go with the majority, then you are doomed to make mistakes. If you are not social, then you are not a person in the full sense of the word. The only salvation here may be to join the minority who have at least some chance of seeing things correctly. Otherwise, one remains to accept the erroneous opinion of the majority.

Before starting to debate whether the majority is always wrong, it is important to exclude those primitive questions on which one can speculate. For example, if you ask the majority whether it is bad to get cancer and whether it is good to die under the wheels of a train, the answers will be “yes” (bad) and “no” (not good), respectively. And a minority will also give similar answers (not counting a very tiny percentage of psychos). This technique can then be used as an attempt to refute the claim that the majority is always wrong.

Therefore, it is important here to ask less axiomatic questions that require a person’s thought process and independent opinion. Thus, when asked “is it bad to be sick,” the minority may already take a more tolerant position – “depending on what,” “or maybe it’s good if the body needs rest and care.” And to the question “is it good to die,” the same minority will, with greater confidence, give answers in the spirit of “good if you are terminally ill” or “good, because it is important for human evolution.”

If you discard questions and answers, which are just opinions, what remains are actions. It is quite easy to see from actions that the majority always act normally and get normal (average) results. And if a person has enough average results, then it makes sense for him to join the majority. Fedya got married? And I'm getting married. Yarik went to IT? And I'll go. Mykola bought a car? And I will buy it. Somehow, in a stream of similar fates, the likelihood of driving into a ditch is lower than if you are alone on an uncharted road.

If you go from practice to theory, then here too you can quickly see the ceiling of the majority - the average result of problems solved in mathematics will always be lower than the result of a genius and higher than the result of an ignoramus. That is, this example shows that if a person’s level is not up to par, then the majority can have a positive influence on him (reach out to us, my dear!). And vice versa - if a person thinks a cut above, then the majority will always pull him down.

In this regard, the statement of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius is interesting:

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

That is, according to Aurelius, the goal of life is not to go with the majority, but to avoid it, finding oneself in the ranks of madmen. The word “madmen” here does not have such a negative connotation, especially if you replace it with the more appropriate “dissidents.” Do you feel internal rejection when reading the word “dissent”? Same thing. Genes of obedience and propaganda of conformity in one bottle. For most people

- bad,
the other
- bad. Vysotsky in his song “The Pacer’s Run” also provides food for thought.

Here comes the rebellion:

No! The mountains will not be golden! I will be the last to cross the target. I’ll remember these spurs for him, I’ll fall behind him in the gallop.

and even hopelessness (you really want to be like everyone else):

What is wrong with me, what am I doing, how dare I - Indulging my enemy! I simply don’t control myself, I can’t come first!

but in the end comes a compromise:

What to do? All that remains for me is to throw out my jockey and ride as if in a herd, under the saddle, with a bridle, but without it.

As Tolstoy said in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Paraphrasing and passing this expression through the prism of the normal distribution, we get the following: “All normal people are similar to each other, each crazy person is different in his own way.”

In the center there are normal people, on the edges there are dissidents.

This is the difficulty for someone who decided to become an outsider - there is no recipe, no examples from life - and there cannot be any. Because the path of a psycho cannot be repeated - it is a jazz improvisation in a certain time and place. The only thing the pacer's story can serve as evidence of what dissent can do.

It all starts with thinking. Therefore, if you choose the path of an outsider, then you should choose the appropriate thinking. Which? Yes, anything, as long as it’s not like the majority. That is, what you need to be most afraid of is similarity of opinions on issues: home, work, study, money, and so on. The value system is what allows you to identify with a particular group. That’s why it’s important to thoughtfully and slowly go through your value system.

The ideal case is when all values ​​are at least half a product of the inner “I”. But if for some reason you are too lazy to think (ah-ah-ah!), then the easiest way would be to go by the opposite. For example, if one of the values ​​of a normal person is a high position, then in our case a high position cannot in any case be included in the value system. Or if the main value of a normal person’s life is to give birth to a child/buy an apartment/(and so on), then this cannot in any case be included in our value system. This doesn't mean you can't have children or buy an apartment. No, of course you can. But the point is that if these events happen, they will be the result of other values. For example, “realize your potential.”

There are always more normal ones. Therefore, one should not be surprised at how strongly society resists other faiths and dissent, and how strongly this desire to obey and do everything like everyone else sits within us. What can you not do for the sake of calm stability! Dissent can have a lot of pitfalls and require an increased margin of safety for the raft, even if it goes not against, but across the current. And the question here is not only why the helmsman needs all this, but also whether he has enough strength for this risky battle with conformity.

James Altucher: Most people are idiots. What to do?

You decided to pass off one of the most successful books of all time as yours.

You take a book that won a National Book Award, rewrite it from scratch, and pretend it's yours. You send it to 20 publishers. You sign it with a fictitious name.

100% of publishers refuse. And I liked it!

Two things are striking about this:

A) NONE of the publishers realized they had rejected a National Book Award winner. B) They ALL thought the book was terrible. The book that received the highest award.

It was.

A writer named Chuck Ross was curious. He picked up Jerzy Kosinski's book Stepping Stones, which won the National Book Award in 1969, and decided to have a little fun.

He rewrote the entire book and then sent it to all publishers, signing it with a false name.

Not only did publishers reject the book, even Random House, the publisher that published the original, rejected it with a formal response.

The book has been compared to Kafka in his best years. This is a short, bitter book. One of my favorites. I highly recommend her.

Does this mean that most people are idiots? May be.

This means:

• Most people who have an opinion are probably wrong.
• If people don't know who you are, they are more likely to reject you.
• Nobody wakes up and says, “Today I’m going to make some unknown person a superstar!”
• Most people don't worry about work. What well. But you shouldn't trust them with your success.
• Even successful people don't want you to jump the line. I always hear: “Everyone must pay their price.” Oh shit. This means:
• You must take control of your career and opportunities.
• Have you written your first book? Self-publish it. Did you make a movie? Download it on Amazon.
• Have an idea for a radio show? Make a podcast.
• Want to write an application? Don't collect money. Save money, write an application and get clients.
• Do you want to become a movie star? Write your own script or direct your own movie (like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky).

Most people can't be entrepreneurs or creatives. Don't believe those who say that anyone can become an entrepreneur.

They are lying.

Most people can't cope with being constantly rejected and the anxiety and depression that comes with it.

This has happened to me many times. Honestly, it wasn't worth it.

This is a dead end situation, because in order to be successful, you need to be unique. To be unique, no one needs to know you. And no one does a favor to a stranger.

Dr. Seuss's first book was rejected 27 times. “Too different from other children's books on the market to warrant sales,” wrote one top editor.

Harry Potter was rejected by every publisher until the 7-year-old daughter of one of the publishers begged her father to publish it.

If Moses wrote the 10 Commandments today, he would be rejected by all publishers and would probably give up. I would give up if I were him.

Even 50 Shades of Gray started out as samizdat. The novel had sold 250,000 copies on Amazon and was still being rejected by many publishers. Even Amazon's own publisher. It was eventually published by Simon & Schuster. And it sold more than 125 million copies.

Don't trust anyone. Don't listen to anyone. Ignore them.

Either give up or bypass the middlemen.

So I did an experiment:

I took 50 Shades of Gray and hired someone in India to take a synonym dictionary and change every word in the book. For example, “She was rushing to take her tests” became “Brenda was rushing to get to her exam on time.” I used a fake name, changed the title, made a book cover and uploaded it to Amazon. It is now a published book.

This is exactly the novel 50 Shades of Gray, in which every word has been changed, sentence by sentence. Maybe... just maybe... I was hoping there would be a lot of sales.

About 80 copies were sold. Oh shit.

But it cost me about $200 and two hours of my time. It was an experiment.

Why does 50 Shades of Gray sell so well? What did E.L. do? James? I learned from my failed experiment.

Why was Fifty Shades a success?

• She had a platform. She probably had close to a million fans on various sites.
• Fifty Shades of Gray came out around the same time the Kindle became popular. And people could read such soft erotica in public places without fear of people seeing what they were reading. Avoiding judgment.
• He was unique.

She had a platform. It was the right time and the right technology. But it would never have happened if she had not experimented, built a platform, written a book without “permission,” and published it herself.

She's lucky.

This is not about samizdat. And not about how stupid others are (well, maybe a little). It's about not waiting for permission. To experiment with whatever excites you. You will learn lessons from every experiment. There is no other way to learn. A billion people want to do what you do.

Stupid people, mean people, people who hate you, people who don't want you to move forward. People who will even sabotage you. People who are disappointed with their own lives, who are dealing with their own problems, are sad, anxious, afraid.

Try to get around them. Every day. It's not their fault. But it does not matter. You have to get around them.

You must try every day.

Now I'm doing another experiment. I really like him. So far, more than three million people have seen it.

It's actually not going the way I expected. But we'll see. Perhaps he will fail. But I stopped worrying about it.

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