Peter Thiel’s book ‘ZERO TO ONE’ is on the bookshelf of every Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Thiel is the billionaire who created PayPal with Elon Musk. He then went on to become the first external investor in Facebook, which disrupted the media landscape. He then went on to invest in Airbnb which disrupted accommodation. Then Linked-In, which disrupted recruitment and B2B advertising, and Spotify which disrupted the music industry.
You may be wondering how Thiel spots these disruptions ahead of others. How he in effect can predict the future. It’s very simple. It’s on the very first page of his book. He asks one just question, before working with someone.
What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
Thiel believes that the disruption that creates new industries and destroys old ones is caused by a truth being spotted in the world. A truth that the new have embraced and the old have either ignored, or decided to fight against.
Why are these important truths ignored? Why could the truth in the KWYRA video’s be ignored for a short while?
On the very first page Thiel proposes the reason why important truths are ignored. It’s in the second part of his question – ‘that few people agree with you on.’
Thiel says it is psychologically difficult to say the unpopular, to voice the unaccepted. It takes courage to go against the usual, or as he puts it:
‘Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius.
This is something we all instinctively understand. Our need to fit in, to check with others, or more correctly avoid humiliation is so embedded we don’t even notice it. It can be expressed in many different ways. A common question to a friend might be ‘what are you going to wear to
So will the fear of looking stupid stop the growth of KWYRA? No, because as Thiel’s billions are testimony to, the truth always happens. The disruption always comes. No matter what tries to stop it. It is inevitable.
There is a basis in science behind this. After the 2nd world war many psychologists became interested to discover how millions of people were convinced to take part in the terrible atrocities that had occurred. These psychologists ran many experiments to understand how we are controlled by the powerful forces of authority, the people in charge, and conformity, the people around us.
It is conformity that Thiel suggests causes us to ignore an unpopular truth, and the experiments back him up.
In the 1950’s psychologist Solomon Asch ran one of the most famous conformity experiments.
Asch would show groups of 8 men a card on which was a single line. He would then produce a 2nd card with three lines of different lengths. Asch would then ask the group which of the three lines on the 2nd card was the same length as the original line on the 1st card. The group were asked to provide their answers one-by-one, by saying out loud the name of the letter under the line.
Asch ran the experiment with a control group and found unsurprisingly that a vast majority of people were easily able to provide the right answer. In fact only 0.7% of people gave the wrong answer. Asch had proven that 99.3% of the time people were able to judge the lengths of lines on different cards and provide accurate answers.
Asch then made a change to the set-up. This change would cause the number of people giving the correct answer to collapse from 99.3% to just 26%. Yes, with something as clear, simple and obvious as judging the length of a line Asch could get 74% of people to give the wrong answer.
The change to the set-up Asch made was to only experiment on one person. This person would be the subject of the experiment. What this person wouldn’t know is that Asch had asked everyone else in the group to give the same wrong answer. So if the real answer were line C, the rest of the group would all give the answer as line A. The subject would be the last person to be asked for an answer.
You can imagine how it must have felt to have even the first person in the group answer confidently with the wrong answer ‘A’. And then the second and third, all the way around the table to you, the subject in 8th place. What would you do? Stick to your guns? Or fold?
What Asch found was at this point 74% of the people tested would give the wrong answer, so that they could fit in with the group. They denied the evidence of their own eyes to fit into the group.
74% of people can ignore the clear, simple and obvious truth of the length of a line, to fit in with a group of strangers. Imagine how much more difficult it would to point to the truth if the group were your family or your country? or if you might go to jail for not agreeing? or if the truth being pointed at were something more complex and ambiguous, such as a political or religious belief?
Fortunately for us, not everyone gave in.
If everyone were as easily influenced as the 74% we’d never have any progress, in anything. Because we would all just continue to conform to the existing normal. A total conformance with living in caves in the past, would have us still living in caves today. The reason we don’t live in caves is because a few of us don’t conform. A few of us break-free, keep our integrity and always head towards the truth.
In Asch’s experiment 26% of people always gave the right answer, no matter how many times the experiment was ran. They stuck with the truth they saw. They had integrity.
These people that commit to the truth are the ones we have to thank for all our progress. They are the sparks that ignite change in the world, and create a new and better normal for all of us.
No matter how courageous they are 26% of people aren’t going to change the world alone. They are clearly a minority versus the 74% who would rather comply than disrupt. But this minority armed with the truth can do something extraordinary. As Asch’s next experiment would prove.
Asch ran the lines experiment again, but this time Asch told one of the group to also provide the correct answer. This meant that the person being tested wasn’t completely alone anymore. They had one other voice of support for the correct answer. Only one out of seven. Not anywhere near a majority, but a single supporter, a single hope. What happened in these experiments, with just one supporting voice? The number of people that would give the wrong answer collapsed from 74% to just 5%. One lone voice of support boosted the number of people who would stick to the truth from 26% to 95%. That lone voice moves the truth from being the minority to the majority.
This mechanism is how the 26% of people that stick to the truth have created all the progress in our world.
Small groups discover the truth, they stand by it, they share it and this opens the door for others to join. The truth then happens. All our progress has happened this same way.
When you are ill you go to a doctor and not to a priest because once upon a time some small group stood for the truth of what makes us ill. They ignited the creation of the largest industry in the world, Healthcare. It seems normal now but it wasn’t. It all started from one small group standing for the truth.
The reason you went to school as a child and not to work down a mine or in a factory is because once upon a time some small group stood for the truth. That investing in our children builds a better and more prosperous society than exploiting them.
The reason you are free to choose who you marry, even chose who you are ruled by is because some small group stood for the truth. That we are all equal and that the combination of individual freedom, talent and effort can create a better and happier society than living as the property of a ruling class.
The truth always happens because we see others stand, we see it is good for us, and then we find the courage to stand ourselves. Look at how your life has benefitted from these people who went first.
KWYRA is a disruption. It is an important truth that few people agree with today.
Unlike the length of a line the truth of KWYRA is not obvious to see. So, we created 4 videos to make it as obvious to see as we could. We hoped that if just 10% of viewers would understand what we were pointing them towards we’d have something that could impact the world. Most elections are won by less than 5%.
We aren’t seeing 10% of people understanding the content. We are seeing over 80%.
Over 80% of people who watch the 4 videos understand and connect to an experience that will change their lives forever. This will inevitably disrupt our world.
If we act quickly this may save our planet and mean that our children’s lives will be better than ours.
Your choice now is to keep pointing at the wrong answers in the world or begin pointing at the truth.
Will you conform to the old world or ignite the new? Are you Blockbuster or Netflix?
The science says you’ll have much more support than you think.
