Editing Horse-and-Rider Problem

The "Horse-and-Rider Problem" refers to a tension between an individual with extraordinary talents or ideas (the "rider") and the individual's achievements or contributions to society (the "horse"). The core issue is that these outliers are often brilliant and essential to progress, but their personalities, opinions, or behaviors may make them dangerous to the status quo in conventional systems. This leads to a situation where society or institutions might try to disconnect or isolate the person from their accomplishments to avoid dealing with their unconventional views or behaviors.

This concept thus highlights the problem (as seen by institutions) of balancing the contributions of brilliant, non-conformist individuals with the desire of institutions (like governments or universities) to maintain control and coherence. It points out the paradox that societies often benefit from these outliers but also feel the need to suppress or marginalize them to avoid dealing with their disruptive potential. The term also implies that while society may claim to support innovation, it often struggles with the difficult dynamics of accommodating people who challenge consensus and status quo.

<blockquote>
''So this is this is an old problem that was explained to me in Washington DC. I don't know whether I came up with the name or somebody else came up with the name, but I call it the '''Horse-and-Rider Problem'''. And the problem was that people like Noam Chomsky and Leo Szilard were very important in their fields and were voices that the government did not want amplified. So Leo Szilard, famously, is sort of the father of the Manhattan Project, but he wasn't allowed into the Manhattan Project because he was considered to be too unreliable and idiosyncratic. Noam Chomsky, of course, one of the founders of modern linguistics, generative grammar, what have you, famously kind of a radical lefty, very, very smart. And MIT was stuck with a cantankerous voice because he was the greatest linguist of his time. So what I believe is that we went about disconnecting people from their accomplishments so that we didn't have to deal with the outliers, because an outlier could be a genius and say, I'm bitterly opposed to the war effort. For example, I believe Steve Smale, who was a fields medalist, was very opposed to the Vietnam War, was also a communist, if I recall correctly. I think Jim Simons, who founded Renaissance Technologies, was the chairman of the Stony Brook Mathematics Department, opposed the Vietnam War. There was this whole problem, that some of the most brilliant people don't want to sign on the dotted lines, stay in their lane, read the rule book every night before bed, and promise to be a good little boy or girl at the committee meetings. And so as a result, we are an anti-outlier society whose primary means of competing is that we're the best in the world at creating outliers.''

- '''Eric Weinstein''' in [https://x.com/EricRWeinstein/status/1872876461562224842 X Space, Dec 28, 2024], in answer to a question about funding and encouraging outliers
</blockquote>

== Related Pages ==
* [[Academic Freedom]]
* [[Labor Shortages]]

[[Category:Ericisms‎]]
[[Category:Concepts]]