Bridgewater, the Panopticon, and Plato


            Bridgewater takes two ideas from philosophy, the panopticon and Socratic dialogue, and implements them in the real world.
First, at Bridgewater, employees are recorded and the videos can be watched for future analysis. This is similar to David Hume's idea of the panopticon from the 1700s, in which convicts are placed in a prison in which a guard could watch any prisoner at any time. A key difference between the two is that in the panopticon, convicts do not have a choice of participating, while at Bridgewater, employees are free to leave at any time.
Second, Bridgewater espouses a theory of communication called “radical transparency.” This radical transparency is a style in which people are direct, honest, and civil with each other, while questioning and probing. The level of transparency is similar to a Socratic dialogue, in which one person questions the other until the other is left flummoxed, written by Plato in the 400s BCE.
Bridgewater’s success is based in sound philosophical styles for discovering truth. Both Hume and Plato paved the way for Bridgewater.

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