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Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

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Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#31

Post by derefr »

milquetoastaf wrote: post #23
Animats wrote: post #2

"If the President had picked me to predict which country [in postwar Europe] would recover first, I would say, 'Bring me the records of maintenance.' The nation with the best maintenance will recover first. Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. They haven't got it in Russia. If I got in there in the warehouse, let's say, and I saw that the broom had a special nail, I would say, 'This is the nail o…

>Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. Yep, no other cultures maintain anything.

Maintaining things coincidentally, and thinking in terms of there being such an activity as "maintenance" that you might want to start doing on any given thing if you aren't doing it already, are different things. I can believe that some cultures have no concept of "Total Cost of Ownership" distinct from purchase price, for example.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#32

Post by owebmaster »

amelius wrote: post #26
sammyo wrote: post #25

Maintainers make the world go round, innovators MAKE the world.

Meh, if innovators didn't, somebody else would. As the frontier of knowledge expands, increasingly more low-hanging fruit appears on the horizon.

> Meh, if innovators didn't, somebody else would

And then this somebody would be an innovator.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#33

Post by carsongross »

draw_down wrote: post #17
pjc50 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So who are all those people going on about the inherent awfulness of government and how it should be replaced by private businesses?

Conservatives, of course! Oh wait, now we've blown up the whole premise of innovation vs maintenance as regards left vs right. Hmmmmmm.

There is more meat to the argument than you are giving credit. Peterson has done quite a bit of psychological research on ideological differences and the behavioral manifestations of them. Jonathan Haidt has as well. Both are worth reading and watching.

It's interesting stuff and I would recommend approaching it with an open, non-ideological mind as best you can. (Certainly I'm no saint when it comes to leaving my own biases at the door: we are all all too human.)

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#34

Post by maxxxxx »

carsongross wrote: post #3

Related video by Jordan Peterson, on how liberals and conservatives need one another because liberals (high trait openness) innovate, but conservatives (high trait conscientiousness) maintain things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ho5VZp_ps4

This may be true for the original meaning of the words but I don't see how today's conservatives are maintainers and today's liberals are innovators. It's probably closer to the opposite.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#35

Post by worldsayshi »

amelius wrote: post #26
sammyo wrote: post #25

Maintainers make the world go round, innovators MAKE the world.

Meh, if innovators didn't, somebody else would. As the frontier of knowledge expands, increasingly more low-hanging fruit appears on the horizon.

If the maintainers didn't make the world go around, somebody else would.

Either way those that would have to fill the spots would likely not be as competent in the doing.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#36

Post by upofadown »

Obviously the thesis is true. Maintenance is crucial while innovation rarely changes anything substantive...

I think that is the reason that we hold innovators in high regard. People are very bad at it and it happens so infrequently. We rarely get the right person when we hand out credit so such idolization is usually meaningless, but I suppose in the long run that is not important. We have this irrational need to attach a person to the idea.

So we end up failing to properly credit any of the people that make and keep our civilization...

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#37

Post by AcerbicZero »

Animats wrote: post #2

"If the President had picked me to predict which country [in postwar Europe] would recover first, I would say, 'Bring me the records of maintenance.' The nation with the best maintenance will recover first. Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. They haven't got it in Russia. If I got in there in the warehouse, let's say, and I saw that the broom had a special nail, I would say, 'This is the nail o…

Hoffer is wrong. He's confusing different military philosophies with this mixed up idea about national identity regarding "maintenance".

I don't think anyone would suggest Germany didn't perform a minor miracle by rebuilding as quickly as they did (with massive support), but the Russians went from having half their country burned to the ground, to a world superpower (also with a large amount of support), in a shorter time span than it took West Germany to return to pre-war industrial levels.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#38

Post by carsongross »

maxxxxx wrote: post #34
carsongross wrote: post #3

Related video by Jordan Peterson, on how liberals and conservatives need one another because liberals (high trait openness) innovate, but conservatives (high trait conscientiousness) maintain things: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ho5VZp_ps4

This may be true for the original meaning of the words but I don't see how today's conservatives are maintainers and today's liberals are innovators. It's probably closer to the opposite.

I am using Peterson's psychological definition of liberal and conservative temperaments, which I think holds regardless of the current manifestations of (and abuses of) the terms. He has theorized that the core political, and in fact philosophical and perhaps even more deeply, religious, battle in the west is between people who think there should be borders (physical, e.g. between nations, conceptual, e.g. between sexes, etc.) and those who do not, which revolves around these two psychological axes.

Interesting to think about.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#39

Post by jalayir »

Animats wrote: post #2

"If the President had picked me to predict which country [in postwar Europe] would recover first, I would say, 'Bring me the records of maintenance.' The nation with the best maintenance will recover first. Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western. They haven't got it in Russia. If I got in there in the warehouse, let's say, and I saw that the broom had a special nail, I would say, 'This is the nail o…

> Maintenance is something very, very specifically Western

Not really. The need for maintenance occurs when a specific "Thing" has been around for long enough, and when the institutions, schools of thought that sustain that Thing persist for long enough. When there are radical, rapid political/economic/political changes, "maintenance" and the need for maintenance goes away. This article focusses on maintenance of industrial artifacts, and nowhere in recent times have industrial artifacts (boats, lifts, software), the companies that produce them, and the living standards they create, and the governments that encourage them been continuously existent longer than the "Western countries" (since the early 1800s at least). If you were to look outside the sphere of industrial artifacts, for example at old religious buildings - churches, mosques, temples - you'll see solid examples of good maintenance all over the world. The Koran, a literary artifact, for example, has been well-maintained for over a thousand years across the world by a mostly pre-industrial society.

TLDR: Keeping something running isn't just a "Western" thing - but keeping industrial products running is certainly Western, because only the West has seen a continuous and sustained industrial movement for over 200+ years.

Re: Maintainers make the world go round: Innovation is an overrated ideology

#40

Post by maxxxxx »

carsongross wrote: post #38
maxxxxx wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be true for the original meaning of the words but I don't see how today's conservatives are maintainers and today's liberals are innovators. It's probably closer to the opposite.

I am using Peterson's psychological definition of liberal and conservative temperaments, which I think holds regardless of the current manifestations of (and abuses of) the terms. He has theorized that the core political, and in fact philosophical and perhaps even more deeply, religious, battle in the west is between people who think there should be borders (physical, e.g. between nations, conceptual, e.g. between se…

This makes more sense to me.
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