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Accountability Sinks

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Re: Accountability Sinks

#21

Post by rini17 »

osener wrote: post #16
immibis wrote: post #4

It's interesting we always talked about the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials when talking about accountability, as if similar atrocities aren't currently happening. It's because breaking an accountability sink of people who are long dead doesn't have any impact other than the explanation itself. Breaking an accountability sink of currently living people and currently active wars is much more dangerous.

It’s often debated whether the public at the time was aware of the scale of the atrocities committed, whether they were accountable, and whether they could—or should—have done something. But only now am I realizing how much a certain part of the population actually does the propagandists’ dirty work by defending and whitewashing such atrocities.

Debated by whom? I'm from Slovakia which had voluntarily copied laws and process for deporting Jews verbatim from Nazi Germany and here is overwhelming amount of evidence that everyone knew something very bad is going to happen to them. Also the "arizácia/aryanization" dispossessing of Jew property made it doubly clear they weren't going to return.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#22

Post by MaxikCZ »

einpoklum wrote: post #17

> Bad people react to this by getting angry at the gate attendant; good people walk away stewing with thwarted rage. Notwithstanding the rest of the column, this particular example brings the following thought to mind: It could actually be argued that getting angry at the gate attendant is not a "bad people" response. Suppose that under those circumstances, the typical individual passenger would demand the gate atten…

Still wouldn't change a thing. The gate keeper has no say into who gets let on the plane and who doesn't, they are there just to enforce the decision.

The only way to get this solved is if in the executive meetings one person goes "Our processes that bumps people resulted in xxxxxx cost, that's too much".

The way those costs are incurred doesn't matter, if its direct compensation or fines, but unless you can attach a price tag to it, nothing will change.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#23

Post by rwmj »

> Eventually, employees noticed a problem: The card design only allowed for 24 characters, but some applicants had names longer than that. They raised the issue with the business team.

I'm looking at you, ANA Mileage Club card! 24 characters should be enough for anyone according to their database. They even have a whole page dedicated to how you should work around it (I tried, this procedure & indeed it lets you truncate your name, but then you won't be able to associate any tickets you purchase in your real name with the card). https://www.ana.co.jp/en/jp/amc/reference/merit/procedure/in...

Re: Accountability Sinks

#24

Post by satisfice »

I am deeply suspicious of "blameless" post mortems. I agree that we should work in ways that minimize fear. We should, to some degree, celebrate the learning we glean from our failures.

But I keep seeing "blameless" being construed as lying about why something happened. It's construed in such as way that anyone can hide from their misdeeds. People screw up, and we need to hold them accountable, and THEY need to hold THEMSELVES accountable. Not necessarily with "punishment" (what does that even mean in a professional context) but perhaps atonement and retraining.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#25

Post by gsf_emergency »

divan wrote: post #10
gsf_emergency wrote: post #2

Related discussion (517 pts): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41891694 https://aworkinglibrary.com/reading/unaccountability-machine (A very short overview of Dan Davies' book, quoted in TFA, that came up with the term) EDIT: complementing book mentioned in that thread Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink"…

Great post and discussion as well! I learned from that about two just cultures and their different views of what "accountability" even is.

>If you combine those two frameworks, you could conclude that to be accountable for something you must have the power to change it and understand what you are trying to accomplish when you do. You need both the power and the story of how that power gets used.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#26

Post by blueflow »

Etheryte wrote: post #9
blueflow wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you imply that there is another Holocaust currently ongoing?

There are numerous conflicts worldwide where one side is trying to systematically destroy the other population, civilians and all. Whether they are exactly the same or how you define that is pretty secondary to that fact.

Whatever. Since my last Wikipedia spree on that topic i feel such comparisons are highly inappropriate.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#27

Post by bflesch »

osener wrote: post #16
immibis wrote: post #4

It's interesting we always talked about the Holocaust and the Nuremberg trials when talking about accountability, as if similar atrocities aren't currently happening. It's because breaking an accountability sink of people who are long dead doesn't have any impact other than the explanation itself. Breaking an accountability sink of currently living people and currently active wars is much more dangerous.

It’s often debated whether the public at the time was aware of the scale of the atrocities committed, whether they were accountable, and whether they could—or should—have done something. But only now am I realizing how much a certain part of the population actually does the propagandists’ dirty work by defending and whitewashing such atrocities.

The public was well-aware. They had stickers on shops. Your Jewish neighbors were paraded through the streets for deportation. Once they were gone, people took the furniture, the businesses, or simply moved into their apartments. On the country side, there were various land reforms where people who joined the NSDAP party were given fields from famers who were either simply deported as being Jewish or political opposition.

Of course people always had the feel-good lie "oh they're just being relocated to XYZ" but in those times you'd never leave your furniture and other valuables behind when moving if you were not forced to. For German people it was a win-win situation: More work for everyone (either as a party soldier or in the construction), steal some valuables from your neighbors who just got taken away, and feel good about your noble aryan genes.

Sorry for rambling on this topic but there are books for every mid-size Germany city which detail the unfathomable amount of looting, stealing and "M&A business" that was done by everyday "normal" German citizens during these times.

And most of these crimes were not prosecuted because of political decisions after the war.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#28

Post by queuep »

bflesch wrote: post #20

The reader can feel a glimpse of the author's ego the moment he explains his skills as a Google Site Reliabiliy Engineer and his glorious work on improving gmail post-mortems right after the section where a hospital team saves various people in a mass casuality situation by empowering nurses to perform formally doctor-only tasks. Only with a healthy dose of cynicism I can understand where he's going. While the topic…

So the author gives what, 10 examples, and one of them is about himself and his own experiences, and one of them is from a hospital.

And from that you convey that the author must have some kind of ego? I don't think that's justified critique.

Re: Accountability Sinks

#29

Post by gsf_emergency »

bflesch wrote: post #20

The reader can feel a glimpse of the author's ego the moment he explains his skills as a Google Site Reliabiliy Engineer and his glorious work on improving gmail post-mortems right after the section where a hospital team saves various people in a mass casuality situation by empowering nurses to perform formally doctor-only tasks. Only with a healthy dose of cynicism I can understand where he's going. While the topic…

Maybe he thinks it's too early to get sued over a blog-- he's only just got to the HN frontpage for the first time this year?

Subtext of his previous blogpost:

Capitalism is powered by greed.

https://250bpm.substack.com/p/per-tribalismum-ad-astra

EDIT: another post of his that got traction ~5 yrs ago was about the Swiss political system (Swiss are a pragmatic culture though afaik he's Slovak so we might have to account for some Iron Curtain baggage)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23881309

Re: Accountability Sinks

#30

Post by bflesch »

queuep wrote: post #28
bflesch wrote: post #20

The reader can feel a glimpse of the author's ego the moment he explains his skills as a Google Site Reliabiliy Engineer and his glorious work on improving gmail post-mortems right after the section where a hospital team saves various people in a mass casuality situation by empowering nurses to perform formally doctor-only tasks. Only with a healthy dose of cynicism I can understand where he's going. While the topic…

So the author gives what, 10 examples, and one of them is about himself and his own experiences, and one of them is from a hospital. And from that you convey that the author must have some kind of ego? I don't think that's justified critique.

The word "hero" is mentioned twice in the whole article. Once in the section before he talks about his own work, and once in the section directly following it.

> As one of the commenters noted: "Amazing! The guy broke every possible rule. If he wasn't a fucking hero, he would be fired on the spot."

> **

> Once, I used to work as an SRE for Gmail. SREs are people responsible for the site being up and running. If there's a problem, you get alerted and it's up to you to fix it, whatever it takes.

I only know Mr. Sustrik from this one article but had to mention this because it was just a too low hanging fruit in terms of criticism.

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