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The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

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Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#61
post #18

Sounds like it's not real but... It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

Yeah, this anger is entirely misplaced. I don't think this woman is happy to have to enforce this idiotic law and listen to angry people all day long. It's the politicians that people like us elected because they promised to cut wasteful spending, so now blind people have to prove they're still blind once a year. We did that to them.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#62
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

i don't believe that to be the case at all but, of course, i don't have any choice in the matter, so what's the point of talking about it? but, of course, we don't have any choice in that matter either, do we?

I don't need blame to hunt an animal for food or slam someone who's biting me.

I don't need blame to swat a mosquito that's trying to live, to remove a cobra from my living room, or to quibble about fine print with someone in such an annoying way that I eventually get what I want.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#63
post #43

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

    never blame anyone for anything
That's actually not quite true.

Assigning blame, via agency or otherwise, and the associated social or legal consequences are additional signals in the environment that influence and change behavior.

If the actions of an individual were involved in propagating some chain of events, then it's perfectly valid to respond to their involvement, via social stigma, punishment, etc, regardless of whether or not there is "agency". The knowledge and anticipation of a similar response changes future actor's behavior, with or without free will.

This discussion itself is exactly an example of this in practice. If there's no such thing as agency, then us talking about what someone should or shouldn't do, given whether there is free will, have any influence on anything, except that it does because interacting with these ideas themselves change behavior, with or without free will.

This is what people mean when they say we should just ignore the question of free will entirely, because it doesn't really factor into how we should design the social contract.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#64
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

This. There's something about most cultures that I am slowly am realizing; we always know how to complain and shift the responsibility. And no, you're not immune to this. You're not immune to anything, really. Medical departments aren't about helping you out anymore. When you work in a hospital, you do what your rule book says. If someone doesn't have their paperwork available, you cannot help them. That's your boss'…

> Why can you not just give them their pills and charge them the real amount.

You can, you would just end up without income at best, or charged with a crime and imprisoned at worst.

Also, all these complexities in healthcare exist due to 90% not being able to afford it, so the complexities are to paper over politically unpopular subsidies from various groups of people to other groups of people, in varying amounts. The other part of it is the nebulous costs of liability, that potentially reach into the millions for each interaction.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#65
post #43

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

Everybody is formed by their experiences and genes and they act accordingly. There is no free will. If you realize that, you realize that you can never blame anyone for anything, because they had no choice to act differently. As a customer it's still hard to take, when someone who is clearly formed by years of professional deformation, treats you like shit.

If you think there’s no free will then you won’t argue with me when I say I think there is.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#66

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

"cut those cops strangling that guy over bootleg smokes some slack, they have a tough job"

These sorts of don't hate the cogs hate the machine takes are worthless because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#67

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

The lesson is obviously to have an ablative layer of suffering people strapped to the front of your organization. No one can fight you without hurting them so you are invincible.

It’s commonly practiced and we can see why.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#68

Aside from the AI writing the blog itself seems to have a false timeline. It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year. There is all of this promotion about books, podcasts, volunteering to support the author. What is this about?

> It says there are posts from April 2017, but the domain has only been up for a year.

I don't know the author, but presumably the blog predates the domain.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#69
post #18

Sounds like it's not real but... It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

>It reads like an indictment of the government employee personality in general, and the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Fixed that for you. That's how it should read. Not only is the system questionable in a "the bricks may be individual defensible but the road goes right to hell" way but the kind of people such a system first creates (nobody signs up to be a cop just to strangle black guys over…

It may read that way to you. It does not to me.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#70

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

"cut those cops strangling that guy over bootleg smokes some slack, they have a tough job" These sorts of don't hate the cogs hate the machine takes are worthless because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.

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