121–130 of 316 posts
From Donella Meadows: “Intrinsic responsibility” means that the system is designed to send feedback about the consequences of decision-making directly and quickly and compellingly to the decision-makers.
I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers. Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but comput…
Make a good faith effort to get your problem addressed, and record the fact that you've done so to use in your hearing if it gets that far. Then just file the claim. Generally they fold immediately, and this way you incentivize actual customer service in the only language they understand.
1. Macro level: Departments claim broad accountability.
2. Micro level: Pinpointing task ownership causes accountability to vanish.
3. Indefinite states: Ambiguous tasks linger without resolution.
4. Entanglement: Dependent tasks inherit this ambiguity.
This creates a system where responsibility exists in superposition, tasks remain unresolved, and accountability becomes increasingly delocalized.
Tom Schelling's 'The Strategy of Conflict' touches on similar themes, but mostly in a more positive light. One of his examples is that you should make yourself unavailable for contact, when you suspect someone is trying to blackmail you. That's exactly the same severing of a link as described in the article.
> you should make yourself unavailable for contact, when you suspect someone is trying to blackmail you. Maybe I'm missing something, but how often does blackmail happen that it rises to the level of needing strategic advice like "make yourself unavailable" ? Who is Tom Schelling's audience?
Parents, of course.
You might think I'm joking, but dealing with toddlers throwing tantrums is a prime example in some of his books.
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> Who is Tom Schelling's audience? Politicians setting policies for use of nuclear weapons during the cold war, IIRC. Among others, at least. I read parts of that book many years ago, I recall the major theme is that voluntarily sacrificing control over the situation can be a powerful way to force the other party to do what you want. Like if you and me are playing "chicken", speeding towards each other and wanting th…
This is how we get a Dr. Strangelove situation. If both people take that advice then they both crash into each other, even if they realize at the last minute it was a terrible idea.
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Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the sea…
I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want t…
Why is rebooting offensive to you? State is hard; resetting your system to know state can fix many issues.
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I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want t…
> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting) I had problems solved several times by rebooting modem. One time it was "reboot modem and access point in proper order", me naively rebooting them both at the same time didn't help, only phone support solved this problem. > Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer. Hmm, I might be desensitivised f…
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I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to trac…
That’s a sad experience and I would definitely try to chase them robots. Sadly even though German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality, though when it comes to human service you can find yourself in peculiar position. And particularly if you are not German and happen to be in one of those international cities there where Germans are fed up with visitor. You waive goodbye to your 50€ and keep a…
This is a terrible example because it's simply not true: > Davies gives the example of the case of Dominion Systems vs Fox News, in which Fox News repeatedly spread false stories about the election. No one at Fox seems to have explicitly made a decision to lie about voting machines; rather, there was an implicit understanding that they had to do whatever it took to keep their audience numbers up. Rupert Murdoch conce…
Voting machines are hacked every year at DEFCONs voting village. They're wildly insecure and no one should trust them. Frankly, any claims of manipulation of voting machines are at worst plausible.
You logic is flawed at the core. With that train of thought you can infer everything.
Why trust voting it can be manipulated.
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Voting machines are hacked every year at DEFCONs voting village. They're wildly insecure and no one should trust them. Frankly, any claims of manipulation of voting machines are at worst plausible.
Accounts are hacked every second. They are wildly insecure and noone should trust them. Frankly saying you are just a hacked account is at worst plausible. You logic is flawed at the core. With that train of thought you can infer everything. Why trust voting it can be manipulated.
All voting systems can be manipulated, there's no need to make it so easy though.