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No-one knows what they are doing

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Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#181

Post by smitty1e »

audunw wrote: post #56
smitty1e wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are only idiots on stage. Which says something about our democracy. 1. Savvy across the organization adds like resistance in a parallel circuit: the org as a whole is slightly less savvy than the biggest doof therein. 2. Restated: people scale poorly. 3. In the government case, minimizining flailing and tyranny equates to minimizing the size of government. 4. We seem to trend the opposite direction from (3).

> 3. In the government case, minimizining flailing and tyranny equates to minimizing the size of government. Whoa there. There are plenty of very small governments that have plenty of flailing and tyranny. In the limit, if government is just one guy, he clearly won't have clue about 99% of what he's doing, and will be extremely easy to corrupt since he has no-one else to hold him accountable. If you want to have even…

> What's really scary these days is how many people think we'll solve all our problems if we just make government smaller and smaller.

You said "solve". I said "minimize". Details matter, boss.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#182

Post by smitty1e »

jacquesm wrote: post #81
smitty1e wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They are only idiots on stage. Which says something about our democracy. 1. Savvy across the organization adds like resistance in a parallel circuit: the org as a whole is slightly less savvy than the biggest doof therein. 2. Restated: people scale poorly. 3. In the government case, minimizining flailing and tyranny equates to minimizing the size of government. 4. We seem to trend the opposite direction from (3).

> the org as a whole is slightly less savvy than the biggest doof therein. I've seen about 220 'orgs' from the outside in, interviewed a few thousand people in those orgs and have done the write up on the state of affairs. I've yet to find a single example that would support this claim, where did you get this from?

Personal observation of Congress.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#183

Post by idontwantthis »

zcw100 wrote: post #167
tacon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A concert pianist doesn't just walk up on stage and wing it. Well, sometimes they have to. There is the famous example where a professional concert pianist realizes when the orchestra starts that she practiced the wrong piece. They happen to have been making a documentary, so we get to see her face as she realizes what is happening. And then she "wings it", and manages to play very well anyway. [0] https://www.youtu…

I was going to add something about improvisation and jazz. While it’s not planned out you wouldn’t describe them as “not knowing what they’re doing” nor are they just blindly mashing the keys. They’re feeling their way through a dynamic situation guided by skill, experience and luck.

Really the complete opposite of winging it. Only possible after immense study. And what your seeing is what they are most comfortable playing. They’ll push themselves out of their comfort zone offstage when they aren’t being paid.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#185

Post by conanxin »

小孩子可能会以为成年人都知道要干什么，但成年之后才知道这个世界其实是草台班子，绝大多数人对正在做的事情没有任何头绪的。经营企业同样如此，人们所总结的成功企业经营之道都是后见之明，成功企业其实并不清楚每个阶段需要干什么。如果你想创业，不要为不知道要干什么而放弃。因为没有人真正知道。

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#186

Post by kcplate »

highwaylights wrote: post #93
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #77

This is a very comforting fiction to tell yourself when you’re faced with new and unfamiliar challenges. However, it’s not really true. Plenty of people within an industry or field know enough of what they’re doing because they’ve gone through it before and/or done all of the heavy research to prepare for these situations. I see the “nobody knows what they’re doing” fiction brought out as an easy antidote for imposto…

* Except politics. It's verifiable that no politician can possibly be qualified for whatever they're doing at any point in time as there exists no threshold of experience for doing any job to which they might be assigned and it (at least in democracies) actively ignores experience and selects for pandering.

My theory is that any person running for President (US) has to be narcissistic enough to believe that they should be the most powerful person in the world. Any person who believes that they should be the most powerful person in the world is too narcissistic to be the most powerful person in the world, and thereby by the act of running, should be disqualified.

Re: No-one knows what they are doing

#187

Post by einpoklum »

tpoacher wrote: post #59
EnKopVand wrote: post #5

I’m going to let you in on a little secret. I spent almost a decade in public sector digitalisation in Denmark, and those politicians who look like they don’t know what they are doing in the media, well, they absolutely know what they are doing. Not only that, but they get advice from a bureaucracy full of well educated, really smart people, who also know what they are doing and have known so for decades. One of the…

I think this largely depends on the definition of "know". E.g., when I used to work as a doctor in hospital, the last thing I would describe my colleagues as would be incompetent or un-knowing. They all "knew" stuff. Heck, they had to pass stringent exams, and were still accountable to several agencies to ensure being up to date. The thing is, 50% of what they "knew" was wrong. And if you looked a bit under the surfa…

> , I've come to the conclusion that the number one cause of modern disease is iatrogenic

Do you have non-anecdotal evidence for this claim? It sounds rather far-fetched.

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