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Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

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Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#91

Post by Esophagus4 »

RobotToaster wrote: post #18

To analyse the impact of this study I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference so that at the end of the day we'll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions.

Excellent idea!

And the best part is that while we’re talking about making a decision, we won’t have to actually do any real work.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#92

Post by butILoveLife »

DrewADesign wrote: post #17
ekjhgkejhgk wrote: post #11

These headlines are crack for HN.

Sure, but it’s not clickbait. It accurately reflects the article content, and seemingly, the discussed study’s results.

The Karl Popper in me says: Its barely useful science because its not falsifiable.

Its like a horoscope, it applies to everyone.

Its closer to a tautology "Its raining or its not" than a contradiction "Its raining and its not".

The closer to contradiction limits the possible realities, which makes it better science.

Imagine if I said "People who skip breakfast are worse at their jobs". Its so vague, its always true.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#95

Post by foundart »

A good takeaway line from the article:

> Rather than a ‘rising tide lifting all boats,’ a higher level of corporate BS in an organization acts more like a clogged toilet of inefficiency.”

and a link to the paper: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/400597536_The_Corpo...

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#96

Post by Barbing »

duped wrote: post #74
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay Corporate speak as a signalling mechanism is only effective among the "clueless" in the Gervais model. If any CEO tried to talk 1:1 to a competent board member that way, they would lose all credibility. Once you've operated at a certain level you get it >a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. This is the (cynical version of) the framing I tend to hold about corpor…

> Which is not to be read as a necessarily "bad" thing I (and many others) read it as "dishonesty"

Is there a historical example or does anyone have an anecdote of some crunch time where the CEO blowing hot air was the best thing for morale? Compared to what I might think a lot of us would prefer in many cases, which might be an honest assessment & making us part of the journey to overcome whatever adversity.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#97

Post by lo_zamoyski »

rdevilla wrote: post #16

I suspect this is why formal languages exist; as a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay, and a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. We are undoing much of this progress by now insisting everything be expressed in natural language for a machine to translate on our behalf, like a tour guide. The natives will continue to speak amongst themselves in their mother tongue.

That's not quite accurate. Formal languages (which have an old pedigree) can be useful for clarification and inference, but they can also obfuscate the truth, and what's more, subvert it. Every logical formalism necessarily presupposes some metaphysics, and if the metaphysics is bad, or you fail to recognize the effective bounds of that formalism, you can fall into mechanically generated bullshit. Modern predicate logic suffers from known paradoxes and permits nonsensical and vacuous inferences (like those caused by material implication). More subtle effects are expressed in, for example, the problem of bare particulars.

Formalism is a product of prior (semantic) reasoning that isn't formal. And because formalism is syntactic, not only can you still jam your semantic nonsense through it (through incoherent subjects and predicates, for example), but the formalism, stripped of semantics, can itself allow for nonsense. So formalism can actually aid and abet bad reasoning. The danger, of course, is the mistaken notion that "formal = rigorous".

Formalism is also highly impractical and tedious in many circumstances, and it can depart from human reasoning as expressed in the grammar of natural language enough to be practically inscrutable. There is no reason why natural language cannot be clear and well-written. So, I'm afraid you're barking up the wrong tree here.

The problem with LLMs isn't that they're not "formal". It's because they're statistical machines, not reasoning machines, yet many people treat them like magical oracles.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#98

Post by Esophagus4 »

There does exist some purpose for corp-speak: it is a shared language for people in disparate parts of a large organization to communicate with. It is a tool, mostly for managers.

Managers use it with peers because their job is coordination and communication.

Managers shouldn’t talk to their reports in corp-speak, but think of it like a shared protocol for all messages in the corporate message bus.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#99

Post by ta988 »

Esophagus4 wrote: post #98

There does exist some purpose for corp-speak: it is a shared language for people in disparate parts of a large organization to communicate with. It is a tool, mostly for managers. Managers use it with peers because their job is coordination and communication. Managers shouldn’t talk to their reports in corp-speak, but think of it like a shared protocol for all messages in the corporate message bus.

But how much of that is real as in has measurable positive impact vs random decision making.

Re: Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs

#100

Post by AnimalMuppet »

duped wrote: post #74
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>a sieve to keep the hordes of fools at bay Corporate speak as a signalling mechanism is only effective among the "clueless" in the Gervais model. If any CEO tried to talk 1:1 to a competent board member that way, they would lose all credibility. Once you've operated at a certain level you get it >a system for turning bullshit into parse errors. This is the (cynical version of) the framing I tend to hold about corpor…

> Which is not to be read as a necessarily "bad" thing I (and many others) read it as "dishonesty"

Not exactly?

Let's say there are a thousand people there at the town hall. You don't want any of them to leave upset, or even concerned. But they each have different things that will make them concerned and upset. So there are maybe 10,000 tripwires out there, and you don't want to trip any of them.

So you're not being dishonest, exactly. You're being nonspecific. You don't want to get down in the weeds and nail down the answer too tightly, because you may trip someone's tripwire. (And also because it would take to long.) So you say something true but not very specific.

(I mean, there can be dishonesty, too, but that's a different thing. Smooth vagueness can still be honest, just unsatisfyingly vague.)

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