Very nice expansion on Sowell's dictum "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.".
I am an old fart doing computer security work - which I have been doing for decades. We are all going to be wrong some of the time when we are making calls on incomplete information, but if we are wrong too much of the time we are out of work - deservably. It ends up being a surprisingly small community and your reputation is important - people you have worked with or for in the past remember you and your work. That reputation is important. I am well into my 70's and still going.
And sometimes you build your reputation by getting yourself fired. I once told a client about an issue that they clearly did not want to hear about - but it was in my opinion my responsibility to let them know that they had an issue that they needed to manage. My contract was cancelled the same day. My manager at my consulting company congratulated me - if the shit hit the fan, we could not be blamed for it - and assigned me to another project with a different client.
My youngest daughter is a civil engineer - and they work hard to not be wrong. They have legal liability as well as reputation to protect. Both are important.
One of my contacts Linked In, an American engineer named Phil Rink, talks about broken feedback loops on a societal level all the time, and I agree with both of you, and I think its the right way to frame it.
When someone or something is insulated against its errors it cannot correct them and chaos ensues. That one of the problems with planned economies vs free markets. We need more free markets in all fields.
Ongoing awareness of this sempiternal propensity of human institutions, and the deployment of effective prophylaxis is the single most important mission confronting our times. Congrats 'Renzo for taking it on, and hopefully amplifying it relentlessly. What you, Cummings, and other voices say about the public sector in particular, exactly coincides with my experience, in senior roles in the bureaucracies of four different countries over three decades. The syndrome is impervious though to asymmetric resistance. (I have the scars.)
Lorenzo, it's always a dreadful pleasure reading your analysis and shining a light on many things that have been kept out of view.
I'd love to know what you think of DataRepublican’s Substack post ‘Minnesota as a Systems Failure - How NGOs process dissent until reality no longer matters’.
They mention a concept I'd not heard of before called Autopoiesis:
‘Autopoiesis is a term from systems theory.
It means this: a system responds to reality only through the constraints of its own internal organization.’
Very nice expansion on Sowell's dictum "It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.".
I am an old fart doing computer security work - which I have been doing for decades. We are all going to be wrong some of the time when we are making calls on incomplete information, but if we are wrong too much of the time we are out of work - deservably. It ends up being a surprisingly small community and your reputation is important - people you have worked with or for in the past remember you and your work. That reputation is important. I am well into my 70's and still going.
And sometimes you build your reputation by getting yourself fired. I once told a client about an issue that they clearly did not want to hear about - but it was in my opinion my responsibility to let them know that they had an issue that they needed to manage. My contract was cancelled the same day. My manager at my consulting company congratulated me - if the shit hit the fan, we could not be blamed for it - and assigned me to another project with a different client.
My youngest daughter is a civil engineer - and they work hard to not be wrong. They have legal liability as well as reputation to protect. Both are important.
There is a huge difference between reputation for reality-tested capacity and performative reputation.
One of my contacts Linked In, an American engineer named Phil Rink, talks about broken feedback loops on a societal level all the time, and I agree with both of you, and I think its the right way to frame it.
When someone or something is insulated against its errors it cannot correct them and chaos ensues. That one of the problems with planned economies vs free markets. We need more free markets in all fields.
Ongoing awareness of this sempiternal propensity of human institutions, and the deployment of effective prophylaxis is the single most important mission confronting our times. Congrats 'Renzo for taking it on, and hopefully amplifying it relentlessly. What you, Cummings, and other voices say about the public sector in particular, exactly coincides with my experience, in senior roles in the bureaucracies of four different countries over three decades. The syndrome is impervious though to asymmetric resistance. (I have the scars.)
Brilliant
Lorenzo, it's always a dreadful pleasure reading your analysis and shining a light on many things that have been kept out of view.
I'd love to know what you think of DataRepublican’s Substack post ‘Minnesota as a Systems Failure - How NGOs process dissent until reality no longer matters’.
They mention a concept I'd not heard of before called Autopoiesis:
‘Autopoiesis is a term from systems theory.
It means this: a system responds to reality only through the constraints of its own internal organization.’
Why is nobody on the right talking about Iran? What`s going on?