Thus spake Marcus G. Daniels circa 10/06/2008 03:28 PM: > If a community doesn't access to people with the skills to effectively > solve a problem, then the problem won't get solved. Management is just > one skill set.
But, this is precisely the problem, not the solution. This abstraction away from the fully embedded _human_ to idealistic "skill sets" is the problem. It's what leads us to hire "experts" and then remove them from their proper context and place them in positions where they do unimaginable and unforeseen harm (or good). E.g. GW Bush, who, in his context, is probably a great asset. But taken out of his context, he's extremely dangerous. I am not a set of skills. [grin] (To be spoken in the same tone as "I am not a number! I am a free man!") > I could have a brain tumor that's just a lump of harmless gunk, or one > that was likely to kill me, or one that would be likely to kill me, but > intervention will only kill me sooner. The `management' decision I can > make is basically limited to how many opinions I can get or how much > research it's feasible for me to do in a short amount of time. It's > parameterized by my desire for quality of life over a certain amount of > time and tolerance for risk. The medical advice drives the decision > and in this sense, the decision is made for me. No. The decision is _never_ made for you. If it is ... well, if you give up that responsibility ... hand it over to someone else, particularly an algorithm, ... well, then you deserve what you get, I suppose. >> And it >> is best to have someone from the space shuttle affected regions to >> decide the when/where/who of building a space shuttle. > > Here again, the benefits of developing a space program are intangible to > many, yet hugely valuable in the end. The car salesman that didn't > want his taxes going to (frivolously) a send a man to the moon, doesn't > connect the fact that 45 years later she is watching DirectTV thanks to > that leadership and the national aggregation of wealth that facilitated > it. That's true. However, you seem to be implying that DirectTV is a good thing. I agree that unforeseen consequences _can_ be good things. But, I don't think they are always good. There's just as many bad unforeseen things that come from big government programs like the space shuttle as there are bad unforeseen things. The question is, do the good unforeseens outweigh the bad? And how would we go about measuring such without the continual hindsight bias (those who were for it are biased to filter out the bad and those who were against it are biased to filter out the good)? > The most real stuff there is comes from sustained developed of theory > and technology, and that often takes real money, beyond what local > communities can fund. No. The most real stuff comes from real action... embedded action in a context. Theory (and all inference, thought, etc.) _can_ guide action to create more good than bad, in my opinion. But ultimately, unless and until we have some relatively objective way to measure good and bad (ultimately a religious or moral judgement), that's all a wash and there's no evidence that theory guides action to good or bad outcomes. The best we can do is measure whether theory leads more effectively and efficiently to the achievement of some objective (discounting externalities). That's what we're doing now (though we could do it better). But it doesn't handle the externalities that can be handled by ensuring every decision-maker is embedded in the context of those decisions. ... i.e. local government... i.e. "eat your own dog food". -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
