15 ms·
Nobody Knows What They're Doing (2013)
- RangerScience 10y agoSo... My honest take away is: Can you disrupt Washington by coming up with a better coordination tool? I mean - that's clearly not the bulk of the problem (unclear causal relationships between the actions you can take and the outcomes you want seems to the real problem), but it's specifically cited and seems doable... ...until I think about how well teams inside companies communicate.
- MyMan1 10y agoWell, the context of working within a company is different. Especially if you rely on the money you're making.
- kaspm 10y agoIt depends on the company but I would say the thing about Washington and this article makes this point well is that there are a significant number of people actively trying to prevent you from doing anything big because they disagree with your goal. In a company, that's less often the case, although I have seen it at larger places.
- spott 10y agoPart of the problem is probably that there is no money in it: Congressional offices don't have a big enough budget for the staff they need, much less any pieces of software/services.
- ThrustVectoring 10y agoThe lack of coordination tooling isn't the problem, the complex interlocking structure of conflicting interests is. The obvious fallout of a congressional communication tool is that it becomes a firehouse of what congress members strategically share to further their own goals.
- uncle_d 10y agoThis is a false dichotomy: either everyone is "ceaselessly, ruthlessly, effectively scheming" or "all parties and groups are fractious and bumbling" How about the truth is somewhere in between? Some people are scheming - and some schemes do come off successfully. There has been nothing but scheming and counter-scheming since this U.S. election - the removal of General Flynn being, according to some commentators, just the latest example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j_ZfKmcnSk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j_ZfKmcnSk
- learc83 10y agoThe article doesn't say that no one is scheming, just that what starts as a plan devolves into a mess of reaction and counter reaction. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy and all that. Schemes are occasionally successful, but that is because the schemer either got lucky and everyone reacted the way they wanted, or because the scheme was incredibly simple. What the article is talking about is the mythical scheming that involves correctly predicting the behavior and reactions of the opposition through multiple iterations of attack and counter attack--the hypothetical chess master who can see 5 moves ahead. The systems we are dealing with are generally just too complex for that.
- r00fus 10y ago> No battle plan survives contact with the enemy I always (as a Vet) thought this was a misnomer - it's often best described as "no battle plan survives contact with reality" - reality being the new info you get that you didn't get or couldn't have gotten.
- drdrey 10y ago"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -- Mike Tyson
- erikb 10y agoIt's also a great quote, but it's a different one. "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" is more like you get punched as much and in a way that you didn't expect, even if you planned to get punched. Tyson's saying "When you get punched the sensation is so unexpected that your brain stops working for some time". The 'counter' to the changing environment quote is to be flexible from the beginning. The 'counter' to Tyson's situation is to train so much, that your muscle memory will continue to work even if your brain doesn't.
- Bouncingsoul1 10y agoReminds me of this ramble https://nickbradbury.com/2014/12/11/the-programmers-dream-a-ramble/ https://nickbradbury.com/2014/12/11/the-programmers-dream-a-... . I printed it out and hung it in my livingroom, keeps me sane.
- qaq 10y agoWell one can argue that people "in charge" are not at all the people that hold the public offices so we have no clue whether or not they have a clue. If one wants a decent conspiracy theory one could start with the fact that Capital Group, Fidelity , BlackRock and Vanguard have 13 trillion under management majority of which is invested in US stock market so if they collude they would have majority of votes in a majority of US public companies.
- breischl 10y agoBut the point of both articles is that these groups are not even unified within themselves, much less can they collude effectively, or out-maneuver the various forces that would not want them to control everything. And even if they could - what then? Managing even one company is difficult, trying to coordinate several thousand is essentially impossible. More pedantically, you're assuming those groups could take all of those assets from where the owners of those assets put them (including bonds, commodities, foreign investments, etc) and put them into the US stock market. Even if they did so they're barely above 50% of the US market cap (put at 25 trillion by World Bank). http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD?locations=US&name_desc=true http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/CM.MKT.LCAP.CD?locations...
- qaq 10y agoYou are not counting effects of circular ownership citi owns 5% of Chase and Chase owns 5% of Citi and on and on you effectively don't need 50% to control the vote. Even if those 4 are off you can add next two or three with trillion +/- under management. So worst case you need 7 people to collude.
- RachelF 10y ago
- hkon 10y agoI agree with the title. The few places I have worked where things were not horrible, were places where one guy had a masterplan for it all.
- cs702 10y agoWell, I would agree that most people most of the time don't know what the heck they're doing... ...but some people DO know what they're doing, at least some of the time. Applies to business too.
- 5_minutes 10y agoThe truth is that the difference between many companies is the perception, that they can create towards the external world, and 3rd parties: that they KNOW what they are doing. Eventually, when you talk to your friends, you notice it's a mess at most workplaces. Management often is very shaky and clueless. People keeping up apperances etc. This is all more or less the same in alot of companies (though not all), however: the perception of it to the outside world, is what makes the difference. I've been validating this theory many times throughout the years and it's very applicable and true.
- 5_minutes 10y agoThe truth is that the difference between many companies is the perception, that they can create towards the external world, and 3rd parties: that they KNOW what they are doing. Eventually, when you talk to your friends, you notice it's a mess at most workplaces. Management often is very shaky and clueless. People keeping up apperances etc. This is all more or less the same in alot of companies (though not all), however: the perception of it to the outside world, is what makes the difference. I've been validating this theory many times throughout the years and it's very applicable and true.
- whack 10y agoAn obvious counter-argument to this: NSA. If someone had said 10 years ago that an organization like NSA exists, and that it is conducting electronic surveillance at the level that it currently is, they would have been laughed at as a conspiracy theorist. One can only imagine what Ezra Klein would have said to such a person. "What you're saying is too improbable. No one can carry out complicated plans. All parties and groups are fractious and bumbling." Turns out organizations like the NSA do actually exist, and they are capable enough to carry out complicated plans in secrecy for many many years. Despite it being a non-partisan government agency staffed by government workers reporting to our elected leaders. One can only wonder what other kinds of scheming and backroom deals are being done by private organizations such as lobbyists, super-PACs and think-tanks.
- silverbax88 10y agoThere were a lot of people saying the NSA, or someone similar, would do exactly what they did. It was the main opposition to the Patriot Act. People forget so quickly.
- ryandrake 10y agoDocumentaries such as _Enemy of the State_ have been describing the NSA for much longer than 10 years.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 10y agoba dum tss Is there evidence the NSA has even ever conducted an enforcement action, never mind a rogue one on US soil?
- Avshalom 10y agoEnforcement? no. We know they gather intelligence on citizens though and we know they collaborate with other agencies that do enforcement though.
- appleflaxen 10y agoI've seen this written slightly differently: "Never attribute to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by stupidity."
- abraae 10y agoSeems a slightly simplistic analysis. We know there are people who scheme and plot to get what they want, and will stop at nothing to do so. We also know that the real world is chaotic, that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. The most successful schemers are not those who can think ten moves ahead, because no-one can do that. Instead they're the ones who can turn on a dime, who can rapidly re-scheme, and re-scheme again, always adapting to circumstances so quickly that the rest of us are left wondering wtf happened.
- ebcode 10y agoI upvoted this before I read the article, simply because I agree with the headline. I wonder how many others here did the same?
- erikb 10y agoHow about nobody knows what they are doing, but people are making plans to screw other people anyways, and sometimes they work. And as always there will actually be people who do this for so long and really work on improvement that they will beat the others in most cases, even if sh*t hits the fan.
- zelos 10y agoSo The Thick of It is more accurate than House of Cards?
- Animats 10y agoThat's painfully true. There have been, though, broad long-term plans that succeeded. Here are two classics: * "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" (1971), by Lewis J. Powell.[1] This is the founding document of the modern conservative agenda. Powell later became a Supreme Court justice. He proposed heavily funded groups to push a conservative pro-big-business agenda, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce taking the lead. This was quite successful, especially noting how politically weak big business was at the time. * "The Overhauling of Straight America" (1987), by Marshall Kirk and Erastes Pill (pseud. of Hunter Madsen). This is the founding document of the modern gay agenda. This, too, was quite successful. It outlines a detailed program, and most of the goals listed were achieved. [1] http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1078&context=darter_materials http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=... [2] http://library.gayhomeland.org/0018/EN/EN_Overhauling_Straight.htm http://library.gayhomeland.org/0018/EN/EN_Overhauling_Straig...
- ctchocula 10y agoI'm halfway through [1] and it seems to capture the spirit of the times very well. I'm interested in a better understanding of US politics. Do you know any more classics in this genre?
- Animats 10y agoThe "Attack on American Free Enterprise System" paper was circulated to CEOs of large companies, many of whom replied. The replies are here.[1] The beginnings of fund-raising for right-wing news are in those letters. Fox News was still 20 years away, but the roots are here. This is where CEOs of US companies started to become an organized national political force. Until then, they mostly saw each other as competitors. Small business owners were generally anti big business. Banks, railroads, and chain stores were powerful enough to crush small businesses, and they looked to government to keep from being run over. But this free enterprise coalition was able to pull together big and small businesses under the banner of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [1] http://law2.wlu.edu/powellarchives/page.asp?pageid=1251 http://law2.wlu.edu/powellarchives/page.asp?pageid=1251
- 10y ago
- dziungles 10y agoThe biggest thing is that people are scheming "behind the scenes". People are scheming in politics, in business, in family, with friends. We all agree on this? Why we are living in such a Machevellian society? Are there any alternatives?
- technologyvault 10y agoThis article reminds me of a book I read several years ago: None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, written in the 1971 For anyone who wonders whether there are sinister things being done in concert by groups of individuals, I highly recommend reading that book.
- pinaceae 10y agoyou genuinely believe that noone understood the NSA's existence and mission in 2007? holy shit, is this the work of the US education system? no knowledge of history, from OSS to the cold war? please tell me you're 12 years old.
- dang 10y agoAs you know, we ban accounts for this kind of incivility. Please edit it out of your posts here. Also, please be charitable when interpreting others—that is, please prefer a smarter interpretation to a dumber one where plausible. This leads to better-quality discussion. For example, it's more likely that whack meant that most people weren't aware of the extent of NSA surveillance, rather than that no one had literally heard of NSA. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13655447 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13655447 and marked it off-topic.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoI have a theory: human civilization is at about the peak of what can be achieved, with people in charge. We're just too error-prone and selfish and shortsighted to ever form a larger functioning society.
- Qantourisc 10y agoSo, replace people in charge with non-humans ? On the bright side the political spectrum can be perfectly defined to the average of the voters. (People would vote on ethical, moral, socialism-liberals problems basically.) But the code is not going to be easy, or easily accepted ;)
- zaque1213 10y agoThere are some theories, such as those laid out by Francis Fukuyama in the Origins of Political Order, which postulate that homo sapiens are optimized to form functioning societies of about 120 units. However, certain features have evolved in our species, such as the ability to speak AND write, and form mythologies and stories, which allows our ability to form political societies to exponentially increase. Who's to say we won't keep evolving to find ways to cooperate in ways that were impossible before?
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoBecause, look at the newspaper (or blog or whatever). Its coming apart at the seams.
- guelo 10y agoThat probably applies much more to underfunded grassroots activists then to large corporate lobbyists. The large corporate lobbyists have organized long term plans working from state houses to DC to accomplish multi year goals. Take a look at ALEC for example. It's like the difference between some GPL open source project and Google's latest Android release.
- User23 10y agoThis article was written with the intent to make its readers worse at recognizing patterns. Put bluntly, it was written to make you more stupid for the benefit of the authors or their principals. It doesn't belong here. The persuasion is ham-handed and obvious, but clearly effective enough to get it on the front page here.
- mwsherman 10y agoThink in terms of natural selection. Behaviors (and personalities) that make more successful choices in that environment will tend to survive in the environment, regardless of whether they know what they are doing. Most of the bumbling fails. Some of the bumbling works. And so the most “effective” politicians (and organizations) will survive, even if their success has little to do with deliberate scheming.
- harry8 10y agoJ. Edgar Hoover.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- throwanem 10y agoHell, all you need to know that is to read Frank Rich's bio and then watch Veep. You'll learn just as much, and laugh a lot more while you do it.
- zaque1213 10y agoI think it was Jessica Yellin on NPR's On Point who said something about Washington being way more like VEEP than House of Cards. Comforting somehow.
- mxfh 10y agoNo reference to Adam Curtis yet? http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6184984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6184984
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- wallace_f 10y agoSince the rise of Trump, first political comments stopped being flagged. Now HN is entertaining daily threads on politics.
- grzm 10y agoIf you think a submission is inappropriate for HN, please flag and move on.
- wallace_f 10y agoWhat's with the hostility? I'm pointing out something factual that some users (especially new users) may not be aware of.
- grzm 10y agoThere's no hostility. There are plenty of comments from mods, including the discussion on Political Detox Week, that discuss politics on HN, which are actually helpful rather than just observations. Here's one such comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13522433
- wallace_f 10y agoWhat? Well I'm sorry my comment was not helpful to you. In the future should we judge everyone's comments with respect to someone in a position to offer better information? For example, here is a comment by you: >Disclaimer: I don't have a comp sci degree. >I've found having an understanding of the underlying theories supporting the tools (that includes languages and libraries) I use makes me use them better, understand their strengths, weaknesses, and how to improve them. It also helps me look at problems from various perspectives and see how other solutions may fit, including those that don't already have a tutorial or library. >I suspect that if you're an effective programmer, you're doing more than copying and pasting and growing in experience, and you're actually absorbing and apply more computer science than you realize. You also post observations without being an authority. That is fine. You need to relax with the, yes, hostility.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- charles-salvia 10y agoI'm inclined to be very sympathetic to this article, even though I don't agree entirely. In an age when conspiracy theories about "global elites" are rampant, it helps to remind everyone that most human designs fail due to unforeseen complexity and unpredictability. When faced with people who actually believe in "master-plan" type conspiracy theories, I have to really wonder if they've ever actually tried to do anything hard. That said, it's certainly possible to apply long-term planning and coordination in a very effective way. It's just that hindsight and selection-bias tends to make success stories look like the human agency involved was hyper-competent, while glossing over all kinds of factors like simple luck or even just gross incompetence on the part of those who were opposed to the goals of the planning. And how exactly is the NSA a refutation of anything? They leveraged enormous government resources to pull off massive surveillance covertly for a while, but now we're talking about it publicly so I guess they weren't exactly so hyper-competent after all. Seeing hyper-competent human agency and design behind everything is essentially just another example of the general human brain-defect called Apophenia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia).
- arca_vorago 10y agoHaving studied the deep state for a long time now, I have come to a more nuanced conclusion: Incompetence abounds, but is useful cover for the few malicious actors. Often in discussion I have derided the use of Hanlons razor, for I think it a logically fallacious statement from the get-go, but I understand the spirit of it. The problem is that at a certain point, incompetence becomes indestinguishable from malice. At some level, attributing incompetence to everything because nobody knows what they are doing so it's just the complicated process of organic failure no longer suffices. The irony is that I most often hear this defense from the realpolitik subscribers of the Kissinger type defending bad actions... the ones I highly suspect of being the primary malicious actors abusing the incompetence in the first place! You want a perfect example of this? High level manipulation of events via the triple agents of the Cambridge 6. This is also why I theorize that the deep state is largely unkown the middle-high level managers, they simply corrupt from the top down. For those curious about the deep state, I suggest starting with works of Peter Dale Scott. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dale_Scott https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Dale_Scott
- vonklaus 10y agoI agree with the premise but not the conclusion. Worked at/have seen a few start-ups close up; people don't know what they are doing-- I mean this in a "cliff jump build parachute" way not pejoratively. With that in mind, you have a fragmented ecosystem and a lot to gain. I don't think people are organized or agreeable enough for an "illuminati"-esque conspiracy, but people and groups can scheme so well here w/ little oversite. Article seemed to say that small specific task goals can get done but because some large groups can't execute a large scale goal there is no "scheming". I disagree.
- wu-ikkyu 10y agoTldr; a strawman + an anecdote: Author posits fictional conspiracy movies are fictional, and the author has never personally witnessed a successful "scheme", so you have nothing to worry about. History shows otherwise. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_conspiracies https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_conspiraci...
- hunvreus 10y agoThis doesn't just apply to politics. That was probably my earliest epiphany as a founder: nobody knows what the fuck they're doing. Nobody. That VP of marketing at a fortune 100? No idea what he's doing. That young startup CEO who's successful while being 10 years your junior? No freaking idea at all. Even in areas where you would assume process and numbers outweigh the human element (e.g. finances), I was surprised to see how the sausage is made (and how messy it is). Once you've internalized that truth, the world is a lot less intimidating, especially as a founder.
- mabramo 10y agoHanlon's Razor in action, as I see it.
- mordymoop 10y ago"Nobody ever knows what they're doing and their scheming never works, except sometimes when they do and it does."