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This article reminds me of a clip from an interview with Obama recently. https://youtu.be/N7ZHDoNhScY?t=716 https://youtu.be/N7ZHDoNhScY?t=716 He states that h

This article reminds me of a clip from an interview with Obama recently. https://youtu.be/N7ZHDoNhScY?t=716 https://youtu.be/N7ZHDoNhScY?t=716 He states that he expected people in charge would be more informed or smarter as he progressed up the chain from community organizer to world leader. But in his experience they did not. In his words, "It was all the same people." Another person that touches on this idea is Adam Corolla. His often states his observation that he thought everyone was good at their job when he was a child. But when he grew up and worked with people he realized that there are so many people that are bad at their jobs.

pmoriarty 8y ago
I guess Obama never met people like Fabrice Bellard or John Carmack.
- orev 8y ago
  You’re selecting for exemplary people in your example, while Obama and Corolla are talking about a wide group of people in an industry. Your comment does not hold water.
- empath75 8y ago
  I bet John Carmack is just winging it in a lot of aspects of his life, too.
  - Applejinx 8y ago
    Hearing Jonathan Blow talk about John Carmack is fascinating. It's in some video or other, as it's a story Blow tells on himself when giving talks. He'd gone over the Doom source code when Carmack had open-sourced it, and Blow was appalled, because it was loaded with inefficient, crude, not-optimized stuff. Essentially, Doom source code was dumb and primitive. Jonathan Blow's initial reaction was horror and contempt, because the code gave the impression that Carmack was just winging it most uncaringly. Later, Blow decided that this was a process of value judgement, and himself turned against trying to optimize and refine every little code style, in favor of doing stuff that didn't take nearly as much brain and ability to retain state. He took some of Carmack's dumbness and crudeness as an example of where to place your attention. This is totally valid, while at the same time being a conscious decision to 'just wing it' in many senses. I do this myself, even on public-facing code. In a sense it's optimization and choosing to focus on areas where I can be more useful. At the same time, I'm literally just winging it and some of the things I'm not doing, I'm not doing because I'm too dumb to know how, and would be distracted by trying to learn. If I had great mastery of all these things it would affect my choices, but when I don't I'll take the Carmack path and ostentatiously do the 'crude' thing so I can lean on what I do have going for me.
    - derangedHorse 8y ago
      There's a concept I learned in an Ethics class years ago that basically outlined a thought experiment where some thinkers had to decide the solution to a problem with immediacy but because they were too busy thinking about their decision, they were no longer able to decide. I feel like it describes these types of scenarios perfectly.
- hnuser355 8y ago
  I mean I worked with people at Kmart who had fairly quick intellects and encyclopedic knowledge of some random thing like radios, definitions of words, and every pop hit of the last several decades
amelius 8y ago
Perhaps he witnessed the Peter Principle, [1]. And having been at the top himself, the principle doesn't apply to him personally. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

pmoriarty 8y ago

I guess Obama never met people like Fabrice Bellard or John Carmack.

orev 8y ago
You’re selecting for exemplary people in your example, while Obama and Corolla are talking about a wide group of people in an industry. Your comment does not hold water.
empath75 8y ago
I bet John Carmack is just winging it in a lot of aspects of his life, too.
- Applejinx 8y ago
  Hearing Jonathan Blow talk about John Carmack is fascinating. It's in some video or other, as it's a story Blow tells on himself when giving talks. He'd gone over the Doom source code when Carmack had open-sourced it, and Blow was appalled, because it was loaded with inefficient, crude, not-optimized stuff. Essentially, Doom source code was dumb and primitive. Jonathan Blow's initial reaction was horror and contempt, because the code gave the impression that Carmack was just winging it most uncaringly. Later, Blow decided that this was a process of value judgement, and himself turned against trying to optimize and refine every little code style, in favor of doing stuff that didn't take nearly as much brain and ability to retain state. He took some of Carmack's dumbness and crudeness as an example of where to place your attention. This is totally valid, while at the same time being a conscious decision to 'just wing it' in many senses. I do this myself, even on public-facing code. In a sense it's optimization and choosing to focus on areas where I can be more useful. At the same time, I'm literally just winging it and some of the things I'm not doing, I'm not doing because I'm too dumb to know how, and would be distracted by trying to learn. If I had great mastery of all these things it would affect my choices, but when I don't I'll take the Carmack path and ostentatiously do the 'crude' thing so I can lean on what I do have going for me.
  - derangedHorse 8y ago
    There's a concept I learned in an Ethics class years ago that basically outlined a thought experiment where some thinkers had to decide the solution to a problem with immediacy but because they were too busy thinking about their decision, they were no longer able to decide. I feel like it describes these types of scenarios perfectly.
hnuser355 8y ago
I mean I worked with people at Kmart who had fairly quick intellects and encyclopedic knowledge of some random thing like radios, definitions of words, and every pop hit of the last several decades

amelius 8y ago

Perhaps he witnessed the Peter Principle, [1]. And having been at the top himself, the principle doesn't apply to him personally. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle