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Reminds me of a Critical Thinking course my company held; the instructor asked everyone how many lazy people they'd want working for them. Everyone who answered
by afterburner 16y ago
Reminds me of a Critical Thinking course my company held; the instructor asked everyone how many lazy people they'd want working for them. Everyone who answered said "none", but the instructor countered that they would want at least a few lazy people, so that those people could find the shortcuts and work-saving techniques that could save the whole group time, instead of going full out on a bunch of stuff that's unnecessary or needlessly tedious. I assume the assumption was that these lazy people were also competent, ie. "smart", or they wouldn't necessarily find/make the short-cuts...
- pavel_lishin 16y agoOr worse, the shortcuts they took ended up hurting in the long-run. Making room for the new interns' desks by putting them in the unused corner, instead of renting more office space, is a great shortcut, unless it blocks the fire escape and your building catches fire.
- berntb 16y agoThat is where this famous quote was cribbed from? " I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Most often two of these qualities come together. The officers who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Those who are stupid and lazy make up around 90% of every army in the world, and they can be used for routine work. The man who is clever and lazy however is for the very highest command; he has the temperament and nerves to deal with all situations. But whoever is stupid and industrious is a menace and must be removed immediately!" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Hammerstein-Equord Personally, I try to follow the Perl virtues -- laziness, hubris and impatience. http://wiki.preshweb.co.uk/doku.php?id=perl:virtues http://wiki.preshweb.co.uk/doku.php?id=perl:virtues Edit: Can anyone give a reference to the Napoleon quote? Was that the German general playing off Napoleon? (Or was TFA written by someone too dumb to Google and energetic enough to write from memory?)
- gruseom 16y agoWhat's going on is the usual process by which good quotes get detached from their original authors and grafted onto celebrities (Napoleon in this case). It helps the quote propagate faster. The internet seems to accelerate this process - or maybe it's that it makes it visible because original sources are easier to track down than they used to be. In any case, it's a fun little mini-hobby to follow these things. For example, Gandhi never said the one about "first they laugh at you", Einstein never said the one about insanity being doing the same thing over and over, etc.
- lucasjung 16y agoI've never seen the insanity one attributed to Einstein; usually people say it comes from AA. Personally, that one always drove me nuts because, while I appreciate the sentiment, the way it is phrased is blatantly wrong. I eventually came up with a suitable response: whenever someone quotes that one to me, I pull out a coin and start flipping it repeatedly, calling out "heads" or "tails" each time.
- jerf 16y agoAmusing, many people get it "wrong" and I don't even know which is the original between the two of "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a (different/same) result."; to me both are equally wrong and useless. In a world that is always adapting, doing the same thing over and over again will often locally have the same effect but globally it won't as conditions change, and the aphorism is basically never actually useful or as wise as it sounds.