4 ms·

>I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them? "I am the owner of this computer, yet I can't know whether it will run a certain pr

>I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them? "I am the owner of this computer, yet I can't know whether it will run a certain problem in finite time?" "We are the dominant species on this planet, yet we can't change its course towards Alpha Centauri?" Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it. A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something. "Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt."

mistermann 6y ago
>> My original question: "I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them?" I notice that rather than answering my question, you seem to have chosen to instead reply with two other questions, both of which are rather absurd examples of things that are literally not possible, and have little relevance to the question I actually asked. May I ask why you chose to respond in this way? My (speculative) intuition is that it is a form of rhetoric, that is often used in conversation to persuade third party observers of a certain thing. But to be explicit, this is only my intuition, I am not making a formal accusation of any kind...I am simply curious about what is going on in this conversation. So, having said all that: is my intuition incorrect? And if so, I would very much appreciate if you could explain what is going on here, as it seems to have become a very common writing technique here and elsewhere, but I am personally unable to understand it at all - to me, it only makes already complex conversations even more confusing. > Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it. > A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something. > "Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt." This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. Is this what you are actually saying, or is my interpretation flawed? If it is flawed, would you be able to restate your beliefs in clear, unambiguous, non-rhetorical terms? And if it is not flawed, could you possibly post at least one example where omnipotence is clearly required to accomplish the task (or something reasonably close to demonstrating that)? And I suppose I should also point out that the underlying issue of my analogy is whether the current political process in the Unites States of America could be improved, at all. Do you think it is not possible to make any improvements at all, however small? If it isn't too much trouble, I think an initial discrete "Yes" or "No" answer would help in maximizing communication effectiveness, and after that you can include any rhetorical narrative that you believe adds to that initial answer.
- invalidOrTaken 6y ago
  Enter, O practitioner of conversational charity, and be welcomed. Yes, I think it is possible to make improvements.* >and have little relevance to the question I actually asked. My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice. My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point. So no, this was not a display for third parties (not completely, anyway---who doesn't like upvotes?), but an honest attempt to communicate that yes, it is really hard, probably actually impossible, and certainly not easy or simple if approached naively, which the "company owner" analogy seems to do. >This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. No! A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual. That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate: - a company owner, as an individual, is less likely to make contradictory, impossible demands. For electorates impossible and contradictory demands are the rule rather than the exception. - a company owner is concerned with a more responsive machine (the company) than an electorate (a country), and so is more likely to have a working feedback loop---which means if they do make impossible demands, they are more likely to connect the (bad) consequences to the demands. - a company owner is able (at least in theory) to believably make commitments. If a company owner said, "What specifically is the problem stopping you from XYZ, I will fire you if you don't tell me, I will promote you if you do," there is a set of circumstances in which subordinates could believe and rely on that. Electorates, in contrast, are completely unreliable and cannot make believable promises. Individuals might---you might write your congressman and promise you'll vote for him if he does XYZ---but what does he care, you're one vote, he gets letters every week saying the equivalent, but for different things. So I am perhaps not answering the question as written---is it possible for a company owner to expel bad management. Yes, it absolutely is. However, analogizing that to nation-state governance is a model with some very important flaws, the bulk of them relating to coordination/communication problems that electorates face. Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable. There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get. I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million, and there are lots of people with brains that function perfectly well. The shortage is not one of political philosophy! I tend to think the place where I can actually have impact is by building community with my neighbors, raising my family, and (I unironically believe this) writing good software. * Though even the definition of "improvements" is up for grabs. Is a commit that improves runtime by 50% but also increases memory usage by the same amount an improvement? Governance is full of similar tradeoffs, and reasonable people can and do disagree on them.

mistermann 6y ago

>> My original question: "I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them?" I notice that rather than answering my question, you seem to have chosen to instead reply with two other questions, both of which are rather absurd examples of things that are literally not possible, and have little relevance to the question I actually asked. May I ask why you chose to respond in this way? My (speculative) intuition is that it is a form of rhetoric, that is often used in conversation to persuade third party observers of a certain thing. But to be explicit, this is only my intuition, I am not making a formal accusation of any kind...I am simply curious about what is going on in this conversation. So, having said all that: is my intuition incorrect? And if so, I would very much appreciate if you could explain what is going on here, as it seems to have become a very common writing technique here and elsewhere, but I am personally unable to understand it at all - to me, it only makes already complex conversations even more confusing. > Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it. > A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something. > "Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt." This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. Is this what you are actually saying, or is my interpretation flawed? If it is flawed, would you be able to restate your beliefs in clear, unambiguous, non-rhetorical terms? And if it is not flawed, could you possibly post at least one example where omnipotence is clearly required to accomplish the task (or something reasonably close to demonstrating that)? And I suppose I should also point out that the underlying issue of my analogy is whether the current political process in the Unites States of America could be improved, at all. Do you think it is not possible to make any improvements at all, however small? If it isn't too much trouble, I think an initial discrete "Yes" or "No" answer would help in maximizing communication effectiveness, and after that you can include any rhetorical narrative that you believe adds to that initial answer.

invalidOrTaken 6y ago
Enter, O practitioner of conversational charity, and be welcomed. Yes, I think it is possible to make improvements.* >and have little relevance to the question I actually asked. My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice. My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point. So no, this was not a display for third parties (not completely, anyway---who doesn't like upvotes?), but an honest attempt to communicate that yes, it is really hard, probably actually impossible, and certainly not easy or simple if approached naively, which the "company owner" analogy seems to do. >This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. No! A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual. That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate: - a company owner, as an individual, is less likely to make contradictory, impossible demands. For electorates impossible and contradictory demands are the rule rather than the exception. - a company owner is concerned with a more responsive machine (the company) than an electorate (a country), and so is more likely to have a working feedback loop---which means if they do make impossible demands, they are more likely to connect the (bad) consequences to the demands. - a company owner is able (at least in theory) to believably make commitments. If a company owner said, "What specifically is the problem stopping you from XYZ, I will fire you if you don't tell me, I will promote you if you do," there is a set of circumstances in which subordinates could believe and rely on that. Electorates, in contrast, are completely unreliable and cannot make believable promises. Individuals might---you might write your congressman and promise you'll vote for him if he does XYZ---but what does he care, you're one vote, he gets letters every week saying the equivalent, but for different things. So I am perhaps not answering the question as written---is it possible for a company owner to expel bad management. Yes, it absolutely is. However, analogizing that to nation-state governance is a model with some very important flaws, the bulk of them relating to coordination/communication problems that electorates face. Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable. There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get. I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million, and there are lots of people with brains that function perfectly well. The shortage is not one of political philosophy! I tend to think the place where I can actually have impact is by building community with my neighbors, raising my family, and (I unironically believe this) writing good software. * Though even the definition of "improvements" is up for grabs. Is a commit that improves runtime by 50% but also increases memory usage by the same amount an improvement? Governance is full of similar tradeoffs, and reasonable people can and do disagree on them.