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> What was surprising was the number of institutions which had signed onto the framework - my alma mater included. I'm curious how many of these still have an E
by enriquto 6y ago
> What was surprising was the number of institutions which had signed onto the framework - my alma mater included. I'm curious how many of these still have an Elsevier contract.
If you ever tried to dig deep into the internals of a large organization, you will notice that they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. At least, this was my experience.
For a mathematician used to third-excluded logic, it may seem impossible, since you can prove anything from "p and not p". Yet, these organizations manage to not be able to do arbitrary things from contradictory inputs, but somewhat sane things (some of the time).
- skywhopper 6y agoI mean, the reality of any large institution (or even a single human being) is that there will inevitably exist many contradictory "rules" that must be handled. I'm not sure how it is amazing. It's a fundamental necessity for their existence.
- jiveturkey 6y ago> they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. Not amazing. Rules are for the ruled. The executive is not bound by them.
- Nextgrid 6y ago> they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules This is caused by managers' and middle-managers' performance metrics being tied to the wrong outcomes. The top layer of management's target is the desired outcome. The bottom layer's (the worker) target is also clear, it's to do whatever their manager says to do. In the middle is where it often breaks down; their objectives are short-sighted and while it works out for their own career, it rarely benefits the top level target. At best, it introduces a large inefficiency, waste of resources and unnecessary busywork ("bullshit jobs" becomes relevant here) and at worst it goes completely against the target set at the top level. Imagine it as an eventually-consistent system. If you don't change anything and give the system enough time it will eventually achieve its goal. The problem is that the "time" we're talking about is measured in years if not decades and during that period the system is stuck in a contradictory state. Endless restructurings and other external factors often reset this "timer" so the system is even more likely to stay in the contradictory state forever (some other "systems" depend on this system staying in the contradictory state), despite theoretically advancing towards the end-goal.
- JackFr 6y ago> At best, it introduces a large inefficiency, waste of resources and unnecessary busywork ("bullshit jobs" becomes relevant here) If the COVID-19 lockdown has taught us anything, it's that probably a full third of our economy is bullshit jobs. We're at best self-perpetuating economic 'nice-to-haves', at worst parasitic rent seekers, probably somewhere in between, whose real role is simply to distribute GDP more widely, while pretending to add value to society.
- saalweachter 6y agoI suppose that is a third way to deal with automation. I usually say, there are two ways to deal with productivity increases (from automation and industrialization): you can either attempt to do more as a civilization (build moon bases, increased consumer goods, etc) or you can have everyone work less (3 or 4 day work weeks, 5 hour work days, etc). I guess you can also just create lots of bullshit jobs so everyone is still "working" 40+ hours a week without actually doing anything.
- TeMPOraL 6y agoI believe your third answer is indeed the reason that despite so many things being automated, we're not seeing benefits of that in terms of reduced workloads on people. The way I see it, as long as creating bullshit jobs is easy, the market will force everyone to work 40+ hour a week to survive. And as long as creating bullshit jobs that just shuffle money around is easier than creating socially valuable jobs, we won't see any Moon bases either.
- toomuchtodo 6y agoLook at it from another angle: would people work bullshit jobs if they didn't have to? Fix the incentives, pay people a minimum income where they don't have to work, and if you absolutely need labor you're going to have to pay someone who doesn't have to be there if they don't want to. If people's basic needs were met, I think you'd see a lot of labor shift to work that is valuable, but currently not compensated for. Also, you have to adjust constraints to deal with legacy systems: the Federal Reserve works to maximize employment through monetary policy. This is suboptimal, when work will expand to consume the time allowed for it [1]. You need to use a one way policy ratchet to ratchet down the hours per week worked as productivity has increased, otherwise workers will never see productivity gains and society will be stuck on the 40 hour labor work week forever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law
- mcphage 6y ago> you will notice that they are perfectly capable of managing a set of self-contradictory rules. It is actually an amazing power. That's how life is, though—a jumble of rules that don't all agree and aren't all consistent. So you get used to juggling them all, making them work together as well as you can, so you can get your job done and move on.
- ptero 6y agoYes, but to me this (the contradictory nature of a large set of rules in life) is a nuisance, not a feature to be welcomed. Sometimes it is unavoidable or very expensive to clean, but we should discourage adding complex rules contradicting our existing set if possible. My 2c.
- zentiggr 6y agoConsider the state and intent of a group of humanity as a spin glass, and you can apply a little bit of vaguely applicable analysis. I've tried for most of my life to internalize that most of the difficulty in life is caused by different people having different viewpoints and goals and conditions. Any endeavour only works as well as the sum of its implementors.
- fnovd 6y agoLight behaves as both a wave and a particle. This goes well beyond human eccentricities. The universe does not care that our simple brains want to model it simply.
- marksbrown 6y agoThe wave and particle models are our own. They don't necessarily respect the true nature of reality. A bit like the old anecdote about blindfolded people feeling an elephant.
- fnovd 6y agoThe dual, contradictory model predicts reality better than a unified one can. A set of contradictory rules might create better outcomes than a set of straightforward rules.
- devit 6y agoIt's easy to make this non-contradictory by making the rules apply only to future contracts, or only when the decision maker wants them to apply.
- enriquto 6y agothis guy manages!
- rini17 6y agoRuthlessly applying logical rules onto reality tends to create singularities :)
- oliwarner 6y agoPolicy compliance is a constant battle of wills in most large organisation. Enough of a battle in some places that they have compliance staff. Just because they sign up to do something in a particular way doesn't mean everybody in that org is going to follow those rules.
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- Tainnor 6y agoTotally a tangent, but: the law of the excluded middle ("tertium non datur") doesn't state that "a and not a" is always invalid, it states that "a or not a" is always valid. This is a somewhat important distinction since there are logic systems (intuitionism) where "a or not a" is not a tautology, yet I don't know of any logic that accepts "a and not a".
- mehrdadn 6y agoI'm confused. Or maybe you're confusing AND with OR? How can "A and not A" ever be true, let alone tautologically so? Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_noncontradiction
- dfischer 6y agoQuantum states can be A and not A. Unknown questions are A and not A. There’s interesting alternative logic systems that try to tackle this. We get into interesting territory when using English and then “is” as a statement. Most English is assumed to have a certain value because of to be. English is almost inherently flawed with logic bugs and assumptions. E-Prime may help with this. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catu%E1%B9%A3ko%E1%B9%ADi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catu%E1%B9%A3ko%E1%B9%ADi 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaina_seven-valued_logic 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite-valued_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite-valued_logic
- mehrdadn 6y agoOkay but I still don't see how the law of the excluded middle says that "a and not a" is always valid.
- dash2 6y agoGrandparent said that the law doesn't say that "a and not a" is always INvalid. (The law also doesn't say that "a and not a" is sometimes valid. It makes no comment at all, but only claims that "a or not a" is always valid. According to the grandparent. Now I need to lie down for a bit....)
- arcturus17 6y agoJust like the humans that make them, then.
- bananamerica 6y agoMaybe it doesn’t make sense to think about large organizations as monolithic entities. They’re composed of numerous sub entities that may follow different rules. A platoon may be ordered to shoot, but it’s conceivable that not all soldiers will comply. This is not at all contradictory.
- m463 6y agoI can't help but think of the legal system. You would think it was rigorous and logical and would have parallels in science in some way, but when you can "exclude evidence" you realize they are different animals. as to large organizations... Look, it's just Game of Thrones all the way down.
- jlokier 6y agoThere's a whole class of formal logic systems that accept "a and not a". They are called Paraconsistent Logics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraconsistent_logic), which allow contradiction without explosion. Ideal for mathematically representing the kind of reasoning that bubbles up from contradictory positions and goals as you described, where organisations manage to do sane things anyway, sometimes!
- watwut 6y agoOrganizations are composed from many people doing independent decisions and forgetting about old decisions. There is nothing difficult about organization being inconsistent, the difficult leadership task is to make it consistent. Inconsistency is natural state even when we ignore the fact that all humans are internally inconsistent - including mathematicians.