5 ms·

No matter the industry, it sucks to have someone managing by dashboard. In classic post modernism, the signifier replaces the signified. If anything, it’s a gre

by dexwiz 2y ago

No matter the industry, it sucks to have someone managing by dashboard. In classic post modernism, the signifier replaces the signified. If anything, it’s a great signal to the employee that it’s time to start looking elsewhere.

shrimp_emoji 2y ago
Are flies that evolve to look like bees to ward off predators postmodern? It just seems like game theory.
- dexwiz 2y ago
  No, that is convergent evolution. A more apt comparison would be selection of secondary sexual traits that no longer correspond to fitness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier
jjmarr 2y ago
I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism. The process of reality getting abstracted to the point abstractions stop being representative of reality is extremely common in software engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality A hyperreal workplace is one where representations of reality take precedence over reality itself, and the reality of a situation ceases to have meaning. i.e. One where people chase metrics for the sake of metrics, instead of understanding that issue count is supposed to reflect the underlying code quality, and code quality should always take priority over the representation. The broader philosophical context is relevant because it shows the broader cultural problem instead of assuming the issue is limited to a single tool.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism. Because, rather than recognize that overdoing abstractions is a thing and reminding people that there is always reality out there that won't bend to your wishes, post-modernism (which is the term the GP used) tells people that there is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions, and anyone who tries to push back because reality is just insufficiently post-modernist.
  - orwin 2y ago
    That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is, that's at best a misunderstanding, but more likely a strawman. The only point on which all post-modernists agree is a refutation of meta-narratives (and to be explicit: "here is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions" is a meta-narrative). A very, very charitable interpretation is that you are maybe conflating it with Frankfurt School of critical theory, because it is also somewhat used/based on psychoanalysis (sigh) (latest postmodernists use psychoanalysis way less, also post-modernism isn't built on it, contrary to critical theory). Postmodernism is mostly post-marxism though, while critical theory is mostly neo-marxist imho (also, i don't want to be too critical of Frankfurt's school, i think most of their bad rep is caused by bad vulgarization/pop-science, most critics i read don't seems to understand why it's wrong either). I do think that the reason most people conflate the two is because of an idiotic canadian psychoanalyst who can't read (or at least, can't understand what he read), who _clearly_ has no degree in literature or philosophy, and try to appear smarter than he is. He invent citations of the books, and sometime state that Derrida mean something when Derrida hismself wrote the opposite. 8th grader would do better and their reading comprehension assignment. He is wrong. Read and think by yourself.
    - pdonis 2y ago
      > That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is It's not what post-modernists typically say post-modernism is. But I'm not relying on what they say it is. I've read enough post-modernism to form my own opinion. > Read and think by yourself. I have. See above.
      - squigz 2y ago
        This doesn't seem to actually address any of what GP said
      - Solololo 2y ago
        Who did you read?
      - Log_out_ 2y ago
- Spooky23 2y ago
  You need to learn to game it. People care about this stuff are usually stupid. When I led a large support organization I had an SVP who really cared about open incident duration. His pattern for giving a fuck was predictable. My strategy was to hold certain tickets in an undead state (not impacting the metric), then reopen them and close them, demonstrating a metric improvement. He got his improvement and big shot street cred, users weren’t impacted, and I didn’t have to ruin support to try to grind out small gains.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - nunez 2y ago
    It's less stupidity and more "if we don't prove that we meet x control in y compliance framework, our auditors will deem us non-compliant and we will be fined into oblivion"
    - ocodo 2y ago
      I mean, it's still stupidity, but it's upstream stupidity with the ability to punish. So, snafu.
    - Spooky23 2y ago
      Or “my bonus depends on metric x being above y” Smart leaders know how to balance it. The stupid work to rule
- OJFord 2y ago
  Whenever I want to feel completely stupid, I just open a Wikipedia page on some philosophical term/idea and go down a rabbit hole of links that it's a concept in/argument against/etc. Just completely impenetrably baffling to me in a way that other fields like chemistry or microbiology or physics or whatever (despite also not being my own) aren't. Not that I understand them, but they're penetrable, I can read more and more and form some kind of understanding. Is it just me? I don't know what it is, can it really be as simple as philosophy not being taught at school (compulsorily, or young) so I don't have that kind of rough overview of the landscape I do for other broad subjects? (I did take one course in 'contemporary philosophy' at university, which I enjoyed, but we covered only what we covered I suppose - I might be able to hold a (very) basic conversation about Sartre or Wittgenstein, but that page on post-structuralism.. no idea!)
  - _dain_ 2y ago
    you aren't stupid. philosophers forgot how to write clearly sometime in the past century.
    - orwin 2y ago
      Most modern philosophers papers are 5 to 20 pages long and are mostly understandable, more than a particle physics abstract at least, you should try: - https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/9/177/files/2011/04/Hursthouse-Arational-actions.pdf https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/9/177... (it's about rationality, it changed the way in manage my emotions and made me question my consciousness, which in the end made me stop alcohol) - https://philpapers.org/archive/KAMCYB.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/KAMCYB.pdf which made me realize an intuition i had sonce reading the first book (i think the writing is better and clearer, but it might be because the author isn't USian/english and doesn't try to much) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y (i noticed my access wasn't revoked, it's been 4 year since i've stopped working for an institution. Hopefully you have an access too, else you might find it on scihub)
  - roenxi 2y ago
    More than likely it is "just you", the page on post-structuralism seems clear enough to me (as far as I can tell, the post-structuralists are criticising structuralism because they don't think the structures are sufficiently powerful). What that means in detail is unclear - understanding a position and thinking it is obviously silly is a completely valid stance when dealing with philosophers. Or just having no interest in the questions philosophers often ask (for example, if structuralism seems to be fundamentally invalid then bothering to take a post-structuralist stance to criticise it it requires a certain type of pedantic and argumentative mind). Or the easy explanation which is misunderstanding [0]. I liked the Barthes example on the post-structuralist page - if a text's author doesn't necessarily have the authority to assert the meaning of a text, then the idea that they text is necessarily part of some identifiable structure is open to question. I assume that means that the same text might fit into multiple contexts with different meanings and trying to fit it with one static meaning based on its initial context is doomed, and that suggests structuralist critique is either insufficient or overly reductive. [0] Although arguably all of philosophy is people misunderstanding each other; otherwise it may as well be a settled field.
- Solololo 2y ago
  For Baudrillard specifically, The Matrix is of course to blame ;)
- TSP00N3 2y ago
  I think rather than calling it post structuralism or hyper reality, we can just look at goodharts law[0] for the general understanding that metrics cease to be useful when they become the thing that leadership looks at. Like Spooky23 and others are saying in other comments, once you learn that it’s all a game you can use it to your advantage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law
2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
I'm not sure about every industry but it becomes especially tricky with software. I worked at a manufacturing plant and they put dashboards on monitors everywhere so the whole plant was always aware of their performance. This was easy to measure because they made physical goods! How do you measure output and performance in software?

by dexwiz 2y ago

shrimp_emoji 2y ago

Are flies that evolve to look like bees to ward off predators postmodern? It just seems like game theory.

dexwiz 2y ago
No, that is convergent evolution. A more apt comparison would be selection of secondary sexual traits that no longer correspond to fitness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signified_and_signifier

jjmarr 2y ago

I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism. The process of reality getting abstracted to the point abstractions stop being representative of reality is extremely common in software engineering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperreality A hyperreal workplace is one where representations of reality take precedence over reality itself, and the reality of a situation ceases to have meaning. i.e. One where people chase metrics for the sake of metrics, instead of understanding that issue count is supposed to reflect the underlying code quality, and code quality should always take priority over the representation. The broader philosophical context is relevant because it shows the broader cultural problem instead of assuming the issue is limited to a single tool.

pdonis 2y ago
> I don't get why people hate on post-structuralism. Because, rather than recognize that overdoing abstractions is a thing and reminding people that there is always reality out there that won't bend to your wishes, post-modernism (which is the term the GP used) tells people that there is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions, and anyone who tries to push back because reality is just insufficiently post-modernist.
- orwin 2y ago
  That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is, that's at best a misunderstanding, but more likely a strawman. The only point on which all post-modernists agree is a refutation of meta-narratives (and to be explicit: "here is no reality out there, it's all just human-created abstractions" is a meta-narrative). A very, very charitable interpretation is that you are maybe conflating it with Frankfurt School of critical theory, because it is also somewhat used/based on psychoanalysis (sigh) (latest postmodernists use psychoanalysis way less, also post-modernism isn't built on it, contrary to critical theory). Postmodernism is mostly post-marxism though, while critical theory is mostly neo-marxist imho (also, i don't want to be too critical of Frankfurt's school, i think most of their bad rep is caused by bad vulgarization/pop-science, most critics i read don't seems to understand why it's wrong either). I do think that the reason most people conflate the two is because of an idiotic canadian psychoanalyst who can't read (or at least, can't understand what he read), who _clearly_ has no degree in literature or philosophy, and try to appear smarter than he is. He invent citations of the books, and sometime state that Derrida mean something when Derrida hismself wrote the opposite. 8th grader would do better and their reading comprehension assignment. He is wrong. Read and think by yourself.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > That's typically _not_ what post-modernism is It's not what post-modernists typically say post-modernism is. But I'm not relying on what they say it is. I've read enough post-modernism to form my own opinion. > Read and think by yourself. I have. See above.
    - squigz 2y ago
      This doesn't seem to actually address any of what GP said
    - Solololo 2y ago
      Who did you read?
    - Log_out_ 2y ago
Spooky23 2y ago
You need to learn to game it. People care about this stuff are usually stupid. When I led a large support organization I had an SVP who really cared about open incident duration. His pattern for giving a fuck was predictable. My strategy was to hold certain tickets in an undead state (not impacting the metric), then reopen them and close them, demonstrating a metric improvement. He got his improvement and big shot street cred, users weren’t impacted, and I didn’t have to ruin support to try to grind out small gains.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- nunez 2y ago
  It's less stupidity and more "if we don't prove that we meet x control in y compliance framework, our auditors will deem us non-compliant and we will be fined into oblivion"
  - ocodo 2y ago
    I mean, it's still stupidity, but it's upstream stupidity with the ability to punish. So, snafu.
  - Spooky23 2y ago
    Or “my bonus depends on metric x being above y” Smart leaders know how to balance it. The stupid work to rule
OJFord 2y ago
Whenever I want to feel completely stupid, I just open a Wikipedia page on some philosophical term/idea and go down a rabbit hole of links that it's a concept in/argument against/etc. Just completely impenetrably baffling to me in a way that other fields like chemistry or microbiology or physics or whatever (despite also not being my own) aren't. Not that I understand them, but they're penetrable, I can read more and more and form some kind of understanding. Is it just me? I don't know what it is, can it really be as simple as philosophy not being taught at school (compulsorily, or young) so I don't have that kind of rough overview of the landscape I do for other broad subjects? (I did take one course in 'contemporary philosophy' at university, which I enjoyed, but we covered only what we covered I suppose - I might be able to hold a (very) basic conversation about Sartre or Wittgenstein, but that page on post-structuralism.. no idea!)
- _dain_ 2y ago
  you aren't stupid. philosophers forgot how to write clearly sometime in the past century.
  - orwin 2y ago
    Most modern philosophers papers are 5 to 20 pages long and are mostly understandable, more than a particle physics abstract at least, you should try: - https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/9/177/files/2011/04/Hursthouse-Arational-actions.pdf https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/voices.uchicago.edu/dist/9/177... (it's about rationality, it changed the way in manage my emotions and made me question my consciousness, which in the end made me stop alcohol) - https://philpapers.org/archive/KAMCYB.pdf https://philpapers.org/archive/KAMCYB.pdf which made me realize an intuition i had sonce reading the first book (i think the writing is better and clearer, but it might be because the author isn't USian/english and doesn't try to much) - https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11229-018-02071-y (i noticed my access wasn't revoked, it's been 4 year since i've stopped working for an institution. Hopefully you have an access too, else you might find it on scihub)
- roenxi 2y ago
  More than likely it is "just you", the page on post-structuralism seems clear enough to me (as far as I can tell, the post-structuralists are criticising structuralism because they don't think the structures are sufficiently powerful). What that means in detail is unclear - understanding a position and thinking it is obviously silly is a completely valid stance when dealing with philosophers. Or just having no interest in the questions philosophers often ask (for example, if structuralism seems to be fundamentally invalid then bothering to take a post-structuralist stance to criticise it it requires a certain type of pedantic and argumentative mind). Or the easy explanation which is misunderstanding [0]. I liked the Barthes example on the post-structuralist page - if a text's author doesn't necessarily have the authority to assert the meaning of a text, then the idea that they text is necessarily part of some identifiable structure is open to question. I assume that means that the same text might fit into multiple contexts with different meanings and trying to fit it with one static meaning based on its initial context is doomed, and that suggests structuralist critique is either insufficient or overly reductive. [0] Although arguably all of philosophy is people misunderstanding each other; otherwise it may as well be a settled field.
Solololo 2y ago
For Baudrillard specifically, The Matrix is of course to blame ;)
TSP00N3 2y ago
I think rather than calling it post structuralism or hyper reality, we can just look at goodharts law[0] for the general understanding that metrics cease to be useful when they become the thing that leadership looks at. Like Spooky23 and others are saying in other comments, once you learn that it’s all a game you can use it to your advantage. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart's_law

2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago

I'm not sure about every industry but it becomes especially tricky with software. I worked at a manufacturing plant and they put dashboards on monitors everywhere so the whole plant was always aware of their performance. This was easy to measure because they made physical goods! How do you measure output and performance in software?