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Bothers me generally that journalists anthropomorphize companies ("company X worried by...", "will regret..."). Companies are totally emotionless entities only

by qoez 2y ago

Bothers me generally that journalists anthropomorphize companies ("company X worried by...", "will regret..."). Companies are totally emotionless entities only living to maximize profit.

psychoslave 2y ago
And so is internet archive. And laws. And juristic institutions. There is no emotion or individual human interest in our fully rational processes, move along, you mere mortal.
- bunderbunder 2y ago
  I doubt that's what parent was getting at. Probably something more along the lines of the central thesis of the book Essence of Decision by Graham T. Allison. The gist of the book is that organizational behavior never makes sense if you anthropomorphize it as if it were a single entity with its own goals and motivations. Nor does it make sense if you think of it as a corporate machine that behaves mechanistically. It really is a bunch of individual humans with their own goals and motives interacting within a bureaucratic structure. It's a pretty interesting book because its ideas actually got a pretty decent test. He used the Cuban missle crisis to evaluate these three theories of organizational behavior, and showed how publicly knowable facts didn't make sense under the first two models. He then showed that the third model fit them better, and went on to make some hypotheses about what really happened that couldn't be verified at the time. Decades later the relevant information was declassified and it turned out that, while many of his guesses were incorrect, an impressive number of them were spot on.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
>that journalists anthropomorphize companies Because companies are composed of individual tapeworms working towards a common goal? >Companies are totally emotionless entities You speak as if they're evil spirits. They're made up of people. They're very emotional, you just get to see all the worst emotions manifesting at the most inappropriate times.

by qoez 2y ago

Bothers me generally that journalists anthropomorphize companies ("company X worried by...", "will regret..."). Companies are totally emotionless entities only living to maximize profit.

psychoslave 2y ago

And so is internet archive. And laws. And juristic institutions. There is no emotion or individual human interest in our fully rational processes, move along, you mere mortal.

bunderbunder 2y ago
I doubt that's what parent was getting at. Probably something more along the lines of the central thesis of the book Essence of Decision by Graham T. Allison. The gist of the book is that organizational behavior never makes sense if you anthropomorphize it as if it were a single entity with its own goals and motivations. Nor does it make sense if you think of it as a corporate machine that behaves mechanistically. It really is a bunch of individual humans with their own goals and motives interacting within a bureaucratic structure. It's a pretty interesting book because its ideas actually got a pretty decent test. He used the Cuban missle crisis to evaluate these three theories of organizational behavior, and showed how publicly knowable facts didn't make sense under the first two models. He then showed that the third model fit them better, and went on to make some hypotheses about what really happened that couldn't be verified at the time. Decades later the relevant information was declassified and it turned out that, while many of his guesses were incorrect, an impressive number of them were spot on.

NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago

>that journalists anthropomorphize companies Because companies are composed of individual tapeworms working towards a common goal? >Companies are totally emotionless entities You speak as if they're evil spirits. They're made up of people. They're very emotional, you just get to see all the worst emotions manifesting at the most inappropriate times.