Oh yeah that’s the Peter principle I think. Or closely related.
Someone is good at job A, so they promoted to B. They’re good at B, so they get promoted to C. They’re kind of bad at C, so they stay there.
Over time, all roles fill up with people who are kind of bad.
I’ve been stuck on this thought that people making decisions are often idiots.
We’re sort of told that management is smart. That big business leaders are visionaries. If someone’s the director of engineering they’re probably smart right?
No. They’re just people. People that have the skills to get promoted, but those aren’t the same skills to do anything else.
I think it would matter less if there was more competition and more stakes. If some business puts idiots in charge and the whole company dies, okay. But instead we have Google just shitting the bed for years, and there aren’t consequences.
This is a capitalist hell
They will accept any negative sum game, they will ruin their own livelihoods and their own lives, if only it helps sad little kings of sad little hills.
I’m reminded of that book about Authoritarian Personality Types. They did like a model UN / Civilization game kind of thing, where the players represented different countries and could make decisions about policy, war, and so on. There were two groups. Unknown to the players, the people running this experiment put all the people who scored high for authoritarian personality in one group, and everyone else in the other group.
The group with low authoritarian personality scores? Basically everything was fine. They solved the ozone layer crisis. They were solving world hunger. One guy tried to be a dick and the rest of the group brought him in line.
The high authoritarian guys? Nuclear apocalypse. They made them sit in the dark for five minutes to think about what they’d done, and let them have a do-over. They still did a shit job. Petty squabbling. Stealing. Out of control climate crisis.
I don’t think there’s an ethical way to do this in real life, but I do think if you just didn’t allow people with that kind of personality to have any real power, we’d all be much better off.
It’s also possible i mangled the story because I rewrote it here from memory, but I believe it was in this book: https://theauthoritarians.org/
Oh yeah. Cars are bad on like every metric.
Socially they isolate people. You don’t interact with anyone when you’re driving except to get angry. The micro interactions you have on the train matter. Seeing people that aren’t just like you, also annoyed that the train is delayed, or just having a nice time with their kids, matters. More than makes up for when other people are annoying.
Economically they hurt. It’s much harder to just pop into an interesting looking shop when you’re cruising along at 40mph. All the space dedicated to parking could be used for other stuff- housing, commerce, communal space, whatever.
They make spaces less safe. Other than the direct impact (no pun intended) of people getting hit by cars, or crashing into stuff, a space that has steady foot traffic is generally safer. If everyone was in their car instead, you’d probably be alone on foot with no one to help if something happened.
They’re bad for the environment. Air pollution, micro plastics, whatever.
Drunk driving is way more dangerous than drunk “riding the train”.
The more non-car options are built out, the better it will be for people who need to drive for whatever reason.
Cars culture is trash and if we ever escape from it, it’s going to take years.
Ed Zitron wrote a blog post I’ve been thinking about, where he said that a lot of decisions are made by “business idiots” now. People that don’t really use or understand the product, and don’t really understand the users or their needs. It’s an interesting read, even though the guy is rather verbose: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-era-of-the-business-idiot/
I see what you did there and I’m not going to fully fall for it.
They didn’t say, but like
This week I had two scams, too.
One just solicited me to do crimes. They wanted me to interview on behalf of other people. Just came out and said that’s the deal
The other seemed a little off in its email, so I contacted the company directly and they said the position doesn’t exist, and they didn’t email me.
It’s a hellscape
I don’t think I know anyone who’s cheated. But I also hang out with a lot of polyamorous people, where cheating is possible but I feel like is less common.
Huh. I don’t think I know anyone who cheats so I guess I got lucky. Your post is plausible
Is there a name for the thing where you’ll make an argument with like 3 distinct points supporting it, and the other person will attack only one, and claim the whole thing is in their favor?
Like, “You can’t cast two leveled spells in a turn, and you’re silenced, and you’re out of spell slots, so you can’t cast another fireball”
“No, I have another spell slot from my ring. Fireball time!”
I saw that one too and thought similarly!
I didn’t recognize the source and thought to myself this is either archaic or amateur. It feels purple by modern standards.
The only case I can think of is like you had to call 911 for an emergency and you want the people around you to also hear the dispatcher.
For day to day stuff, not really.
games? I found a civilization port for the phone and it sucked up a lot of time. Turn based so you can do it for a few minutes at a time: https://yairm210.itch.io/unciv
learn a language? duolingo and other apps are out there
This is a time of political crisis. The US government is upending decades of alliances and economics. The right wing is globally on the rise, and that means people’s lives are in danger. The environment is becoming more unpredictable and less supportive for humanity.
There’s a lot of important political shit to talk about. If we were living in a boring utopia, there’d be less, probably.
Also, what do you even consider “political”? Some people will tell you that a story about a man and a woman getting married isn’t political, but a story about two men getting married is. That’s a really low quality analysis there.
On the one hand, yes. But also, it’s mostly capitalism.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with “I’m starting a frisbee club for fun. We’re going to meet saturdays in the park. I’m going to put up some flyers and tell my friends about it”.
But at some point that can mutate into “i put a 30 second unskippable ad for FrisbeeFranchise on youtube, and a giant billboard over the subway stop that implies if you don’t play frisbee you’ll never be happy”. That’s bad.
I think targeted ads should be illegal as a first step. I don’t think anyone except the worst sort of advertisers would go to bat for those. Old fashioned static ads where they put an ad for bike stuff by the bike lane in town is annoying, but somehow we’ve invented things so much worse than that.
Spotify kind of sucks. I’ve been buying music from the musicians (mostly via Bandcamp) for years. Buying one album a month for like $8 means is cheaper than a subscription, and I now have a huge library of music.
I guess riots break out all around the world?
I feel like this idea that people are just going to riot and do mass violence is some right wing fear.
Most people, most of the time, are pretty social cooperative creatures.
The other day some guy was walking his dog outside in the city. The dog took a shit, and the guy just kept walking. I made eye contact but didn’t say anything. Just shook my head and kept walking.
We were heading in the same direction and after a bit I got to my destination and stopped. He stopped a little ahead and let his dog take another shit. He looked back at me and said something like “you wanna pick this one up? Coward.”
I don’t know but for that moment I was emotionally ready to murder him. He’s literally making the world a shittier place, and for nothing. I don’t want that kind of selfish shithead just walking around without consequences.
Well, lucky for me I’m not armed and have impulse control. He was bigger than me and I don’t know how to fight. I yelled at him that he’s a shithead or something inarticulate, and he laughed and kept walking.
Fuck that guy. I hope he gets hit my a truck and bleeds out in a shit filled ditch.