A Parable, part 3

Imagine a very large campground. Well, considering people live there year round, perhaps it's more than that...

They hunt for a living, have established a number of chapters to manage specific areas, and periodically select someone to be the campground manager... Particularly to manage shared areas and ensure proper waste disposal. After all, if one chapter uses the river for their waste it can make other chapters (and even their own members) sick with cholera and the like.

This campground is in a region with a fairly mild climate. It normally doesn't get below freezing... But something made the jet stream shift one year, and they're facing an unusually cold winter. 

The campground manager says 'Let's stop checking the thermometers. I like the temperature right where it is.'

Of course some people are aghast, and speak out... But he has a number of supporters who say he's just joking. He didn't really mean it. (And many of the residents don't pay attention at all, and just ignore it).

But the weather keeps getting colder, and the nights are turning frosty.

People start clamoring for someone to do something. 

Some arrangements are made to buy wood (there's not enough locally to make enough fires), though there's a lot of confusion. The campground manager added to that, saying it was up to each chapter to procure their own. Except that anonymous groups kept intercepting the wood shipments... Nobody really knows who, though some claimed it was the campground manager's people.

The campground manager also played favorites... He made sure the chapter heads he liked got plenty of wood, and publicly complained about the chapter heads he didn't. Threatened that he wouldn't give them wood. 

The weather got colder, and a few people were found frozen to death. 

The campground manager then claimed that what they all really needed was flashlights. Flashlights would prevent them from freezing... 

There's a couple of newsletters that go around, some of which support the campground manager. Pressure continued to build, and some wood was distributed to all the chapters (some bought it themselves, some came from the campground manager).

Somehow or another, the rumor started that the smoke from the fire was what was really killing people. That you should really just make sure you have flashlights.

The campground manager refused to let the newsletters take pictures of his woodpile (though he stocked up well, and made sure his office was always nice and toasty).

More people were freezing to death, though it was mostly the weak and the elderly.

People started saying that they needed to go out hunting again. They'd mostly been staying close to a communal firepit, which were too noisy and scared most of the game away.

And people did. Even though hunters here and there continued to freeze to death. 

Eventually, the time to select a new campground manager came, and the people upset at the current manager managed to select someone new...

But the current campground manager claimed it was illegitimate. He even found members of some of the chapters to claim that they wanted him instead (even though they were never selected by the established process in their chapter).

He told all the newsletters that he was actually the winner, and encouraged people to come protest on the day the results were made official. 

He even claimed that his executive officer could refuse to accept the results. 

After quite a lot of chaos and confusion, he eventually left headquarters (though he still, to this day, publicly claims he was the real campground manager).

He's nuts enough, of course. But you have to wonder about the people who aided and abetted him.

Some of them benefited, of course. Perhaps they made the mistake of thinking that what was good for them was good for everyone. As long as they were toasty and warm, who cared?

Or maybe they thought the ones who froze to death deserved it. For being weak, for not buying their own wood (because of course they never struggled to do so...)

Basically came up with any excuse to decide things were fine as is, that nothing needed to change, that they deserve the life they live... And that if anyone froze to death it was their own fault. Or because they had an underlying illness, and would have died soon anyway.

Again... Anything to prevent themselves from thinking they should maybe make a few changes. 

Or maybe they were just gullible. 

Or evil. 

That's kind of been the question of the age. 

That's all well and good, and you'd think once the old campground manager was ousted that that would be it... 

But somehow his friends and allies are clamoring to bring the incompetent PoS back.

They've got a loud group of people who are still claiming that smoke from the campfires is what's really killing people. 

They go around from campsite to campsite, having cookouts and talking about how they have to do something. 

Newsletters talk about the next selection as though the old campground manager is a viable candidate...

And prices are rising. Some say it's just supply and demand, but some of those friends and allies have raised prices even though they're making even more profit than normal.

Rumors are also going around that they're doing it in order to make people upset at the current campground manager... 

As if making people miserable if they don't do what you want is any sort of way to reinstate a pathetic PoS like that. 

It sounds like they're just as incompetent and/or immoral as he is. 

Parable Side Thought

I'll probably continue some scenarios tomorrow...

Given what I've posted about the blame game, I don't think it's surprising that I don't want to go into a tirade against the fill-in-the-blank that have got us here, but I'm also upset enough about it that it's pretty hard not to.... And I definitely want the root causes addressed. Sort of like how confession and reconciliation are supposed to work...

Well, that's far too complicated to get into now. For whatever reason, my little parable makes it easier to talk about. 

I did find another interesting piece to it though. Kinda after the fact. 

After all, what's the difference between a loose collection of campers and an army?

Obviously there's strengths and weaknesses to both. Nobody is ordering those campers around. Nobody is making someone go around to other campsites teaching people how to light a fire... 

And yet, on a cold winter night it's more likely some of those campers will freeze to death. Especially if they chose a site other campers don't know about. 

The army (under even halfway decent leadership, presumably) would probably do more to coordinate resources and make sure everyone survives. Self-organization could probably do the same, mostly. It'd be harder to order people to go out into the cold, there may be more campsites missed, etc. The point really is that there's a spectrum, but that there's a level of coordination that a group can do that can make them stronger than the same number of people when they're just a collection of individuals. 

And what's the difference between a loose connection of individuals and a nation?

(or maybe the campers are divided into multiple groups. Mayhap even tribes. And what's the difference between a bunch of tribes living in the same vicinity and an alliance?... Sort of like the difference between a bunch of states that share a region, and states that are united.)

Oh, one more aside. While I really, really hope we don't wind up in a war with China, I've been long aware that China has a vastly larger population than we do.

They're what... 1.412 billion people?

And we're 333.9 million?

They've got 4 times as many people. I haven't dug into exact numbers in terms of how many in each country are considered to be fighting age...

I don't know what would happen if we actually got in a war with them (again, I don't really want that to happen)... They're close enough in terms of technology and have the advantage in numbers, so it'd probably come down to hard to evaluate factors such as logistics, training, unity at home (China, I've heard, actually has a lot of different ethnicities - sort of like Russia does - so they might have to use more of their forces for domestic security than we would, but that's me just pulling random facts I've heard together and not any solid analysis. I am by no means an expert on China).

Anyways... Going back to how stupid an army leader would have to be to lose soldiers to the cold (barring logistics problems beyond their control), it would be the height of stupidity for anyone worried about China to support policies that get Americans killed.

Well, never let it be said that humans are very logical. 

A Parable, part 2

My previous talk about building campfires assumed everyone was fairly independent...

Like multiple campsites at a campground. Any movement between sites was strictly voluntary (though avoiding a cold night and/or cold dinner at a site that never succeeded at building a fire is motivating enough for them to wander... The rest are probably doing it out of their own curiosity, desire to be helpful, or joy in meeting new people.)

Things look different, though, if all the campers are members of some shared identity.

Someone might see a need and step up, or there might already be a hierarchy in place, but a group can coordinate on a much larger scale. 

And not only by sending more knowledgeable campers around to share their skills... 

Maybe they aren't camping in a forest with readily available wood... So someone finds a way to get wood and distribute it so all the campers can build a fire. Maybe they also distribute pans, and soup, so everyone can have something hot to eat. 

Or blankets... And camping knowledge (if you sleep directly on the ground, the ground tends to suck your heat away... So a layer between you and the ground is pretty important.

How important such leadership is depends -

In summer, where the nights are warm? Not having a good campfire can just make for a less enjoyable evening.

In fall? Chilly and miserable, but probably not deadly. 

On a freezing cold winter night?

If nobody coordinates, you'll have people freezing to death.

And maybe if you're a collection of individuals you could say that it's just their bad luck (though most people would try to find a way to help... Honestly.)

But if you're an army... Well, good luck winning your next battle. You lost a good portion of your people out of incompetence, plus the ones remaining know it and don't trust you to take care of them. 

On Maliciousness vs Incompetence, Cont.

With regards to incompetence, it's very hard to address because blaming people tends to make it worse...

Because the reasons people are difficult in the first place tend to be their biases, prejudices - and fears. Focusing on who to blame just tends to make them even more afraid, even more resistant to change, even more determined to hide their weaknesses and cover up their faults, and it just makes it harder.

Zero tolerance makes people more likely to hide their mistakes.

But that leads to a challenge... because how do you make things better if you don't address the root causes? How do you build competence if you don't point out where things could have been handled better? Root causes that often involve people making mistakes?

I'll use an example from a class on how to build a good healthcare organization - a nurse gives a patient the wrong medicine. If the nurse is terrified they'll get fired for making a mistake like that, they would probably try to hide what they did... and the organization doesn't know and can't address it. If the organization focuses on fixing systemic issues without blame, then they may learn about the problem and design a more permanent, systemic solution. Like making sure the medicines have different shapes and colors, so it's harder to give the wrong one on accident. 

This is very challenging, for a couple of reasons. First, people are instinctively afraid of admitting their mistakes no matter how much you tell them that it's okay. You will have to demonstrate, over and over again, that that's what you really want and expect. They have to see you handle other people's mistakes well before they will truly trust what you're saying. 

Second, you do need to address the issue when someone is consistently and repeatedly making mistakes. Like, some things are just human error and can be addressed with systemic issues, but some people are really not suited for certain position. But the issue isn't that they're 'bad' or 'terrible', it's just that some skills/talents/whatever are not a good fit. Anyways, you do need to address a bad mismatch, so you need a structure that doesn't blame people for mistakes but still handles them in such a way that everyone (the person involved, and the organization as a whole) either learns and grows or are moved to positions better suited to them.

All of these things take emotional maturity, good communication skills, empathy, and more. 

When businesses talk about the dearth of good middle managers, it's because far too many are lacking skills like the ones above... which means that most people are working for a direct supervisor who doesn't have the emotional maturity, empathy, or communication skills to develop them the way I just described.

Workers are more likely to have no development at all, to expect to get fired for any mistake, to be poorly paid, and to be treated as though they would malinger and goof off at the slightest chance. 

But I digress. The main point of these last few posts was that learning and growing is the key to competence, that pointing out mistakes has to be handled carefully or you can start the blame game and make everything worse, and that it's easy to say and very challenging to do.

I also wanted to address the 'good shepherd' comment from before. Or rather, go into examples of how refusing to address your own biases/prejudices/fears coupled with a lack of focus on taking care of your people can lead to some pretty godawful decisions that hurt all of us.

Except, ofc, I have to address them in a way that doesn't start the blame game, because it's more about how we can do better in the future than punish people for doing poorly in the past.

A Parable

As those with camping experience may be able to tell you, getting a fire started is a bit of an art.

You can't just pile up a bunch of logs, strike a match (or even a spark with old fashioned flint and steel), and expect a fire to start.

First, you generally need some sort of tinder. If you took a lit match to a fresh log odds are the match will burn out before the log really gets going... you need dry, flammable material to get the fire really started. Paper, dried out grass, dried out and dead branches, etc.

Second, fires need a certain amount of oxygen. If you just haphazardly pile the logs in a firepit, whatever fire you start may burn out because there's no oxygen. There's actually quite a few options for how to set up the logs, but the main purpose is to spread them around so that they still have enough space to get the oxygen they need.

There's a lot more that can be said about how to start a campfire, but tinder and an arrangement that allows the right amount of oxygen are enough for my little parable.

 The night is cold, and a large group of people are trying to light multiple fires in order to keep warm. Some of them have experience, and are able to get their fires lit with little fuss. 

Others don't... but they send someone to one of the lit fires to ask for tips. Or maybe one of the more knowledgeable individuals decides to walk around and help out, teaching the others what they need to know.

And then there are the campsites where the person in charge has no experience - and feels threatened by anyone who does.

So they refuse to admit they're doing anything wrong. They yell at anyone who tries to suggest they do anything different. They verbally attack any of the helpers that walk by and offer tips. They refuse to send anyone to another site to ask for tips...

And the night continues to grow colder, the people around that site are shivering... and some start drifting off to join the more successful campsites.

Soon, only a couple of people are left. Or maybe nobody at all... it depends on how stubborn they are, and the loyalty of their fellow campers. Either way, it's a failed campsite and a failed attempt to start a campfire.

 

There's a lot of different things I could focus on in that story, but I'm only going to talk about a couple.

First - the issue isn't that they didn't know how to start a fire. The ones willing to ask questions and accept help were able to learn that, and could use those skills next time. 

The real problem is being so afraid (of looking weak, of losing control, of being judged... whatever their reasoning) that they refuse to learn and grow.

Second - everyone wants to be warm when it's cold, and they will do what they need to in order to get warm. If you can't get the fire started, they'll leave. Mostly. (If it's cold enough, and you're tyrant enough to stop them from leaving for warmer fires, then you may just lead to everyone freezing to death, but that's an edge case that would require a LOT of things to go wrong. Having that mix of incompetence and total control is extremely BAD!)

The third point is a bit more meta. Imagine the campfire represents any sort of human endeavor. There are people who can strike sparks to light the fire. They are scattered throughout the population - not everyone can be the spark, but any reasonably large group of people will have someone who can. 

But the spark doesn't catch unless there's tinder and kindling, and of course the fire needs oxygen or it dies out.

The groups who are able to design their organizations well will have that mix - the tinder, the kindling, the oxygen - so that wherever and whoever strikes a spark is able to get the fire started.

Those that forget the tinder, or stack their logs too close, will never get the fire started no matter how many people they have who are able to strike a spark. Or they may start something, only for it to quickly die. (and some may lack proper safeguards and start a fire that quickly gets out of control, but that's outside the scope of this particular post).

Hmmm. I suppose the analogy is even better when you consider that it's easier to keep a fire going once it's started than it is to start from scratch. Like, a startup needs to be careful about making sure it has the tinder and proper spacing, but a business that's already off the ground can probably sustain itself just by throwing a few more logs on the fire. It's just that once the fire goes out, they've lost a lot of the skills and knowledge required to get it started again. Also, if they throw too many logs on the fire, too fast, without the right sort of spacing etc. they can probably put the fire out. (i.e. mismanagement can destroy the fire, and managing a fire takes a different skillset than starting from scratch.)

To tie this in with my previous post - if you're aware of your biases and prejudices (which includes the common bias of thinking that what's good for you is good for everyone, and I probably ought to include 'fear' here, so if you're also aware of your fears) and if you sincerely want to do what's best for your people, then even if you don't actually know how to start a fire you will ask the questions and find the person with the knowledge to do so. 

You will figure it out, and you will make sure your people are warm, and that's what makes you competent.

On Maliciousness vs Incompetence

 I wanted to talk a little bit about my previous post, and I suppose quite a bit of it is related to the famous quote "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." 

And, to my way of thinking, a lot of incompetence is related to human biases. 

We all have biases, just like we all have blind spots...

And like with blind spots, if we're aware that we have biases we can take steps to counter them. (One of the most annoying attitudes I've seen is this idea that 'since it's impossible to be without bias, we shouldn't bother trying'. Like... NO! That completely misses the point?!?) 

You can read the list of common biases and think up countermeasures if you want... I don't intend to go into great detail here. I will say, though, that I think at the heart of it you have to value truth over comforting lies... that you have to be willing to listen when someone speaks who doesn't share your biases and preconceptions (not that you have to agree, but if you listen and consider what they say you have a better understanding of what might go wrong and can - again - take countermeasures)... and that you will be more aware of when you resist hearing something simply because it doesn't conform to your preconceptions. Which makes it easier to step back and evaluate whatever it is by focusing more on the facts. What confirms it? What disproves it? What does the actual data say?

When I talk about incompetence, to me it's mostly about people in positions of power who are all too human. That is, they are biased and flawed and they're not necessarily evil or bad... but they aren't wise enough to counter those biases and make good decisions. Hmmm, well... plus one more thing. Jesus did that whole bit about making his disciples 'fishers of men', and taught how to be 'good shepherds', and I do think that provides a guiding light to any decision making. And those same biased and flawed individuals have a tendency to think that what's good for them is good for everyone, and lose their direction. Basically they get more concerned with 'optics' and how things look. How to manage perception... and so they forget to do their true task, which is taking care of their flock.

But this is... again... human. It comes from biases and fears that are all too common. In other words, they're not special. And they're not really worth laud and praise when they're more... average at best. (Okay... Trump is special... for being spectacularly worse than average. But I don't want to get started on that or it will derail this whole post.)

I've used this logic before, when discussing the decision to invade Iraq. Because critics shortened that decision to 'they lied, people died'. 

But I don't think there was some malevolent group of immoral and evil villains that said "let's lie about weapons of mass destruction so that we can get support to invade Iraq".

Honestly... that would be a lot easier to deal with. The challenge with preventing such a poor decision from happening again is that the people who made that decision were biased and flawed human beings making decisions in a system where most of the people they encounter reinforce their biases and prejudices.

If you absolutely believe Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, then suddenly the lack of intelligence is not because he doesn't have them... it's because he's too sneaky and clever at hiding them. 

There's a lot more to it than that, of course, but the point is that people who honestly think they are trying their best can still make very flawed decisions.

Those rules of thumb helped explain quite a bit of the issues I'd seen in the past... but it no longer feels sufficient today. 

I'll use covid again as an example, but it applies to other things as well.

With covid... the data on vaccinations and other preventative measures is about as clear as I've ever seen. Scientists may argue about whether it's the vaccines, masks, or other actions that have led to such a disparity in outcomes between blue and red counties but it's quite clear that there is a disparity. And that the 'red' counties are dying and being hospitalized at a much greater rate than blue.

Multiple outlets have reported the same results, at multiple times. This is the reality, and anyone who wanted to be a good shepherd to America would be trying to prevent more death and disability by persuading Americans to take proper precautions.

Instead, every single countermeasure (except the personal choice on whether or not to get vaccinated) has been fought. And even with vaccinations... there are forces out there trying to persuade people not to get vaccinated.

It feels like a concerted campaign, even... because every post on Twitter talking about covid deaths seems to get inundated with responses trying to blame the vaccine instead of covid.

Someone on Twitter said it was less a concerted campaign and more a loose coalition of forces acting out of their own self interest, which fits my own biases and preconceptions well enough that I think it's likely...

But the end result still seems to be the same. That is... people are being hospitalized and dying while any attempt to prevent that from happening is attacked until such efforts are paralyzed. 

It smacks of eugenics, tbh. Can you just accidentally create a eugenics campaign? 

How have we come to this? Where are the good shepherds? 

Can typical human biases and prejudices lead to incompetence on such a scale? How were these fools not smacked down by wiser and more competent heads?

I don't believe that the fools that created our current situation are truly the best we can do, but they sure seem to have a lock on power.

Or rather... they're blocking better people from fixing their mistakes, probably because doing so would mean admitting they weren't all that.

Update

I keep thinking about Wonko from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, who basically decided the rest of the world was insane (after finding detailed directions on how to use toothpicks) and put it in an insane asylum (i.e. Basically everything outside the house he built is the asylum).

I'm not advocating giving up or doing nothing, I'll do what I can with what I have... It's just that the world is just nuts right now.

I don't really want to go into a detailed listing (Putin, Trump, regular signs that there are far too many people with more money than sense) but I suppose I'll talk, yet again, about covid.

I still check the numbers, and recently I've noticed a new trend... 

New cases are declining, but the death rate is plateueing 

In other words, we probably don't actually have a decline in cases (since death rates are generally a lagging indicator that correlates to cases fairly well... And I don't think covid has suddenly become more lethal).

What we have is a decline in reporting covid rates.

I'm also rather disappointed that, despite pushing for vaccinations, which I do credit the current administration for doing, multiple forces seem to have decided covid is over, and to minimize it. 

I don't know enough to say how or why that came about. I hear a lot of people blaming one thing or another, but there's not a lot of solid data. And, tbf, some of it may just be fatigue... 

Its been years, after all. 

But it does look like covid can lead to increased risk of strokes, clots, etc... Possibly weakened immune systems aiding the spread of all these other illnesses, and there really doesn't seem to be any herd immunity. Just more and more variants.

But I'm done trying to convince others to take it seriously... Many are just tired and feel like there's nothing they can do beyond getting vaxxed (if they believe it works) and maybe masking themselves.

Like... There really are lots of other things that could have been done? But the same forces blocking a lot of other things seemed to have blocked any serious discussion of that. They act like the choice is locking down forever or nothing.

So I'm just glad I am privileged enough to work from home, that I still haven't caught covid (unless I was asymptomatic), and I'll just keep on doing my own thing and let the rest of the world do theirs...

Its just... 

I've been thinking that there comes a point where maybe it doesn't matter anymore whether decisions are made out of maliciousness or incompetence. 

Or whether it's one small group of people (the powers-that-be) knowingly choosing or whether it's a system with responsibility so diffused that it's just a lot of people with misaligned incentives...

I don't know that it even matters any more,either is a scathing indictment of our entire system.