The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
The question is, who are we talking to, when we write? And why?
Is the reader of a comment on Less Wrong more likely to be a manager, or more likely to be a subordinate? I’d wager that a much higher percentage of the readership fall into the category of “grunt programmer who disdains boring business stuff” than fall into the category of “manager, frustrated that his programmer underlings are slacking on tasks”.
So that’s the “who”; and as for “why”, well, if you’re a subordinate whose career is floundering, you could benefit from advice to do more “interpretive labor”; this could even be a game-changer for you. If you’re a manager, you’ll probably do fine in life without reading advice on rationalist blogs.
Furthermore and most importantly, the advice to the subordinate is good advice regardless of whether the advice to the manager is also good advice.
There’s a mode of writing, and of thinking, where one takes the “god’s-eye view”, and forgets to consider to whom one is supposed to be talking to. “Everyone should do more interpretive labor—subordinates and managers!” A fine sentiment—from the god’s-eye view. But no one chooses “everyone”’s actions; people choose their own actions only. The subordinate can choose to do more “interpretive labor”, or not. The choice before him is what it is, regardless of what we might proclaim from the god’s-eye view.
One might equally well advise workers to correct the power imbalance caused by the asymmetric interpretive labor bottleneck by unionizing, of course.
Again, why not both?
“Stop ignoring business stuff if you want to advance career-wise, even though it doesn’t come naturally and is hard. Also, unionize.”
(This is assuming, of course, that unionizing helps at all. I take no position on this.)
No one’s argued for “not both” here.