It’s important to understand the intended context of these rules. They’re mostly about how to rise within established hierarchies. At one time that would have meant the nobility of a country. In modern developed nations, that means a large corporation, or a governmental bureaucracy. Anyone who has spent time playing inside that kind of game will recognize most of these rules and understand what they’re about.
The rules can’t be gotten round, because anybody who comes in and plays by them will beat out anybody who doesn’t. It’s just game theory. It can’t be circumvented, because in an environment like a large corporation, there are always real limits on how many people each person can know well enough to trust. Absent intimacy and trust, the dynamics revert to each person playing a hand that only they can see.
In such a hierarchy, the question of whether this behavior is optimal, or “good” or “evil” is, in practice, moot. If you don’t figure out and follow the rules, you’ll be trampled, and pushed either down or out. If you discover a different set of rules that work better, then you can write a book about it. And yes, it is zero-sum. It has to be zero-sum, because there is much less space in the top of a pyramid than there is in the pyramid. There’s no outcome where everybody gets to be a boss.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re likely to get much informed insight on this topic on LW, given our apparent demographics. College students taking math and physics just won’t have the experience. Internships aren’t enough. I’ve only scratched the surface myself, just from studied observation during my 5 years at Microsoft. You need to talk to some 30-50 year old general managers / executives that have risen through the ranks of an organization like IBM, Lockheed, Microsoft, Citigroup, etc.
It’s important to understand the intended context of these rules. They’re mostly about how to rise within established hierarchies.
Upvoted. This actually reveals how dysfunctional established power hierarchies often are, and how often they encourage pointy-haired boss types. Ironically, these supposedly hard-nosed, Slytherin types are easily mesmerized by sales folks peddling the latest technology “innovation” or management fads, because they do not understand their job very well, and are often more focused on stroking their own ego than actually accomplishing important things.
Of course, Robin Hanson’s prediction markets hold great promise here, because they make it feasible to spread info within the organization, rather than channel info towards the top. But really, this is a feature of modern infotech and business processes which could be exploited by other systems, such as “learning organizations” as defined by Peter Senge. Applying rationality to the workplace and similar orgs is yet another underexplored area here at LessWrong, although there has been some exploration of basic issues such as groupthink.
I’m not sure whether the same sort of pathology also occurs in politics, but similar issues have been invoked to explain the behavior of the Bush Administration, especially wrt. the Iraq War and response to Hurricane Katrina.
It’s important to understand the intended context of these rules. They’re mostly about how to rise within established hierarchies. At one time that would have meant the nobility of a country. In modern developed nations, that means a large corporation, or a governmental bureaucracy. Anyone who has spent time playing inside that kind of game will recognize most of these rules and understand what they’re about.
The rules can’t be gotten round, because anybody who comes in and plays by them will beat out anybody who doesn’t. It’s just game theory. It can’t be circumvented, because in an environment like a large corporation, there are always real limits on how many people each person can know well enough to trust. Absent intimacy and trust, the dynamics revert to each person playing a hand that only they can see.
In such a hierarchy, the question of whether this behavior is optimal, or “good” or “evil” is, in practice, moot. If you don’t figure out and follow the rules, you’ll be trampled, and pushed either down or out. If you discover a different set of rules that work better, then you can write a book about it. And yes, it is zero-sum. It has to be zero-sum, because there is much less space in the top of a pyramid than there is in the pyramid. There’s no outcome where everybody gets to be a boss.
Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re likely to get much informed insight on this topic on LW, given our apparent demographics. College students taking math and physics just won’t have the experience. Internships aren’t enough. I’ve only scratched the surface myself, just from studied observation during my 5 years at Microsoft. You need to talk to some 30-50 year old general managers / executives that have risen through the ranks of an organization like IBM, Lockheed, Microsoft, Citigroup, etc.
Upvoted. This actually reveals how dysfunctional established power hierarchies often are, and how often they encourage pointy-haired boss types. Ironically, these supposedly hard-nosed, Slytherin types are easily mesmerized by sales folks peddling the latest technology “innovation” or management fads, because they do not understand their job very well, and are often more focused on stroking their own ego than actually accomplishing important things.
Of course, Robin Hanson’s prediction markets hold great promise here, because they make it feasible to spread info within the organization, rather than channel info towards the top. But really, this is a feature of modern infotech and business processes which could be exploited by other systems, such as “learning organizations” as defined by Peter Senge. Applying rationality to the workplace and similar orgs is yet another underexplored area here at LessWrong, although there has been some exploration of basic issues such as groupthink.
I’m not sure whether the same sort of pathology also occurs in politics, but similar issues have been invoked to explain the behavior of the Bush Administration, especially wrt. the Iraq War and response to Hurricane Katrina.