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pewpewlasergun comments on Rationality Quotes October 2013 - Less Wrong
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Neal Stephenson - "Quicksilver"
I suspect that many traditions and protocols promote competent decision making. Do you think that, say, the U.S. military would do better in Afghanistan if President Obama issued an order declaring "when in battle ignore all considerations of tradition and protocol"? Group coordination is hard, organizations put a huge amount of effort into it, and traditions and protocols often reflect their best practices.
"The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one." -Herman Wouk, The Caine Mutiny
That quote seems to be very good in making idiots who think they are not (the majority) to behave like idiots.
Dunning–Kruger effect?
Yes, the quote is best modified to: "Whenever a small group of competent people..."
What strikes me most about this quote is how well Stephenson understands the psychology of his audience.
Whenever a group of subcompetent people get together to do something, they assume they are competent enough to throw tradition and protocol out the window...
Well designed traditions and protocols will contain elements that cause most subcompetent people to not want to throw them out.
Well designed traditions and protocols will contain elements that cause most competent people to not want to throw them out.
No. If an organization contains sub-competent people, it should take this into account when designing traditions and protocols.
Corollary: all organisations eventually contain sub-competent people. Design protocols accordingly.
If an organization contains sub-competent people, it's traditions and protocols need to ensure those people are quickly and reliably thrown out themselves.
Not necessarily, sub-competent people can still be useful, e.g., unskilled labor is a thing.
Unskilled and sub-competent are not synonyms in this context; even a ditch-digger can be competent, it just means they dig quickly regularly and with a minimum of fuss. And not arbitrarily throwing out protocols for momentary convenience is a matter of both maintaining regularity and minimizing fuss, so I shouldn't have to worry about the ditch-digging committee making a mess of things so long as they all have their heads screwed on straight.
Therefore, a reliable method for evaluating competency needs to be part of the traditions and protocols. Otherwise it's just a question of time...
Having just listened to much of the Ethical Injunctions sequence (as a podcast courtesy of George Thomas), I'm not so sure about this one. There are reasons for serious, competent people to follow ethical rules, even when they need to get things done in the real world.
Ethics aren't quite the same as tradition and protocol, but even so, sometimes all three of those things exist for good reasons.