One systemic failure in particular

post by MoritzG · 2020-05-28T05:25:58.335Z · LW · GW · 8 comments

I think there are areas of major systematic failure:

• Human Resources (including Bull-Shit-Jobs as defined by David Graeber)
• Education [A [LW · GW]], [B [LW · GW]], [C [LW · GW]]
• Population control
• Market failure: military Industrial complex [D], Medical sector pricing and treatment selection
• Democracy and Voting
• Financial sector
• Inter-/Super-national regulations and taxation (Heavens for tax-evasion, money-laundering, pollution, work-safety)
• Inheritance and long term resource distribution both of production and natural
• Media/Press [E [LW · GW]], [F]

Next is a List of areas that are not made up (imaginary) and filled with Quacks, Con-men, Oracles, Fortunetellers and False-Experts (as defined by N.N. Taleb):

• Nutrition & "Health/fitness"
• Economics
• Medicine
• Consulting and Training
• HR

A correlation with the list of areas of human societies biggest failures is evident.

Why are there such massive systemic failures? That is a massive generic question that this thread will not be about or able to answer.
In short mentioning some reasons: People are lazy thinkers and see the world form their perspective instead of a global/birds view. Because it is hard to impossible. Because it is done unscientifically. Because costs can be externalized and companies have become more than just used to it, they have come to expect others to pay. Because the personal is unqualified, because there is no one answer but people “refuse” to accept it, because there is no convenient solution, there are bad incentives, because of poor intuition/bias, because innovation and especially social change is hard, because of ideology, deep seated and institutional historical misconceptions, All the usual stuff: fallacies, biases, bad incentive structure, incomplete information.

HR is important because it is a consequence, a cause, and a solution. Change has positive feedback. We know that good people attract more good people and bad people draw in bad people.
The big issue of un(der)employment is in part because of failures in HR. I am certain that plenty very capable and trustworthy people are underemployed.
I find the issue of HR similar to population control in that it is not talked about even though it is very consequential.
I chose HR as an example because I think it has the highest product of consequence and neglect and it is personal to all of us who have to play along every few years. It is not rational to fail so widely at an issue of such magnitude without at least trying to talk about how it could be improved.

Human Resources:
Assuming that you think that work is about outcome and education an investment that needs a return, you might agree that:
Every person should have the job that uses the persons talents, intellect, education to the maximum without running into the Peter-Principle. It is much harder to formulate the conditions from the perspective of the job: No position should be held by someone who is not the best available in that place and time who should not be doing something different.
Also we shouldn't have our smartest people model randomness.
Obviously that is an impossible ideal, nothing but a fantasy useful to guide thinking. That ideal opens the perspective that people might be too „good“ for their position or their potential wasted, a view rarely taken by others than those stuck in an organization that has lost it’s dynamic and meritocracy.
Looking at the tasks that STEM college master graduates actually perform one can not help but think that we are so far from the optimum that getting closer must be possible. The sheer magnitude of the issue makes it important, there is so much room for improvement and so much to be gained that we need to do better.
Many in HR are young females who have no formal education in HR nor psychology. Most do have a high university education, just not in anything with business or STEM. Thus their formal qualification and lack of specific experience is in sharp contrast to that of the people who they are supposed to help to hire. At best they have a high degree of openness to experience, curiosity, urge to truly understand others and possibly traveled the world to understand just how very different people can be.
This is in sharp contrast to how they work themselves. Being largely incompetent all they do is to match words, often the names of software tools specific to the company, in job postings to resumes, a task easily automated.
It is one thing to assume that if someone has done something in the past they will be able to do it in the future, but to take that further and make prior experience a requirement is not practical in the long run. To assume that because someone has never been asked to do something, means they can't do it in the future, has become the operating assumption.
There was a time when gifted technicians became leading engineers and you could get ahead inside a company by taking responsibility and being loyal. Today companies look for "talent" at other companies, the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. CxOs are often stage personalities that switched in-between big name companies. Companies seem to prefer to hire unknown applicants over their own HR product.
(The best way to get more money is to switch the company to do the same for +15% wage every three years. Using the time to learn as many SW tools as possible.)

Unlike today's companies who live under the illusion that they can get any staff delivered at no cost to their front steps like stuff off amazon. The military has long figured out that it has to make the most of what is available and that not every G.I. pawn can be an athletic genius. Research into the g-factor was funded by the US military after realizing that some soldiers should not be handed any weapon due to them being more danger to themselves and their brothers in arms than to the enemy.
Consequentially the military invests heavily into education and training. Producing standard procedures, check-lists, training films, hand books, manuals, developing a deep system of qualification specializations. (United States military occupation designator code and Joint Qualification System)

Companies should focus to hire "good" people who seem to have potential, instead of seeking specific experience and know-how to solve short term needs that exist because of management failure. Their hiring process is too short sighted and at the same time too specific and too general. Too specific in the SW tool experience they ask (A clear case of overemphasis on easy/available information.) and too general/brought in what they ask for in the number of areas of competence. I find it lazy to ask for a wool-milk-pig that lays eggs with the company logo and is used to eating a very specific diet of plants only prevalent in the valley that the company is located in.
Now you might mistake me to be arguing for hiring unqualified personal, but that is not my point. My point is that companies are overestimating their capability to recognize qualified personal and their capability to even tell what they need. The specificity of their requirements is superficial, shows either a lack of reality or unjustified entitlement / right to be demanding. The companies fail to develop and keep their personal and/or feel like it is not their responsibility to train their employees for their specific environment.

There might be awareness of the dangers of having people in positions beyond their competence, but what about the problem of having people do jobs that are below their level of competence? I see two adverse effects. It demoralizes the person and it costs another person their job.
If we let high potential people occupy the remaining simple jobs then we will have social unrest as especially men who could not get a job in the social nor service sector will turn their frustration into hate targeting what ever otherness they feel most responsible.
Many might be satisfied by rising in whatever system they are part of. Some of us can see beyond that and have a need to do good beyond their family. After they fed themselves other needs must be satisfied.

Knowledge is inherently asymmetric: We do not know what we do not know, but that which we do is our entire reality/world. We can only disprove, but only get more confident over time about things we do not understand deeply. There is no insight without failures.
When it comes to making impossible choices, let us avoid the delusion of being able to make the best choice, instead focus on keeping the damage low by avoiding that known to be wrong/bad. In the presence of unknowns, chaos, complexity, randomness and lack of time let us strive to be less wrong. Hence when it comes to searching for the best person to fill a given job let us stop trying to get the perfect candidate but rather, let us focus on not choosing poor candidates since that is all we can achieve by competence. With some luck we even get the best, but how would you even know?
It might be hard to anticipate the best way to heat your house over the next 30 years, but we can be sure that setting it on fire will not be it.
If everyone is looking for A*B then I must seek C*(A+B) at a lower cost. C would likely be a greater number of rejection than selection criteria. The point is not to try to be better at establishing that A*B is true for a candidate and compete for it.

If we want to stay ahead of the spiraling complexity of the world we create and let people be less wrong then we have to do better at matching people and jobs.

This post is similar to: [G [LW · GW]]

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