5 agencies compromised

[gepr]

All effective conspiracy theories have some merit. I think that's what makes them effective. Like good fiction, the micro expressions of deception, con-man tactics, inference to the best explanation, creation myths, and the positivist/generative component of science, conspiracy theories rely on truth in a fundamental way. My favorite examples are math proofs of things like 1=0. It seems to me they're focused examples of Tarski's (and Gödel's) result, which essentially say you can't prove something's true from *within* the language being used to prove that truth.

There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative state is our mound.

The trick lying at the bottom of all critical thinking is to continually back off a bit and see if/when one's little trip down any given logical rabbit hole ... zoom out a bit and see if it's reasonable. That's where we (especially our idealistic/wacko friends) end up failing.

On 12/17/20 12:52 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> Kind of makes you wonder if the "deep state" conspiracy theories have a bit of merit.
>
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>
>     I do wonder what work will look like after most of the small businesses fail.
>
>     "Didn't respond to police presence" -> "Didn't listen to the boss."
>
>     "Hey where did Jamie go?   Last time I saw him was at that meeting.."

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[gepr]

Luckily the secrets I learned were exactly like the non-secrets I still deal with daily. The explanation for why Docker Swarms aren't really any different than the HWIL simulations I used to work with is only interesting to the people who already know what either buzzword might mean. The only people who would assert anything about the secrets I learned were people who already knew those secrets. Plus, black sites ensconced in cities are way less interesting than those perched atop mountains or hiding deep in the desert. That's like Hide In Plain Site 101. It always kills me when people think spies might look like Tom Cruise or Jennifer Garner. A good spy will look like that slightly overweight lady at the checkout counter in your local grocery store. If you don't want people hypothesizing in the hot-tub, don't build your site in a ridiculous place like Los Alamos. Sheesh.

On 12/17/20 4:54 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

> LANL's "communications dept" had their own posters printed up that
> showed up everywhere for the full 27 years I was there for... maybe DOE
> and DOD supplied/inspired messaging... but the one that hit me as the
> most strange/hypocritical was the "Nations don't have friends, they have
> Interests" which was supposed to help undermine Scientists (and others
> with top clearances) from being seduced by nation-states who pretended
> to be "friends".   The hypocrisy IMO was the illusion that our own
> Nation State was in some way our friend, when in fact, our very
> employment and even existence as *citizens* was ultimately a reflection
> of this Nation-State's "Interests"...    
>
> I became acutely aware of some of this when a new director gave us all a
> lecture on "neither confirm or deny" and reminded us that even to deny
> some outlandish claim about a classified matter was in fact, a capital
> crime.   The night before I had been in a hot-tub with a small group of
> Santa Fe Artist types who "Knew" all kinds of things about LANL, the
> Nuclear Weapons Programme, Area 51 and Aliens, not to mention
> Chemtrails, VaxxHOaxes, and ESP.   I remember smirking and maybe even
> scoffing into my elbow a few times at some of those statements and my
> bosses' bosses' boss was reminding me that I had in fact committed a
> Capital crime with both smirk and scoff, though it WAS dark, they
> probably didn't see my smirk and I masked my scoff as a cough, etc.  
>
> I checked my paycheck stub that week and realized I was in no way
> compensated with "hazard pay", since having classified info in my head
> was clearly a huge risk, taking my life into my own hands every time I
> learned a new secret...    I was pretty clear in my own head what was
> true, was pro-nuke propaganda, what was anti-nuke propaganda and what of
> that which I knew enough about to confirm or deny was classified, but
> that didn't stop me from smirking and scoffing involuntarily from time
> to time.   It was the beginning of the end... fortunately DOE Q-type
> classified material was not nearly as "risky" as the DOD TS type as our
> friend Ed Snowden found out...   I think I winced every time I got close
> to the latter stuff right up until I left and the information (and my
> memory) started to age rapidly.     

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[Steve Smith]

Glen -

I appreciate this perspective.   It feels like a rhyme with our various
formulations of "all models are wrong, some are useful",  a conspiracy
theory somehow being a "model" in it's own right.   I could wax on
(ineffectually?) about how the two relate but will leave that as an
exercise to the reader or other correspondents here.

I agree-with/appreciate the "extended phenotype" description of
bureaucracy, and wonder if some of the neo-anti-establishmentarianims we
are experiencing today don't represent something like an auto-immune
response, trying to kill off what it considers to be a foreign body.  Or
maybe in the conception of those (including myself in some contexts)
said components of the "administrative state" are "tumors" that should
be removed/starved/savaged unto extinction.  But as with cancer tumors,
there is a risk in "savaging" a tumor else you accidentally trigger
metastatic emigration.  I wonder at how much Trump's "savaging" various
departments might have lead to some of those bureaucrat/functionaries to
move through the system and find another home where they could proceed
to undermine his efforts in *even* more effective ways?  I look forward
to hearing some of these stories as he quits having the acute power to
damage them further as they pop their little whack-a-mole heads up.

Regarding the contradictory nature of loving sports cars and rocket
ships while hating the DMV and  building codes:  I prefer to consider
the latter to be like systems/components which (more superficially)
deserve/seduce/demand some kind of respect in their beautiful
form/function duality while the infrastructural administratium's
"beauty" is more well hidden and in fact *deserving* of semi-regular
pruning/refactoring as the function rots.   Of course, technophilic
wonks of the administratium naturally recognize the beauty in the
form/function of such elements and even come to fetishize them the way
citizens fetishize a '53 Vette or a '57 T-bird or a Martha Stewart
Christmas wreath, and might even defend keeping some (seemingly
useless/obstructionist/toxic) subsystem in place long after it's
(perceived) time.   In any case, I do agree it is all perspective in
some sense, but I also believe in refactoring, even my stable of unique
(if not particularly fetishizeable) vehicles, tools, hoarded materials,
animals.   Which is why we have swap meets and Craigslist?

I also like your description of backing off from any/every given
analytical rabbit hole, seeking a gestalt.   It seems as if the existing
functioning (if not always flawlessly on the surface)
infrastructure/institutions/administrivium is what gives us the
security/freedom TO dive down those rabbit holes.   It does feel to me
as if the backing off and fuzzing out our vision on these matters is but
one of the features of our required (in a statistical sense)
contributions to "the commons". 

This Time of Trump and this Time of COVID and Time of Climate Crisis can
all be reminders for us to back off and refactor our
understanding/perception/apprehension of such things?

- Steve

> All effective conspiracy theories have some merit. I think that's what makes them effective. Like good fiction, the micro expressions of deception, con-man tactics, inference to the best explanation, creation myths, and the positivist/generative component of science, conspiracy theories rely on truth in a fundamental way. My favorite examples are math proofs of things like 1=0. It seems to me they're focused examples of Tarski's (and Gödel's) result, which essentially say you can't prove something's true from *within* the language being used to prove that truth.
>
> There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative state is our mound.
>
> The trick lying at the bottom of all critical thinking is to continually back off a bit and see if/when one's little trip down any given logical rabbit hole ... zoom out a bit and see if it's reasonable. That's where we (especially our idealistic/wacko friends) end up failing.
>
> On 12/17/20 12:52 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
>> Kind of makes you wonder if the "deep state" conspiracy theories have a bit of merit.
>>
>> On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:
>>
>>     I do wonder what work will look like after most of the small businesses fail.
>>
>>     "Didn't respond to police presence" -> "Didn't listen to the boss."
>>
>>     "Hey where did Jamie go?   Last time I saw him was at that meeting.."

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[Prof David West]

"There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative state is our mound."

very poetic glen

I am in total agreement — except — The deep state is inflicted with a cancer, one that has been growing explosively, like all cancers. Call it "middle management" for want of a better term. Those between the bench scientists and the DMV clerks and the President/Congress/Political Appointees. This cancer metastasized when Congress abrogated its responsibility legislate in favor of passing overly general laws and delegating law making (under the guise of rule making) to the executive branch of government. Unlike a typical cancer, it is intelligent, willful, and malevolent. It seeks only its own interest. It took down Trump, not on behalf of populace, but purely because of self-preservation. It was relatively easy to do because the man was so stupid.

davew

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020, at 11:11 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> All effective conspiracy theories have some merit. I think that's what 

> makes them effective. Like good fiction, the micro expressions of 

> deception, con-man tactics, inference to the best explanation, creation 

> myths, and the positivist/generative component of science, conspiracy 

> theories rely on truth in a fundamental way. My favorite examples are 

> math proofs of things like 1=0. It seems to me they're focused examples 

> of Tarski's (and Gödel's) result, which essentially say you can't prove 

> something's true from *within* the language being used to prove that 

> truth.

> 

> There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an 

> "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. 

> Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the 

> employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely 

> good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our 

> extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like 

> sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV 

> queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative 

> state is our mound.

> 

> The trick lying at the bottom of all critical thinking is to 

> continually back off a bit and see if/when one's little trip down any 

> given logical rabbit hole ... zoom out a bit and see if it's 

> reasonable. That's where we (especially our idealistic/wacko friends) 

> end up failing.

> 

> On 12/17/20 12:52 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

> > Kind of makes you wonder if the "deep state" conspiracy theories have a bit of merit.

> > 

> > On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

> > 

> >     I do wonder what work will look like after most of the small businesses fail.

> > 

> >     "Didn't respond to police presence" -> "Didn't listen to the boss."

> > 

> >     "Hey where did Jamie go?   Last time I saw him was at that meeting.."

> 

> -- 

> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

> 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

There are people that are in the way and a share of them are in government.    

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, December 18, 2020 8:13 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 5 agencies compromised

 

"There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative state is our mound."

 

very poetic glen

 

I am in total agreement — except — The deep state is inflicted with a cancer, one that has been growing explosively, like all cancers. Call it "middle management" for want of a better term. Those between the bench scientists and the DMV clerks and the President/Congress/Political Appointees. This cancer metastasized when Congress abrogated its responsibility legislate in favor of passing overly general laws and delegating law making (under the guise of rule making) to the executive branch of government. Unlike a typical cancer, it is intelligent, willful, and malevolent. It seeks only its own interest. It took down Trump, not on behalf of populace, but purely because of self-preservation. It was relatively easy to do because the man was so stupid.

 

davew

 

 

On Fri, Dec 18, 2020, at 11:11 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> All effective conspiracy theories have some merit. I think that's what 

> makes them effective. Like good fiction, the micro expressions of 

> deception, con-man tactics, inference to the best explanation, creation 

> myths, and the positivist/generative component of science, conspiracy 

> theories rely on truth in a fundamental way. My favorite examples are 

> math proofs of things like 1=0. It seems to me they're focused examples 

> of Tarski's (and Gödel's) result, which essentially say you can't prove 

> something's true from *within* the language being used to prove that 

> truth.

> 

> There definitely *is* a deep state or, the term I prefer, an 

> "administrative state". And I'm grateful for that *infrastructure*. 

> Just like I'm grateful for the bench scientists at the FDA and the 

> employees at the counter of the DMV. That bureaucracy is not merely 

> good because it achieves good things. It *is* civilization. It's our 

> extended phenotype. It's flat out contradictory to love things like 

> sports cars and space ships but hate things like building codes, DMV 

> queues, and mask mandates. We are the termites and the administrative 

> state is our mound.

> 

> The trick lying at the bottom of all critical thinking is to 

> continually back off a bit and see if/when one's little trip down any 

> given logical rabbit hole ... zoom out a bit and see if it's 

> reasonable. That's where we (especially our idealistic/wacko friends) 

> end up failing.

> 

> On 12/17/20 12:52 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:

> > Kind of makes you wonder if the "deep state" conspiracy theories have a bit of merit.

> > 

> > On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 3:29 PM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email] <mailto:[hidden email]>> wrote:

> > 

> >     I do wonder what work will look like after most of the small businesses fail.

> > 

> >     "Didn't respond to police presence" -> "Didn't listen to the boss."

> > 

> >     "Hey where did Jamie go?   Last time I saw him was at that meeting.."

> 

> -- 

> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

> 

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> 

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[gepr]

Thanks for a return to literality. You know what's a cancer? Analogies to cancer are a cancer!  >8^D


On December 18, 2020 8:31:24 PM PST, Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:
>There are people that are in the way and a share of them are in
>government.
>

--
glen ⛧

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[Prof David West]

I agree and I really struggled to find a better metaphor, but failed. It was just as bad a mistake as using the "Nazi Card." my apologies. And, the point I was trying to make was lost.

davew


On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, at 6:32 AM, ⛧ glen wrote:

> Thanks for a return to literality. You know what's a cancer? Analogies
> to cancer are a cancer!  >8^D
>
>
> On December 18, 2020 8:31:24 PM PST, Marcus Daniels
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >There are people that are in the way and a share of them are in
> >government.
> >
>
> --
> glen ⛧
>
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[Steve Smith]

What about the systems/software aging/rot/refactoring analogy?  The similarities seem more *relevant* to the bulk of this group's experience than, for example, cancer or infectious disease.   Of course, one's familiarity with the source of an analogy does not make it more apt, just simultaneously more seductive and *possibly* more illuminating.  Or perhaps it *is* more apt if/because the mechanisms in source/target domain are more similar?

I have my own issues with the misuse/abuse of analogy/metaphor (seemingly orthogonal or or at least complementary Glen's).

While I don't think Marcus' observation is wrong... there ARE people that are in the way (of various willful intentions) and a share of them ARE in the government...  but as pithy as it is, it begs myriad questions...

Is the only/primary problem that individual human people can be wrongheaded/selfish/thoughtless and thereby get in the way of rightheaded/generous/thoughtful intentions?   And is the "share" of these people (holding positions?) in the government an over-abundance?  More than found in *any* institution?   Is there a *structural* problem that comes with the types of organization which we seem to (for possibly inevitable reasons) create over and over again?   Are these structural problems addressable with direct solutions (identifying and removing the offending substructures manually?(re-organization/downsizing)  adjusting the milieu in which they  exist in a preferential manner to reduce those structure's viability while allowing/encouraging less obstructionist structures to flourish? (regulatory environment) ?)  

One fundamental problem with the "cancer metaphor" is that it is based on a "government is alive" metaphor which deserves it's own scrutiny (though probably not summary dismissal?)

Regarding Dave's reference to the over/misuse of the Nazi trope, I recently heard someone make the specific point that invoking such immediately and thoroughly undermined the writer/speakers credibility.  Then they launched into the comparisons, but by pulling back to "authoritarian gov't, autocrats, autocracies" with Nazi/Hitler *examples* (and some Stalin and a few others mixed in).   I was left equally puzzled and impressed with the way that was done, because in fact, the *image* of Nazi Germany and Hitler are so strong that they can really power a point home, but using Glen's primary (most common/notable/persuasive?) argument against metaphor, it almost always comes with un/mis-intended "excess meaning".   This particular talk/essay (how is it I cant remember what comes in through my eyes and what comes in through my ears?) seemed to hit a very good balance in the number of hairs split to make the point without being misleading.

Is there any obvious resolution/relaxation to the tension between the elements in socio-political-economic life which provide structure and continuity and coherence and the individual desire/instinct to avoid all constraint?    En Caricature, the extreme Libertarian seems to pretend that the can/should/will solve all problems entirely by themselves and no larger human organizational unit is necessary, desirable or more to the point, possible.   And on the other caricatured extreme is the absolute collectivist who would have us all reduce our behaviour, circumstance and will to that of (analogy alert!) a drone bee or ant or termite in a hive.

- Steve

PS.  I've been loving watching the Jupiter/Saturn alignment approach during the very, very brief moment between Sun-set and Jupiter/Saturn-set... It is so close to MY horizon (Eastern edge of the Pajarito Plateau) a few degrees above sea-level that I *might* miss conjunction when it finally happens.

Thanks for a return to literality. You know what's a cancer? Analogies to cancer are a cancer!  >8^D 


On December 18, 2020 8:31:24 PM PST, Marcus Daniels [hidden email] wrote:

There are people that are in the way and a share of them are in
government.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Steve writes:

< Is the only/primary problem that individual human people can be wrongheaded/selfish/thoughtless and thereby get in the way of rightheaded/generous/thoughtful intentions?   And is the "share" of these people (holding positions?) in the government an over-abundance?  More than found in *any* institution?  >

The main problem I have encountered with middle management is that they proliferate staff.   A manager needs to manage, and so that implies they also have to hire.   Eventually some fraction of the people that hire also want to be managers, and this causes the organization to deepen.   A deep, large organization that has many managers is mostly concerned with politics and not with doing work.  Every decision becomes about isolating the unfriendly who are not consensus-oriented.   Indeed, there can be toxic staff.  They get that way because they are so disgusted with the preoccupation with non-work goals that they eventually say so and upset people who expect to move up in the organization for nothing more than being nice and making their manager look good.  The sidelined unfriendly staff in effect become cautionary tales.

In this sense I understand why some (Bannon) would want to dismantle the administrative state.   But I think the remedy is harder than just sabotaging the machine.   It requires an devotion to values so that the group health is measured against those values.   For technocratic things, that means that the group has an appreciation of why some things are hard, so that they can actually admire the people involved in solving them.   You could call this against “wrongheadedness”, I suppose, but even a devil’s advocate can be understood to be arguing in good faith.   In a consensus-oriented organization, the devil’s advocate is just rocking the boat.  It is the obedient and agreeable people that are a problem.  They amplify bad decisions until no one can tell the difference.

I have a better view of people in government.  I think the kind of person that wants to solve the big problems (that government is well positioned to solve) are slightly enriched for arguing in good faith.   For one thing, they generally accept less money than their counterparts in business.    I have no problem with the middle managers in government that spend much of careers wrangling ever more spending for NIH/NSF/DOE science.  Because science builds a base of evidence and theory and a framework for communication that can be less self-centered.   I would rather see bigger investments in fewer people, but the proliferation of people problem seems to be an unfixable people.  (Modulo climate catastrophes, severe pandemics, etc.)  Pulling back the money and forcing small organizations doesn’t address the problem, it just mitigates some waste.

Marcus

 

 

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[Frank Wimberly-2]

Marcus,

I saw and ad that claimed that if you enlisted in the Navy upon graduating from law school you would become lead attorney in cases immediately. The ad claimed that it could take years for that to happen in the private sector.  I wonder if other government organizations are similar.

Frank

On Sat, Dec 19, 2020, 11:06 AM Marcus Daniels <[hidden email]> wrote:

Steve writes:

< Is the only/primary problem that individual human people can be wrongheaded/selfish/thoughtless and thereby get in the way of rightheaded/generous/thoughtful intentions?   And is the "share" of these people (holding positions?) in the government an over-abundance?  More than found in *any* institution?  >

The main problem I have encountered with middle management is that they proliferate staff.   A manager needs to manage, and so that implies they also have to hire.   Eventually some fraction of the people that hire also want to be managers, and this causes the organization to deepen.   A deep, large organization that has many managers is mostly concerned with politics and not with doing work.  Every decision becomes about isolating the unfriendly who are not consensus-oriented.   Indeed, there can be toxic staff.  They get that way because they are so disgusted with the preoccupation with non-work goals that they eventually say so and upset people who expect to move up in the organization for nothing more than being nice and making their manager look good.  The sidelined unfriendly staff in effect become cautionary tales.

In this sense I understand why some (Bannon) would want to dismantle the administrative state.   But I think the remedy is harder than just sabotaging the machine.   It requires an devotion to values so that the group health is measured against those values.   For technocratic things, that means that the group has an appreciation of why some things are hard, so that they can actually admire the people involved in solving them.   You could call this against “wrongheadedness”, I suppose, but even a devil’s advocate can be understood to be arguing in good faith.   In a consensus-oriented organization, the devil’s advocate is just rocking the boat.  It is the obedient and agreeable people that are a problem.  They amplify bad decisions until no one can tell the difference.

I have a better view of people in government.  I think the kind of person that wants to solve the big problems (that government is well positioned to solve) are slightly enriched for arguing in good faith.   For one thing, they generally accept less money than their counterparts in business.    I have no problem with the middle managers in government that spend much of careers wrangling ever more spending for NIH/NSF/DOE science.  Because science builds a base of evidence and theory and a framework for communication that can be less self-centered.   I would rather see bigger investments in fewer people, but the proliferation of people problem seems to be an unfixable people.  (Modulo climate catastrophes, severe pandemics, etc.)  Pulling back the money and forcing small organizations doesn’t address the problem, it just mitigates some waste.

Marcus

 

 

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[gepr]

Well, that's *not* an analogy. The "supply chain" compromise is a systems/software aging/rot/refactoring issue. And while your and Dave's posts go at it to some extent, they lack any particular details of the solution that was compromised. It's nothing like cancer or immune systems, or even middle management.

Encryption-mediated "hotfixes" are a practical and reasonable solution to keeping a large collection of systems "secure". Where it breaks down (usually) is the humans who interact with it. And that includes both low and high tier humans in an organization. Highlighting the "middle management" is just more vague overgeneralization. Even Marcus' suggestion that there's a systemic bias toward org depth seems stereotyped to me.

The way I view it is that there are some of us (including robots and algorithms) who are brittle and some of us who are plastic. A frustration with, say, a DMV employee or a particular Bash script, is when the wiggle in the problem they're expected to address is larger than their wiggle. And that seems kindasorta scale-free, from the most focused specialist to the most synoptic CxO ... from the tiniest utility (like "ls" - listing files) to the broadest workflow (like continuous integration, nightly builds, and automated testing). What makes bureaucratic components seem broken is when/if they're not fit to purpose.

Dave's right to point out that treating the components as Kantian ends helps deal with that. But along with such agency comes complexity (component compositions are multi-faceted). And that implies both robustness and polyphenism for any given composition. This Lawfare post targets that lesson to some extent, with the concepts of "layered deterrence" and the asymmetry between offense and defense:

  https://www.lawfareblog.com/solarwinds-breach-failure-us-cyber-strategy

But, inevitably, that "layering" will be seen by some arrogant ill-fit-to-purpose components (at whatever scale in the org) to complain about onerous bureaucracy, cancerous fiefdom, or sucking up to the boss. The primary problem, as I see it, are people who *instantly* assert metaphors like "cancer" or whatever without making a sincere attempt to learn how the org *does* work, first. If it (that part of it, anyway) ain't broke, why assert that it is? And why not be concrete and specific about which particular *part* is broke, rather than asserting (by metaphor no less) the whole system is kerplunk?

The essence of my rant was to point out that bureaucracy is overwhelmingly good. We only *think* it's bad because of the "red stoplight problem". We grow a sense of entitlement because when the machinery works, we don't notice it. And the machinery almost *always* works. The tendency to immediately drop down a gravity well thinking about every time there was some tiny problem with it, and then claiming it's "cancerous" or has some kind of auto-immune disorder is *eschatological*. It sounds like that hypochondriac acquaintance we all have who catastrophizes every little twinge of discomfort.

On 12/19/20 9:09 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> What about the systems/software aging/rot/refactoring analogy?
--
↙↙↙ uǝlƃ

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[gepr]

This is a decent layout of what (may have) happened:

https://malwaredevil.com/2020/12/17/new-evidence-suggests-solarwinds-codebase-was-hacked-to-inject-backdoor/


On December 19, 2020 2:43:32 PM PST, "uǝlƃ ↙↙↙" <[hidden email]> wrote:
>Well, that's *not* an analogy.

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[gepr]

This morning, I learned the name of Steve's response to his fellow hot-tubbers: The Glomar Response -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glomar_response

On 12/18/20 10:27 AM, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ wrote:

> If you don't want people hypothesizing in the hot-tub, don't build your site in a ridiculous place like Los Alamos. Sheesh.
>
> On 12/17/20 4:54 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
>> The night before I had been in a hot-tub with a small group of
>> Santa Fe Artist types who "Knew" all kinds of things about LANL, the
>> Nuclear Weapons Programme, Area 51 and Aliens, not to mention
>> Chemtrails, VaxxHOaxes, and ESP.   I remember smirking and maybe even
>> scoffing into my elbow a few times at some of those statements and my
>> bosses' bosses' boss was reminding me that I had in fact committed a
>> Capital crime with both smirk and scoff, though it WAS dark, they
>> probably didn't see my smirk and I masked my scoff as a cough, etc.  

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[jon zingale]

Marcus' description reminds me of stalk formation in slime moulds (*wink* to
Nick). It is the image of individuals motivated to fashion themselves into a
structural component, one that acts as an administrative *ice-nine*,
management as *grey goo*. Further, he imagines these *altruists* (those
willing to be the body) as being predisposed to select for the
consensus-oriented over the unfriendly. I appreciate his insight.

At the moment, I am listening to a DW documentary on inequality, how wealth
becomes power[1]. The documentary mentions a paradigm shift in finance away
from labour and towards investment, and mentions that very few in the world
can profitably take part in this economic rebirth. What the shift indicates,
to my mostly ignorant ear, is a recognition that we are leaving a stage in
the world where resources are available and now the future will go to
whoever can hold assets. This piece of the stalk formation model is either
missing or latent in Marcus' description. It seems important to me to ask
why we see this behaviour and in such abundance (the behaviour of those so
strongly inclined to be the body that they are willing to contribute to the
death of an institutions function). I speculate that it is worth considering
whether or not perceived scarcity (resources, wealth, liberty to do
otherwise) is a significant driver of this stalk formation mechanism. If so,
then my hope is that there are ways to frame the problem such that there are
actions to solve it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIxi7BiScI&ab_channel=DWDocumentary



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[thompnickson2]

Who maintains the level playing field so the Smithian players may compete?
Who maintains the genome so the Neo-Darwinian "genes" can compete?  Who pays
the costs of maintaining modularity, when the overwhelming law of nature is
entanglement.   This the Achilles Heel of Neo-Darwinism.  

Nick

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
[hidden email]
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
 


-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, December 30, 2020 12:03 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] 5 agencies compromised

Marcus' description reminds me of stalk formation in slime moulds (*wink* to
Nick). It is the image of individuals motivated to fashion themselves into a
structural component, one that acts as an administrative *ice-nine*,
management as *grey goo*. Further, he imagines these *altruists* (those
willing to be the body) as being predisposed to select for the
consensus-oriented over the unfriendly. I appreciate his insight.

At the moment, I am listening to a DW documentary on inequality, how wealth
becomes power[1]. The documentary mentions a paradigm shift in finance away
from labour and towards investment, and mentions that very few in the world
can profitably take part in this economic rebirth. What the shift indicates,
to my mostly ignorant ear, is a recognition that we are leaving a stage in
the world where resources are available and now the future will go to
whoever can hold assets. This piece of the stalk formation model is either
missing or latent in Marcus' description. It seems important to me to ask
why we see this behaviour and in such abundance (the behaviour of those so
strongly inclined to be the body that they are willing to contribute to the
death of an institutions function). I speculate that it is worth considering
whether or not perceived scarcity (resources, wealth, liberty to do
otherwise) is a significant driver of this stalk formation mechanism. If so,
then my hope is that there are ways to frame the problem such that there are
actions to solve it.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFIxi7BiScI&ab_channel=DWDocumentary



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