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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Nick Thompson
Well, Marcus, what little data I have heard about suggests that Prozac does
reduce anxiety and thereby makes people more assertive in their own
interest.   And, it moves monkeys up the hierarchy.  

I hear rumors (as opposed to vaguely remembered old data) that testosterone
is increased by winning and that testosterone increases aggression.    So
feed saltpeter to the rich. };-)>

N

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 3:23 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On Fri, 2014-04-11 at 13:49 -0600, Nick Thompson wrote:

> In short, if this account is correct, we are already feeding Prozac in
> at the bottom of the hierarchy.  I wonder what happens to the social
> dynamics of an exective group when some of the members start taking
> Prozac

The absence of depression doesn't seem to me to be the same thing as the
presence of dominance behaviors, risk taking, etc. that might be
specifically associated with testosterone.  Other aspects of personality
that are influenced by the endocrine system could be modulated by depression
too.  I mean, Prozac (etc) may help the subordinate person cope in their
subordinate position, but won't necessarily cause them to be an alpha, or
make subversive plans against the alphas.

Marcus



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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.

Marcus

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by Steve Smith

Steve,

 

One of the consequences of using complexity babble is that it simply describes the behavior of the system, rather than accusing any one part of the system for that behavior.  So the question boils down to, “How do we fill the basin?”  My favorite way is to tax the bejeezus out of the rich and use it for education, etc., of the poor, because it nearly fulfills my particular sense of morality.  (Actually, we would probably need the guillotines, for THAT purpose.)  But others may think of less vindictive ways to reach the goal of continually filling the basin.

 

You don’t want to make me dictator.

 

N

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Steve Smith
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 10:19 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

Nick -

Merle,

 

I am sure we CAN’T figure it out without your help as a “emergentist”.   The damage done by discrimination is a great example of non-zero-sum losses.  The problem is similar to the problem of inequality of opportunity generally.  The attractor is for the children of better-off people to be better-off and for better-off children to become better-off adults and have better-off children.  As an example I give you the Wood-Gormely [elementary] school here in Santa Fe, which has a richer educational program because the parents throw resources and time at it.  And, I assume, simply because it has an aura of a place where Parents give a damn.  Thus, despite being a Public School, it becomes by virtue of these investments of time and resources and energy, a “better” public school.  To deprive all parents of the possibility of investing in the school their kid goes to is to deprive all schools of something essential; but the possibility of such investment leads inevitably to the genealogical flow of social benefits.  Which is why we have to revive the notion of social Democracy in this poor sad country of ours. 

 

FRIAMMERS could be crucial to such a discussion, if only by virtue of having the conceptual tool of the “attractor” at our disposal.  In complexity terms, what is it that social democracies do?  Is it basin filling? 

And "preferential attachment" and "canalization" and "coevolution on fitness landscapes", et cetera...

I was impressed that the original author in question, Astra Taylor even *referenced* complexity science topics.   I'm not of the belief that sprinkling complexity science terms onto a problem will magically remove it's stains, BUT I do believe that many real-world, everyday challenges in the world *can be* and often *must be* modeled as the non-linear systems that they are, rather than fitting them to a simple linear system, then drawing totally undermotivated and usually bogus conclusions based on those models.

When usually we hear "the Rich get Richer", it rings our bell of unfairness and abuse of power rather than being accepted as a truism about positive feedback (even in linear systems) and preferential attachment and canalization...

While the  rhetoric of equality politics may have been critical to break over from the old cultural hegemony into a new basin of attraction, I don't think that the challenge remains making the point that "power corrupts" over and over again, but rather seeking a dynamic which has the properties we (think that?) we desire.   "Be careful what you wish for" being an entirely other question, I fear.

Vonnegut's short story "Harrison Bergeron" is a cautionary tale of one ultimate consequence of linear, brute force attempts at achieving "equality".

"You Don't Always Get What You Want" - Stones

- Steve



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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
Marcus,

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.  

N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.

Marcus

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Merle Lefkoff-2
A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a physicist to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a solution, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."


On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:
Marcus,

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.

N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.

Marcus

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
On 4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
> breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
> so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.

If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then the
cages that get to parent the next generation are the successful
corporations.  They get to define what is meritorious by controlling the
wealth and by having the means to lobby the government.    They also get
to choose the individuals in the cage (their hires).   Note the
selection criteria for the cages is also `their' criteria (e.g. stock
price), not some multi-objective criteria that would perhaps better
serve the whole set pool of people that are caged-up, as it were.

If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think you
have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the U.S.S.R.  
Otherwise there is not the distinction between the breeders and the bred.

If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which cages
are being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so that the more
ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total. I mean, I'm a super
chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep the peace in the cage by
making it clear to the other chickens know they could end up dead, or
half dead, but without actually doing it.   I'll also estimate that my
offspring will be pretty good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes
to that, and that this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out
well enough, I may have counted how many cages are at my facility and
done some arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that
as a guess for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000
eggs, why should I participate in a process that can yield 100,000 eggs?
That would undermine the grand plan above.

Marcus






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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve Smith

On 4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
622 × 443 - dltk-teach.com
Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.

If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then the cages that get to parent the next generation are the successful corporations.  They get to define what is meritorious by controlling the wealth and by having the means to lobby the government.    They also get to choose the individuals in the cage (their hires).   Note the selection criteria for the cages is also `their' criteria (e.g. stock price), not some multi-objective criteria that would perhaps better serve the whole set pool of people that are caged-up, as it were.

If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think you have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the U.S.S.R.   Otherwise there is not the distinction between the breeders and the bred.

If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which cages are being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so that the more ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total. I mean, I'm a super chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep the peace in the cage by making it clear to the other chickens know they could end up dead, or half dead, but without actually doing it.   I'll also estimate that my offspring will be pretty good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes to that, and that this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out well enough, I may have counted how many cages are at my facility and done some arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that as a guess for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000 eggs, why should I participate in a process that can yield 100,000 eggs? That would undermine the grand plan above.

Marcus






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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by Merle Lefkoff-2

Merle,

 

Not quite sure what was the thrust of your response here, but my original post was written in that fanciful way only because I could not recall the details of the experiment or the citation.  Nothing spherical about my Libertarian or Socialist chickens.  They actually existed in a poultry husbandry lab in Indiana.  Do you want the citation?  The basic message here is, Be careful what  you select for.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 11:47 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a physicist to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a solution, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.


N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.


Marcus

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff


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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Merle Lefkoff-2
Nick,

Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke about physicists and chickens.  Neither you nor I are physicists,  but we do have to contend with them sometimes.


On Sat, Apr 12, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Merle,

 

Not quite sure what was the thrust of your response here, but my original post was written in that fanciful way only because I could not recall the details of the experiment or the citation.  Nothing spherical about my Libertarian or Socialist chickens.  They actually existed in a poultry husbandry lab in Indiana.  Do you want the citation?  The basic message here is, Be careful what  you select for.

 

Nick

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Merle Lefkoff
Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 11:47 PM


To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

 

A farmer has some chickens who dont lay any eggs.The farmer calls a physicist to help.The physicist does some calculations and says, "I have a solution, but it only works for spherical chickens in a vacuum."

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Marcus,

Once upon a time, chickens were bred and selected individually for growth
rate and egg production.  This, of course, produced chickens which, when put
in individual cages, produced huge amounts of bird and egg.  But industrial
egg production requires that chickens live in cages of 9, and when these
supper chickens with put in the cages, they immediately fell to pecking each
other, so then, in the end, each cage had one chicken laying a lot of eggs,
and a lot of half dead ones.  This led to the costly practice of de-beaking
laying hens.   I call these your libertarian chickens.

Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the cage,
so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next generation.  In
remarkably few generations the level of aggression went down, cage
productivity went up,  and de-beaking was no longer necessary.  I call these
your socialist chickens.

It's my understanding that something like this was actually done ... in
Indiana.


N





Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels

Sent: Friday, April 11, 2014 8:37 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 8:19 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> And, it [Prozac] moves monkeys up the hierarchy.
New monkeys are at least a novelty compared to the old monkeys.


Marcus

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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  <a href="tel:%28303%29%20859-5609" value="+13038595609" target="_blank">(303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff


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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  (303) 859-5609
skype:  merlelefkoff

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve Smith
On 4/12/14 11:30 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> Nick,
>
> Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke
> about physicists and chickens.  Neither you nor I are physicists,  but
> we do have to contend with them sometimes.
And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?


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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
On 4/12/14, 11:32 AM, Steve Smith wrote:
> On 4/12/14 11:30 AM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
>> Sorry--it was late and I was getting goofy.  I remembered an old joke
>> about physicists and chickens. Neither you nor I are physicists,  but
>> we do have to contend with them sometimes.
> And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?
Look for creatures such as this if you turn West at Pojoaque..   Not
mentioned in the tour books for some reason.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/943678_602662879744027_2002682148_n.jpg

Marcus

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve Smith
 >> And they are all spherical and live in a vacuum?
> Look for creatures such as this if you turn West at Pojoaque..   Not
> mentioned in the tour books for some reason.
>
> https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/943678_602662879744027_2002682148_n.jpg 
>
Yeh... since my wife slipped blowfish shashimi onto the sushi tray I've
had to trim my beard with toenail clippers...  who would have guessed
that transgenic effects were so easy to obtain?   But finally my muave
sued top hat actually fits!

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Arlo Barnes
Muave - mauve + suave.
-Arlo James Barnes

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve Smith
Arlo,
> Muave - mauve + suave.
> -Arlo James Barnes

Que suave dude!

Suzy wants to know if you want to come over for some Easter Fugu and
egg-dying... the way she prepares it, the neurotoxins simultaneously
mess with your spelling and color perception centers...  get ready for
some really trippy synaesthesia (synesthaesia!)...   Dog nail clippers
are the best for the post-sushi beard-trim, however!  I have an extra
pair you can keep.  We can dye top-hats instead of eggs maybe?


- Mad Hatter

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
On 4/12/14, 2:17 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> Yeh... since my wife slipped blowfish shashimi onto the sushi tray
> I've had to trim my beard with toenail clippers...  who would have
> guessed that transgenic effects were so easy to obtain?
An unfortunate case of role suction..

Marcus


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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Nick Thompson
In reply to this post by Marcus G. Daniels
M

It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
corporations leads to better corporations.  

n

Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology
Clark University
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Marcus G.
Daniels
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2014 8:46 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Openness amplifies Inequality?

On 4/11/14, 10:44 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> Then some poultry husbandry professor got a bright idea.  Instead of
> breeding chickens by the individual, he bred and selected them by the
> cage, so that it was the best CAGES that got to parent the next
generation.

If you want to extend this metaphor to democratic capitalism, then the cages
that get to parent the next generation are the successful corporations.
They get to define what is meritorious by controlling the
wealth and by having the means to lobby the government.    They also get
to choose the individuals in the cage (their hires).   Note the
selection criteria for the cages is also `their' criteria (e.g. stock
price), not some multi-objective criteria that would perhaps better serve
the whole set pool of people that are caged-up, as it were.

If you want to interpret the metaphor more literally, then I think you
have to imagine there are central planners, such as in the U.S.S.R.  
Otherwise there is not the distinction between the breeders and the bred.

If I'm a super chicken and I'm looking across the aisle at which cages are
being selected, I may dial back my ruthless pecking so that the more
ordinary chickens add a few eggs to the cage total. I mean, I'm a super
chicken so I can size-up that situation.  Keep the peace in the cage by
making it clear to the other chickens know they could end up dead, or
half dead, but without actually doing it.   I'll also estimate that my
offspring will be pretty good at laying eggs and at pecking, if it comes to
that, and that this can continue.  And, if I'm planning things out well
enough, I may have counted how many cages are at my facility and done some
arithmetic to guess at how many eggs it produces, and use that as a guess
for the demand for eggs.  If there is only a need for 1000 eggs, why should
I participate in a process that can yield 100,000 eggs?
That would undermine the grand plan above.

Marcus






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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
On 4/12/14, 9:02 PM, Nick Thompson wrote:
> It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
> corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
> corporations leads to better corporations.
Crowdfunded private intelligence?

Marcus


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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Steve Smith
In reply to this post by Nick Thompson
Nick -
> M
>
> It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
> corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
> corporations leads to better corporations.
>
> n
>
I think a lot of Apple's success can be attributed to Steve Jobs'
tendencies in this area.  I'm not saying that his sense of consumer
products and design style wasn't important but I think maybe his general
"management" and/or "leadership" style, might have been equally
important to the company's "success"?

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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Marcus G. Daniels
On 4/13/14, 12:29 PM, Steve Smith wrote:
> I think a lot of Apple's success can be attributed to Steve Jobs'
> tendencies in this area.  I'm not saying that his sense of consumer
> products and design style wasn't important but I think maybe his
> general "management" and/or "leadership" style, might have been
> equally important to the company's "success"?
>
One might discriminate between alpha behaviors and the scope of
selfishness.  Some behaviors that are only good for middle managers,
others for executives, others impact company profitability, some have
implications for whole sectors of the economy, and then there is general
welfare.

If Apple preorders the available high-end Haswell chips for MacBook Pros
that might be argued to be unfair to smaller competitors.   On the other
hand, it's worse (in my opinion) when a company has a product that is
cheap to make and they artificially make it slower or less functional to
preserve their high-end market, e.g. turning off cores or putting in
delays.   In the first situation, the powerful company is pushing out
the technical frontier, and in the latter they are holding it back
because they can (e.g. because they have an effective monopoly on laser
printers).

That's one distinction that might discriminate playing hardball from
purely selfish behavior.

Marcus



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Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?

Owen Densmore
Administrator
In reply to this post by Steve Smith
Re: Jobs mgmt style, I remember one day being struck by my *never* having any doubt as to what to do that day.  All was clear, always.  Eric Schmidt also had that knack.

Both did it by making the team & company goals *very* clear, and in a broad context.  Why were we different?  What is our goal?  Why?  How is the rest of the Valley looking at this?  Why did my part matter.

   -- Owen



On Sun, Apr 13, 2014 at 12:29 PM, Steve Smith <[hidden email]> wrote:
Nick -

M

It would be interesting to know if the most enduring and productive
corporations are led by assholes, or if, suppressing the competition within
corporations leads to better corporations.

n

I think a lot of Apple's success can be attributed to Steve Jobs' tendencies in this area.  I'm not saying that his sense of consumer products and design style wasn't important but I think maybe his general "management" and/or "leadership" style, might have been equally important to the company's "success"?


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