Fwd: Major bug called 'Heartbleed' exposes Internet data

[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 4/13/14, 1:31 PM, Owen Densmore wrote:

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.

Hey, is this one of those sunny California ads?   Throw in a convertible car and I'm sold. 

Marcus

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[Steve Smith]

 >>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
Role Suction?  Role Lock!

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[Eric Charles-2]

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I know this is a bit delayed. It is my first post in a year or two, and it took a while to figure out how to get around the changes in email address. Thanks Stephen for getting me back on the list with an address from which I can send!

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I think this is my first post in a year or two. Hi everyone! And thanks Stephen for getting the change in my email address fixed.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email]

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 5:52 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Just to be a little more clear and to avoid the presumption that we're not making some progress already, I have something like this in mind:

Human Resources Management Ontology
http://mayor2.dia.fi.upm.es/oeg-upm/index.php/en/ontologies/99-hrmontology

But my suspicion is that such an ontology will still be lacking in a large number of the variables we consider when thinking about an individual's health, well-being, happiness, usefulness, and value/merit ... most notably it's missing all the ecological, biological, and medical ontologies. (Don't _you_ think about ticks and the epidemiology of lyme disease when you consider a new job offer?)

And, of course, even though the ontolog[y|ies] might be huge, it's still just a start.  We'd need to use such a scheme to build and falsify models of how any given individual or company (vector) might wander in the spanned space.  Are there unreachable pockets?  Unconnnected pockets?  Etc.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Nick Thompson]

Well, then I misspoke.  For the concept of meritocracy to make any sense, there has to be some “ontology” of merit – i.e., we have to agree upon some objective property that a person has by which we can predict his or her success.  Otherwise, the statement that Jones succeeded “because he was good” makes no sense.   Larding below:

 

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 Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 9:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] meritocracy (was Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?)

 

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

[NST==>Well, nothing guarantees that the idiot child of the objectively meritorious individual will become wealthy, but even conceding regression toward the mean, it sure as hell is more likely, no?  Variance .3?  Where the dickens do you get that?  <==nst]

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

[NST==>Seems like you are starting to beat me over the head with my own point.  If there is such a thing as ontological individual merit, , the nepotism and cooperation work against it.  I don’t happen to think there IS any such thing.  The argument is a reduction.  You are supposed to get to the end of it and have doubts about the concept of merit.  My conclusion is that the social and political system should contain powerful biases to favor the children of those that are currently less powerful.  <==nst]

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

 

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I know this is a bit delayed. It is my first post in a year or two, and it took a while to figure out how to get around the changes in email address. Thanks Stephen for getting me back on the list with an address from which I can send!

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

 

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I think this is my first post in a year or two. Hi everyone! And thanks Stephen for getting the change in my email address fixed.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 5:52 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Just to be a little more clear and to avoid the presumption that we're not making some progress already, I have something like this in mind:

Human Resources Management Ontology
http://mayor2.dia.fi.upm.es/oeg-upm/index.php/en/ontologies/99-hrmontology

But my suspicion is that such an ontology will still be lacking in a large number of the variables we consider when thinking about an individual's health, well-being, happiness, usefulness, and value/merit ... most notably it's missing all the ecological, biological, and medical ontologies. (Don't _you_ think about ticks and the epidemiology of lyme disease when you consider a new job offer?)

And, of course, even though the ontolog[y|ies] might be huge, it's still just a start.  We'd need to use such a scheme to build and falsify models of how any given individual or company (vector) might wander in the spanned space.  Are there unreachable pockets?  Unconnnected pockets?  Etc.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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[Merle Lefkoff-2]

Has the list seen this?   http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

A report coming out of the meritocracy, based on big data sets.  Makes the conversation you're having kind of -- well, what cave do you dwell in?

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 11:41 AM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Well, then I misspoke.  For the concept of meritocracy to make any sense, there has to be some “ontology” of merit – i.e., we have to agree upon some objective property that a person has by which we can predict his or her success.  Otherwise, the statement that Jones succeeded “because he was good” makes no sense.   Larding below:

 

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 Eric Charles
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2014 9:52 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] meritocracy (was Re: Openness amplifies Inequality?)

 

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

[NST==>Well, nothing guarantees that the idiot child of the objectively meritorious individual will become wealthy, but even conceding regression toward the mean, it sure as hell is more likely, no?  Variance .3?  Where the dickens do you get that?  <==nst]

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

[NST==>Seems like you are starting to beat me over the head with my own point.  If there is such a thing as ontological individual merit, , the nepotism and cooperation work against it.  I don’t happen to think there IS any such thing.  The argument is a reduction.  You are supposed to get to the end of it and have doubts about the concept of merit.  My conclusion is that the social and political system should contain powerful biases to favor the children of those that are currently less powerful.  <==nst]

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

 

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I know this is a bit delayed. It is my first post in a year or two, and it took a while to figure out how to get around the changes in email address. Thanks Stephen for getting me back on the list with an address from which I can send!

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" value="[phone]" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Tue, Apr 15, 2014 at 4:23 PM, Eric Charles <[hidden email]> wrote:

Following Glen's lead to move the discussion of meritocracy here:

Nick... I think your understanding of a meritocracy is limited. To rephrase your assertions:

Meritocracies favor the children of the meritorious, if those parents do something to instil their meritorious nature into their children. My guess is that the variance explained by this at mid-adulthood is under .3. Regression towards the mean is a strong effect, and having gone to a better elementary school can only help you so much at age 40.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their families, unless individuals also have to compete with meritorious couples and larger social units that work collaboratively together to achieve even greater ends. Sure, we often socially assign the "merit" to an individual member of such groups, but that is a different problem all together.

Meritocracies favor those who disregard their communities, unless regard for community is taken into account as one of the metrics of merit. For example, in a healthy company (mythic entities, it would sometimes seem) "managers" are people skilled at nurturing communities of a particular size and scale. They also tend to be "good community members" by other metrics, supporting Rotary, charity functions, etc., because, at the least, being a good community member creates good business connections.

Finally: Does meritocracy favor those in the group that gets to decide merit? Yeah, probably most of the time, unless some metric of otherness is given merit - for example, if we think decisions are made better in teams consisting of people who are not all from the group that holds power.

 

Also, valuing diversity is not contrary to being libertarian: http://fixingpsychology.blogspot.com/2014/03/libertarianism-and-american-philosophy.html

Eric

P.S. I think this is my first post in a year or two. Hi everyone! And thanks Stephen for getting the change in my email address fixed.

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-3867" target="_blank">[phone]   fax: <a href="tel:%28202%29%20885-1190" target="_blank">[phone]
email: [hidden email]

 

On Fri, Apr 11, 2014 at 5:52 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

Just to be a little more clear and to avoid the presumption that we're not making some progress already, I have something like this in mind:

Human Resources Management Ontology
http://mayor2.dia.fi.upm.es/oeg-upm/index.php/en/ontologies/99-hrmontology

But my suspicion is that such an ontology will still be lacking in a large number of the variables we consider when thinking about an individual's health, well-being, happiness, usefulness, and value/merit ... most notably it's missing all the ecological, biological, and medical ontologies. (Don't _you_ think about ticks and the epidemiology of lyme disease when you consider a new job offer?)

And, of course, even though the ontolog[y|ies] might be huge, it's still just a start.  We'd need to use such a scheme to build and falsify models of how any given individual or company (vector) might wander in the spanned space.  Are there unreachable pockets?  Unconnnected pockets?  Etc.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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--
Merle Lefkoff, Ph.D.
President, Center for Emergent Diplomacy
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
[hidden email]
mobile:  [phone]
skype:  merlelefkoff

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[glen ropella]

On 04/22/2014 02:24 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:
> Has the list seen this?
> http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy
>
> A report coming out of the meritocracy, based on big data sets.  Makes the
> conversation you're having kind of -- well, what cave do you dwell in?

Heh, there are many people that believe we never were a democracy to
begin with.  To most other democracies, we seem to have been living in a
cave for centuries.  Why buck tradition?

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[Eric Charles-2]

Merle,
I'm not sure how that questions about "democracy" and questions about "meritocracy" are necessarily related. If I was to pick a historic example that most tried to do meritocracy, it would be imperial china, several hundred years ago. Certainly there was an elite class, but there was also incredible potential for social mobility because there were state run tests that allowed people to move into and to move up within the civil service. Of course such tests favored parents who could afford tutors, etc., but nobody cared because the function of tutors was to turn kids into more meritorious adults.

Nick,

I'm not sure we need too much ontological baggage to do the meritocracy game. What we do need is an agreement about the circumstances that we find ourselves in... once we get that, we just look for those who are best fit. ;- )

The biggest hindrance I see to the meritocracy game is that ultimately we will want people with a wide variety of merits (i.e., who exercise skills well-matched to a variety of circumstances). Of course, I know you agree with that (and have written about it at some point).

-----------
Eric P. Charles, Ph.D.
Lab Manager
Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning
American University, Hurst Hall Room 203A
4400 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20016
phone: [phone]   fax: [phone]
email: [hidden email]

On Tue, Apr 22, 2014 at 5:38 PM, glen <[hidden email]> wrote:

On 04/22/2014 02:24 PM, Merle Lefkoff wrote:

Has the list seen this?
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/princeton-experts-say-us-no-longer-democracy

A report coming out of the meritocracy, based on big data sets.  Makes the
conversation you're having kind of -- well, what cave do you dwell in?

Heh, there are many people that believe we never were a democracy to begin with.  To most other democracies, we seem to have been living in a cave for centuries.  Why buck tradition?

--
⇒⇐ glen

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[glen ropella]

On 04/22/2014 04:30 PM, Eric Charles wrote:
> The biggest hindrance I see to the meritocracy game is that ultimately
> we will want people with a wide variety of merits (i.e., who exercise
> skills well-matched to a variety of circumstances).

I've often felt uneasy when I've interviewed people for various
positions.  I've certainly felt uneasy when I've had to choose who to
lay off.  Luckily, I've never had to fire anyone for cause.  One thing
that strikes me as common to all of my experiences is the lack of a way
to understand such variety, which is part of why I was briefly involved
with the HR consortium.

On that note, I ran across this article recently:

My Big Company Code Interview
http://www.drdobbs.com/tools/my-big-company-code-interview/240166992

And it reminded me of something someone said to me while interviewing
_me_ something like a decade ago.  He said: "I like hiring
simulationists because they're mercenaries.  They'll learn and do
anything to get the job done."  I took that as a compliment and believe
he (the CTO) argued for offering me the job.  But they did not offer me
a job because the people who did the algorithm work (who also
interviewed me) thought I was too mercenary.  I didn't give the math its
due respect, I think.  Perhaps they even thought I was simply stupid. A
case where my use of the humility topos went awry.  ;-)  I learned this
from the hiring manager who eventually became a friend.  Like the author
of the above article, the whole experience was useful and interesting...
which is why I continually apply for interesting looking jobs even when
I have no compelling reason to.

Anyway, it's not just variety, or wide variety. It's also appropriate
variety, I suppose.  Sometimes you need someone steeped in traditional
stovepiped discipline.  Sometimes you need gadflies like me.  Sometimes
you need measured "cross-pollinators".  Etc.  But until/unless we adopt
some form of _language_ (English word for the horrifying neologism
"ontology") for talking about these things, we'll stay in the
buzzword-laden ambiguity of business land.

--
⇒⇐ glen

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