The AP kerfuffle

[Robert Holmes-3]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:25 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

Before I spend $120 of your tax dollars, does that particular article cover the kind of massive breaking of connections that were attributed (incorrectly as it turns out) to Zuckerberg?  Even though the story was false, it seems possible that social networks might fragment in that manner over a subject controversial enough.

Well, it's a review paper so it doesn't really go into much depth on any one aspect but it does have pointers to other papers that do. Turns out that this has been studied since about 2003: Toyoda & Kitsuregawa (14 ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia) built a taxonomy of the transitions that a community/cluster in a social network can undergo: grow, shrink, emerge, dissolve, split.

BTW, thanks for not spending $120 of my money. Do Sandia have access to Inter-Library Loan services? Or is that too low cost a solution for big government? ;)

—Robert

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[Parks, Raymond]

  Well, I looked at our collection and we don't have the book.  I'm sure they could get it in and, for that type of money on Amazon, I'd probably go that route.  I have gotten books via ILL.

  I have also been infected with the young folks' need for immediate gratification, though, so I do look at Amazon before the ILL.  Frequently, if the cost is low enough, I'll buy it personally rather than with Sandia funds.  Over the years I've probably bought a dozen books from Amazon that are actually for professional use at Sandia - but I don't expense them.

  I will contact our reference librarian and set her to looking for some of the other papers.  It's interesting for just the reason that Hussein suggests - what does it take to cause a breakup within a group?

Ray Parks

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On Jul 17, 2013, at 5:42 PM, Robert Holmes wrote:

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:25 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

Before I spend $120 of your tax dollars, does that particular article cover the kind of massive breaking of connections that were attributed (incorrectly as it turns out) to Zuckerberg?  Even though the story was false, it seems possible that social networks might fragment in that manner over a subject controversial enough.

Well, it's a review paper so it doesn't really go into much depth on any one aspect but it does have pointers to other papers that do. Turns out that this has been studied since about 2003: Toyoda & Kitsuregawa (14 ACM conference on hypertext and hypermedia) built a taxonomy of the transitions that a community/cluster in a social network can undergo: grow, shrink, emerge, dissolve, split.

BTW, thanks for not spending $120 of my money. Do Sandia have access to Inter-Library Loan services? Or is that too low cost a solution for big government? ;)

—Robert

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[Robert Holmes-3]

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:51 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

  I have also been infected with the young folks' need for immediate gratification,

Of course, you could always see if it's available on http://gen.lib.rus.ec and if it proves useful then get it through ILL/Amazon so that the authors get their credit.

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[Carl Tollander]

BTW, just so FRIAMers don't embarrass themselves elsewhere, its "kerfuffle", not "kerfluffle".

Unless "kerfluffle" is a particularly fluffy kerfuffle.

On 7/17/13 5:58 PM, Robert Holmes wrote:

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 5:51 PM, Parks, Raymond <[hidden email]> wrote:

  I have also been infected with the young folks' need for immediate gratification,

Of course, you could always see if it's available on http://gen.lib.rus.ec and if it proves useful then get it through ILL/Amazon so that the authors get their credit.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/17/13 5:33 PM, Hussein Abbass wrote:

This is more like a controlled experiment: X received information L then decided to disconnect Y; L is the cause, disconnecting Y is the effect.

How about:

1) Form a long bit vector of potential Likes.  The top 1 million popular Likes, say.

2) Derive an numeric vector from these by weighting each field by a vector W.  Set W to 1 to start with.

3) Form a matrix of the vectors (the Like adoption per user).

4) Compute a distance matrix of those vectors

5) Perform hierarchical clustering on that matrix

5) For each pair of people, subtract the geodesic distance in the cluster tree from the actual social network.   Square those and sum across all the people.   

6) Use conjugate gradient, or some other optimizer to find a `best' W, with #5 being the minimization criterion.   Add a penalty term for non-zeros to get rid of uninteresting Likes. 

7) Treat the subspace identified (a relatively small number of W non-zero terms) as a `Like' genome for each person.

8) Use maximum likelihood phylogenetic techniques to infer the evolution of the Likes.  This would involve finding transition probabilities between Like/Like, Like/Non-Like, Non-Like/Like, and Non-Like/Non-Like, and overall volatility of individual memes.   I suppose there's no real transition to Non-Like in practice with Facebook, but rather incremental adoption of more Likes?  
 
The point would be to find the Likes in the genome that best explain topology changes in the tree.
That is, what memes are associated with cliques being maintained (tree distance being relatively small) and which do not.

Ok, it's a little cynical to say that proliferation of Likes and Friends is like the proliferation of a virus, but..

Marcus

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[Steve Smith]

On 7/17/13 9:01 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:

BTW, just so FRIAMers don't embarrass themselves elsewhere, its "kerfuffle", not "kerfluffle".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kerfuffle#English

everywhere I look, KerfLuffle is a legitimate alternative spelling, however I *do* defer that kerfuffle is closer to the ?original? scots curfuffle...

My ear and palate much prefer "kerfluffle" however



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[Carl Tollander]

Depends on what authorities one defers to.   I first heard the term on a "West Wing" episode.

Kerfluffle sounds so kawaii, like there are fluffy pink kittens involved or something.

On 7/17/13 10:03 PM, Steve Smith wrote:

On 7/17/13 9:01 PM, Carl Tollander wrote:

BTW, just so FRIAMers don't embarrass themselves elsewhere, its "kerfuffle", not "kerfluffle".

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/kerfuffle#English

everywhere I look, KerfLuffle is a legitimate alternative spelling, however I *do* defer that kerfuffle is closer to the ?original? scots curfuffle...

My ear and palate much prefer "kerfluffle" however

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[Russell Standish-2]

I'm guessing you're talking about Knife Party?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party

Google seemed to understand what you were on about :). Never heard of
them before, myself.

Cheers

On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 01:23:39PM -0700, glen wrote:

> Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/17/2013 11:42 AM:
> > On 7/17/13 12:19 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote:
> >> Agreed, but we could form an alliance with them on issues on which we agree.
>
> This goes back to the comment someone (Steve, I think) made about whether or not
> you really want your social network to include some of the people it actually
> includes. ;-)  One of the reasons I stopped (blanketly) calling myself a
> libertarian was because of all the ... hm, what can I call them ...
> non-libertarians calling themselves libertarians.
>
> I don't want to be associated with them, much less allied.
>
> > A certain Australian electro house band would be a catchy name amongst the Tea
> > Party folks (or the Domestic Terrorist Party depending on your politics) as well
> > as the club-going young people. I don't dare spell it out for sake of the
> > humor-impaired that might be reading!   Hint:  Julius Caesar.
>
> Allright.  It's killing me.  You have to provide another hint.  Or rot13() it.
> That way anyone who might be offended will have time to cool off. [grin]
>
> --
> ⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
> We like to keep it on the D.L. because our clientele prefers it that way
>
>
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[glen ropella]

Wow, "Knife Party"?  That can't be it ... unless I'm too humor-impaired. ;-)  I
was expecting something more offensive ... and more appropriate ... like "God &
Gun Party" ... or "Racists Riding Hoverounds®".  Speaking of which, I ran across
this article today:

   Race, Ideology, and the Tea Party: A Longitudinal Study
   Eric D. Knowles mail, Brian S. Lowery, Elizabeth P. Shulman, Rebecca L.
Schaumberg
   http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0067110

"The Tea Party movement, which rose to prominence in the United States after the
election of President Barack Obama, provides an ideal context in which to
examine the roles of racial concerns and ideology in politics. A three-wave
longitudinal study tracked changes in White Americans’ self-identification with
the Tea Party, racial concerns (prejudice and racial identification), and
ideologies (libertarianism and social conservatism) over nine months. Latent
Growth Modeling (LGM) was used to evaluate potential causal relationships
between Tea Party identification and these factors. Across time points, racial
prejudice was indirectly associated with movement identification through Whites’
assertions of national decline. Although initial levels of White identity did
not predict change in Tea Party identification, initial levels of Tea Party
identification predicted increases in White identity over the study period.
Across the three assessments, support for the Tea Party fell among libertarians,
but rose among social conservatives. Results are discussed in terms of
legitimation theories of prejudice, the “racializing” power of political
judgments, and the ideological dynamics of the Tea Party."



Russell Standish wrote at 07/18/2013 12:29 AM:
> I'm guessing you're talking about Knife Party?
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife_Party

>> Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/17/2013 11:42 AM:
>>> A certain Australian electro house band would be a catchy name amongst the Tea
>>> Party folks (or the Domestic Terrorist Party depending on your politics) as well
>>> as the club-going young people. I don't dare spell it out for sake of the
>>> humor-impaired that might be reading!   Hint:  Julius Caesar.

--
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Like it's screwed itself in hell


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/18/13 6:16 PM, glen wrote:
> I was expecting something more offensive ... and more appropriate ... like "God &
> Gun Party" ... or "Racists Riding Hoverounds®".
Here's the list of plaintiffs from https://www.eff.org/node/75009.
While I love the Hoverounds idea, there's not even AARP on the list...
They all have arguments for being there, but the intersection of the
set?   Thought perhaps the common interest is just to have a knife party
with the defendants..  A playful nihilism in contrast to the long list
of serious reasons the plaintiffs give.  Only objection to Gary's fine
suggestions was to in anyway build on the name Tea Party as a foundation!

First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
Calguns Foundation, Inc.
California Associations of Federal Firearms Licensees
Council on American Islamic Relations
Franklin Armory
Free Press
Free Software Foundation
Greenpeace
Human Rights Watch
Media Alliance
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws
Open Technology Institute
People for the American Way
Public Knowledge
Students for Sensible Drug Policy
TechFreedom
Unitarian Universalist Service Committee

Defendants:

General Keith Alexander
Eric H. Holder
NSA
United States


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/15/13 3:03 PM, glen wrote:
> I have this opinion because I already
> "knew" the government was (or intended to) spy(ing) on my every behavior prior
> to Snowden's actions.
http://thebulletin.org/not-all-secrets-are-alike

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[glen ropella]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/24/2013 06:16 PM:
> http://thebulletin.org/not-all-secrets-are-alike

Great article!  Thanks.

It reminds me of this:

   http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-path-of-honesty

In particular, this case:

'Harris: Let’s again invoke a deathbed scene, where the dying person asks, “Did
you ever cheat on me in our marriage?” Let’s say it’s a wife asking her husband.
The truthful answer is that he did cheat on her. However, the truth of their
relationship—now—is that this is completely irrelevant. And yet it is also true
that he took great pains to conceal this betrayal from her at one point, and he
has kept quiet about it ever since. What good could come from telling the truth
in that situation?'


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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/25/13 10:49 AM, glen wrote:
> In particular, this case: 'Harris: Let’s again invoke a deathbed
> scene, where the dying person asks, “Did you ever cheat on me in our
> marriage?” Let’s say it’s a wife asking her husband. The truthful
> answer is that he did cheat on her. However, the truth of their
> relationship—now—is that this is completely irrelevant. And yet it is
> also true that he took great pains to conceal this betrayal from her
> at one point, and he has kept quiet about it ever since. What good
> could come from telling the truth in that situation?'
I would say that legislation can be robust to crime or lapses in
individual ethics.  Legislation is a qualitatively different thing from
ethical decisions that govern individual behavior.   The lie above as
described is compartmentalized and does not impact anyone else.   And
revealing the cheating is a catharsis that the husband does not deserve
and should not seek.

The public secret (the thing people know but put out of their minds) is
not at all compartmentalized.  It's secret legislation that contradicts
the public law.   Among the bad things about it is how arrogant it is:  
The idea that the chain of command can be used to keep illegal things
secret even across tens of thousands of employees and contractors.  
Even the military only requires that soldiers follow legal orders.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating:  If the NSA *could* keep
massive surveillance a secret (e.g. not conspire with other government
agencies), then they'd probably keep the ability to study the minds of
dangerous people.   But they failed to, because they failed to persuade
at least one person the mission was a good one.

Marcus

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[glen ropella]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/25/2013 11:24 AM:
> The public secret (the thing people know but put out of their minds) is not at
> all compartmentalized.

Oh, but it _is_ compartmentalized.  Even in the case where everything, all
aspects of every piece of legislation, is public, the composite "law" that
results is too complicated for any one lawyer, judge, court, or agency to
understand completely.

That means that compartmentalization is a natural (perhaps unintended)
consequence of complexity.  To see this, try asking a 60 year old real estate
lawyer about the Samsung/Apple law suits ... or your divorce lawyer about the
tax consequences of an S-corp vs. an LLC. ;-)  Or look at the variations between
9th circuit rulings and the rest of the federal courts.  Compartmentalization is
the rule, not the exception.

> It's secret legislation that contradicts the public law.

Again, that's not as relevant as it might seem because lots of laws contradict
other laws, secret or not.

> Among the bad things about it is how arrogant it is:  The idea that the
> chain of command can be used to keep illegal things secret even across tens of
> thousands of employees and contractors.

I agree completely, here.  But I don't agree because of the secrecy so much as
because of the byzantine nature of our constitutional republic and the (somewhat
dysfunctional) method for constructing and curating legislation.  It's arrogant
all the way around, from the guy arrested for carrying too much marijuana in a
state where the law enforcement has simply decided not to enforce some laws to
the absurdity of punishing Snowden for disclosing something we technically aware
people already "knew".

> Even the military only requires that soldiers follow legal orders.

In letter, but not spirit.  If the chain of command decides to blame you for
something (like humiliating prisoners of war or taking pictures with dead
bodies), then they will.  If you try to disobey the extant "modus operandi" of
whatever clique you're assigned to, you will suffer for it.

And that's all over and above the fact that most service members, like most
people, aren't lawyers and don't understand the law, even the relatively simpler
military law.  By the time any question is settled by a court, the accused's
life is already severely damaged or re-aligned. (witness poor little innocent
Zimmerman who was merely trolling the neighborhood looking for vandals to shoot)

> The proof of the pudding is in the eating:  If the NSA *could* keep massive
> surveillance a secret (e.g. not conspire with other government agencies), then
> they'd probably keep the ability to study the minds of dangerous people.   But
> they failed to, because they failed to persuade at least one person the mission
> was a good one.

I think their mistake lay in the _choice_ of secrets, not in an inherent
inability to keep huge projects secret.  In this, I agree with Aftergood that
we've resigned ourselves to these blanket, broad stroked classifying everything
that moves methods.  Perhaps what we've lost is the strategic and tactical
rationale for what to make secret and what to make public.

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/25/13 12:51 PM, glen wrote:
> I think their mistake lay in the _choice_ of secrets, not in an
> inherent inability to keep huge projects secret.
Yes.

My only disagreement is that I meant compartmentalized as a situation in
which there is only one point of vulnerability, one relevant person.   I
didn't mean "generally operating autonomously", I meant "bullet proof
and air tight".  Whether or not there are contradictions in various
areas of law matters to the extent people care, and there is someone
willing and able to do something about it...

Marcus

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[glen ropella]

Now I'm just making up stuff in order to keep arguing. 8^)

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/25/2013 12:04 PM:
> My only disagreement is that I meant compartmentalized as a situation in which there is only one point of vulnerability, one relevant person.   I didn't mean "generally operating autonomously", I meant "bullet proof and air tight".

OK. But before you said:

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/25/2013 11:24 AM:> On 7/25/13 10:49 AM, glen wrote:
> I would say that legislation can be robust to crime or lapses in individual ethics.  Legislation is a qualitatively different thing from ethical decisions that govern individual behavior.   The lie above [infidel husband at wife's deathbed] as described is compartmentalized and does not impact anyone else.

And:

> The public secret (the thing people know but put out of their minds) is not at all compartmentalized.

Legislation and individual ethics do compare nicely because _some_ people know the "public secret" while others do not, in the same way that the infidel husband's secretary might know of his infidelity (as well as the person with whom he had the affair), even though his wife does not know.  The point being that both cases, the public secret and the infidel husband, are compartmentalized in the same way.  The one's who notice the _potential_ are "in on" the public secret, whereas the oblivious ones are not.

I can't tell you how many California and Oregon hicks thought I was "one of them" when they learned that I suspected the government was attempting to build a database for tracking every phone call, text messages, and e-mail.  I can count 5 such hicks right off the bat (though I don't know the names of 2 of them that I met at dive bars).  But putting paranoia aside, the self-described "nerds" who know lots of flat technology would write off my suspicions until/unless I (and they) took the time to dig in a little deeper.  Those people, the non-paranoid "middle tier" civilian, were not in on this particular public secret any more than the guys who played golf with the infidel husband might not have been in on the secret of his infidelity, whereas his secretary might have been.

Such an ethical case should _not_ scale like this, but it does.  It would not scale, if we spent more time curating our classified materials and/or more time curating our legislation. Agencies like the NSA SHOULD have the most sophisticated classification methods on the planet.  But they don't, probably because there's too little budget for understanding how to classify and too much budget for ... oh, I don't know, building data centers in Utah.

--
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I heard you think I miss it, you'd bet I'd kiss it
 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

On 7/25/13 2:24 PM, glen wrote:
>
> Legislation and individual ethics do compare nicely because _some_
> people know the "public secret" while others do not, in the same way
> that the infidel husband's secretary might know of his infidelity (as
> well as the person with whom he had the affair), even though his wife
> does not know.  The point being that both cases, the public secret and
> the infidel husband, are compartmentalized in the same way.  The one's
> who notice the _potential_ are "in on" the public secret, whereas the
> oblivious ones are not.
While the wife is on her deathbed, it seems unlikely to me that a
secretary, buddy, or mistress barges in to report the affair.  That
could have happened, but it was described as not occurring because that
was the thought experiment.   It was really up to the husband to confess
or not.

My point is not about the structural similarity of information leaks in
various realms (yes I see your point), it's about their relative
consequences.   Exposing problems with organizations is more important
that exposing problems with individuals, simply because of the number of
people it impacts.   If the Catholic church tolerates sexual abuse of
children, or a DA tolerates homicides based on racial profiling, or a
government takes actions that promotes violent blowback from other
organizations, these are qualitatively different than instances of crime
by individuals.  Unfortunately, what often happens is that organizations
are good at what I'd describe as "internally negotiating the truth"
amongst themselves, such that a critic can't pin down any one fault.  
But, Zimmerman and Martin, that's easy to form an opinion about.
>
> But putting paranoia aside, the self-described "nerds" who know lots
> of flat technology would write off my suspicions until/unless I (and
> they) took the time to dig in a little deeper.  Those people, the
> non-paranoid "middle tier" civilian, were not in on this particular
> public secret any more than the guys who played golf with the infidel
> husband might not have been in on the secret of his infidelity,
> whereas his secretary might have been.
A basic sketch of a suspicion may have diffused around, at least
notionally, to paranoid and cynical technology types.  The scale of the
metadata effort was obvious to me back as far as 2003 or so, and the
intent was absolutely clear with the Patriot act right after 9/11.   Of
course it takes government quite a long time to convert intent in to
anything.   I would guess the NSA had production tools by 2008 or so.  
More alarming to me is the collusion between corporations and between
governmental organizations.   Not merely cleverly intrusive (I can
respect the technical capability), but heavy-handed too.

Normal people that put most importance on getting along with their
neighbors and peers and the powers that be will tend to be dismissive
until it absolutely smacks them in the face and there are enough "middle
tier" civilians to form a new consensus.   Without that critical mass,
change won't occur.

Marcus

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[glen ropella]

Marcus G. Daniels wrote at 07/25/2013 02:15 PM:
> My point is not about the structural similarity of information leaks in various realms (yes I see your point), it's about their relative consequences.

Aha!  I didn't snap to that.  It's an important difference.

> Exposing problems with organizations is more important that exposing problems with individuals, simply because of the number of people it impacts.   If the Catholic church tolerates sexual abuse of children, or a DA tolerates homicides based on racial profiling, or a government takes actions that promotes violent blowback from other organizations, these are qualitatively different than instances of crime by individuals.  Unfortunately, what often happens is that organizations are good at what I'd describe as "internally negotiating the truth" amongst themselves, such that a critic can't pin down any one fault. But, Zimmerman and Martin, that's easy to form an opinion about.

I agree in principle with your main point, here.  But in practice, I end up disagreeing.  The problem lies with the illusion of a crisp distinction between an organization and an individual.  The counter claim is: Problems in organizations ultimately reduce to problems with individuals.

This is why I think Zimmerman/Martin opinions are not so easy to form. (OK, I'm baiting... they're easy to form _prematurely_ without thought... but if you put a little thought into it, then it's not so easy.)  Nothing Zimmerman did was or should be illegal.  Yet, nothing Martin did was or should be illegal, either.  Likewise, lots of completely legal things can get you killed.  And there are completely legal ways to kill people.  Given this, why all the hoopla?

The reason for the hoopla is because the _organization(s)_ gave birth to Martin and the organization(s) gave birth to Zimmerman.  Yet the organization was not on trial.  The individuals were on trial.  The legal system doesn't _die_ when it makes a wrong turn.  And the legal system doesn't go to jail when it does something stupid.  It seems quite clear that, in practice, our legal system is reductionist, organizational corruption reduces to individual corruption.  The same can be said of Snowden and Manning ... individual scapegoats for organizational problems.

So, while I agree with you in principle, how do we _force_ a reorganization in the face of organizational problems?

> More alarming to me is the collusion between corporations and between governmental organizations.

I agree, especially large multi-national corporations, which are in direct conflict with self-government.

> Normal people that put most importance on getting along with their neighbors and peers and the powers that be will tend to be dismissive until it absolutely smacks them in the face and there are enough "middle tier" civilians to form a new consensus.   Without that critical mass, change won't occur.

The question is how to [re]generate that critical mass.  For a very short time, I thought the simultaneity of the Tea Party and 99% might get us over a threshold.  But my experience with individuals from both groups was that they were as unwilling to think and act critically, skeptically, argumentatively, as everyone else.  It seems we're doomed to building an unthinking mass to move in one direction, then having to forcibly dissolve that one and reconstitute another in order to change direction again later.  We've hit some sort of efficacy ceiling with our 2, 4, and 6 year bloodless revolutions here in the US.

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Better come to the throne today
 

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[Marcus G. Daniels]

"The problem lies with the illusion of a crisp distinction between an
organization and an individual.  The counter claim is: Problems in
organizations ultimately reduce to problems with individuals."

At every step of the way, and often in iterated private bilateral
discussions, any potentially accountable individual in a large organization
is tolerating (and thus creating) vast inefficiency to to reduce their
liability.  That's not their only goal, of course, they also are looking
up.  The buck passing is just a way to stay safe until they are selected
for advancement.  What they actually want to accomplish when they get their
doesn't matter, they just want to get there!

By the time an objection can be raised, they've found a way to have
everyone say "the sky is not blue" because the paper trail leads to that.  
To say otherwise would be against regulation, policy, good faith, civility,
etc.  So I agree, in practice, to stop this sort of random growth of
nonsense, it is necessary to have a strong argument against a policy from
the perspective of the health of the organization (no agendas or idealistic
motives allowed!) as well a specific and relevant set of targets for blame,
and to pursue it all at once.

Or find something else to do.  Meh.

Marcus

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[glen ropella]

[hidden email] wrote at 07/25/2013 03:48 PM:
> What they actually want to accomplish when they get their
> doesn't matter, they just want to get there!
>
> [...] So I agree, in practice, to stop this sort of random growth of
> nonsense, it is necessary to have a strong argument against a policy from
> the perspective of the health of the organization (no agendas or idealistic
> motives allowed!) as well a specific and relevant set of targets for blame,
> and to pursue it all at once.

I've been having lots of good conversations about the distinction between "identity" and "self" on other mailing lists lately.  In particular, you are not who you _think_ you are.  This type of internally negotiated truth seems to relate ... or, more likely, I'm just a muddy thinker.

Internally negotiated truth is not a bug.  It's a feature.  The trick is that organizational truth is negotiated slower than individual truth.  And societal truth is even more inertial.  In some cases (Manning and the Army, Snowden and CIA/NSA/BAH), individual's have a higher turnover (material as well as intellectual and emotional) than organizations, it makes complete sense to me that a ladder-climber would lose sight of their motivations by the time they reached the appropriate rung on the ladder.  (I think this is very clear in Obama's climb from community organizer to president.)  And, in that context, the slower organizational turnover should provide a stabilizer for the individual (and society should provide a stabilizer for the organizations).

The real trick is whether these negotiated truths have an objective ground, something to which they can be recalibrated if/when the error (distance between their negotiated truth and the ground) grows too large.  I don't know if/how such a "compass" is related to the health of an organization.  But it seems more actionable than health ... something metrics like financials or social responsibility might be more able to quantify.

--
⇒⇐ glen e. p. ropella
Brainstorm, here I go, Brainstorm, here I go,
 

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