Posted by
Marcus G. Daniels on
Aug 16, 2013; 1:00am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/How-Laura-Poitras-Helped-Snowden-Spill-His-Secrets-NYTimes-com-tp7583618p7583630.html
On 8/15/13 9:41 AM, glen wrote:
> But I don't think my critique of his actions or affect is ad hominem.
> I think such a critique is necessary.
Hmm, I often think "here we go again -- mythical man month" when people
are added to a project -- in general you can expect things to slow down
not speed up. Organizations are dumb. And leaders often aren't any
smarter than the non-leaders, they 1) are time-tested individuals that
have been observed not to screw things up terribly, 2) just the sort
that like the satisfaction of giving directives and seek that
gratification 3) are social people and `consensus builders' 4) have poor
impulse control and it is mistaken for `leadership' (here thinking
someone like Eliot Spizer or Anthony Weiner), or 5) somewhere up on the
scale of psychopathic personality traits.
My impression is that individual faults are analyzed to death in the
media just because an individual has some tractability and expectation
of self-consistency. One personality is a specific thing to discuss,
not a complicated contradictory system, like a corporation that no one
has an expectations of other than, say, quarterly profits and shiny T.V.
ads. Also, one person is vulnerable. I think there's a tendency to
focus on the decisions of a person makes because they can be perceived
as correctable. In contrast, if a pharmaceutical company puts out
dangerous compounds and through a sustained and expensive campaign, when
people start experiencing life threatening side effects, no one blames
their CEO. It's just a fact of life. The `system' which is `good'
did it. Meanwhile, Snowden or Cheney or Weiner are people we can all
talk about, but I argue the criticism should be focused at those
decisions of those at the top, and those decisions should be held to a
higher standard.
> So, finally, here's my question. In this age of "outsider
> everything", shouldn't we be seeing (and methodically classifying) a
> diversity of trust establishing methods? What new measures of trust
> do, say, the millenials (or younger) use? Or are we older folk doomed
> to tsk tsking and yelling "get off my lawn"?
Well, I don't really trust. I just accept that I'm often powerless. To
the extent I can identify bad arguments, I avoid or try to stop the kind
of people that make them over and over. If there is no story a person
can rationalize or falsify, it's all just guesswork anyway.
Marcus
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