It's a good letter, and it asks only for due diligence. Also, it's worth noting, that tough problems like this many times lead to genuine breakthrough. An algorithm that could "grade" journalism based on veracity and rigor could be a boon to the journalists themselves (helping them stand out), even as it would certainly be a boon to the consumers of journalism.
It's kind of the Peter Principle: You rise to your own level of incompetence. Hopefully, you don't get boosted past that level. Then you can instruct and manage the next down level.
You make an excellent point about filtering out the irrelevant. The wood is brown, for example, is irrelevant to building a proper staircase. The angle of decline is highly relevant.
But, with regard to leadership, the Peter Principle (identified by Laurence J. Peter and published in 1969) is in inverse correlation to performance, I believe. Particularly if performance is tied to being able to communicate with the success of the high performer at that level, because they might not have met their own level of the Peter Principle.
And, after communicating, one must be able to act. If a person has reached their Peter Principle level, they will be incompetent at the task -- which is why so many managers are hated.
I think that you identify Mr. Salviatier's main thesis: That knowing or not knowing are equally invalid until observation has been done. Of course, it's said the the very act of observation exerts change on the observed, but that's neither here nor there.
So, when I take tech teams into uncharted waters, the first thing we do is observe. Otherwise we create "ivory tower solutions" better suited to ourselves than actual users.
And, yes. Your're right. If you're supposed to be the "expert founder" then "I don't know" is not, generally in your vocabulary. However, I do suspect this is a male problem, more so, than female. Having said that, in this great time of social upheaval, vis a vis gender, perhaps it's a great time to learn from our sisters!
One of the hardest things to do is make difficult processes and systems accessible. This article achieves that with a simple discussion of building a staircase (no mean feat, first time) to step up to the springboard for a much larger idea. It's almost as if observing the staircase details renders a scaleable model fractal that gets to measurement of a learning curve.
I wonder if, by observing the details of one's own most difficult task, focusing on the time to learn each detail and assemble one's own model, an overall speed for learning ANY difficult task, done by a particular person could be calculated. That could be a valuable tool for measuring human potential, particularly in apprentice-type learning.
The value of the time and the effort put into the apprenticeship -- to both the apprentice and the master craftsman -- could be assessed before hand. Achievement baselines could be set closer to reality; or it could be decided that the apprenticeship would not be worth the time and effort. But that last decision could be made on firmer ground, data-wise.
Da Vinci, I would suggest, was a great observer of detail; he was also pretty good at math, science, engineering, and architecture. But it all started with drawing -- observing the most minute of detail, in all it's imperfection, then transferring that to paper. As an artist, he also learned to sort of standardize many of the imperfections -- or at least the use of the tool to represent those imperfections on paper or canvas. The painting method he galvanized, sfumato, eschewed hard lines in nature, and worked hard to achieve the soft edge. I wonder if da Vinci saw the irrationality of pi as evidence that a circle has no true "edge," but that a circle was instead equidistant points stretching out in a small infinity, particular to a specif object
The downside of observation might be wrapped up in this last, though. Because the casual observer of a circle, presuming that there is a definite, finite edge to a circle could lose their faith in the dimensional space we've grown up perceiving (four dimensions.) This might be okay for a mathematician, a scientist, or an artist. To a suburban husband with a mortgage and a minivan, it might be terrifying. The observation might completely unmoor him, and send him drifting off.
Nature is like that. The infinite diversity of nature, at say, the class, order, genus, species, or individual level can be maddening to try to take in. Looking above, at "animal, mineral, vegetable" compounds that exponentially. How those pieces work together to build a staircase, or a giraffe, or a seam of granite, or the savanna of Africa, is the heart of scientific -- and artistic -- inquiry.
Thanks, John Salvatier, for a provocative and insightful article.
This is certainly a nuanced look at a figure who is generally cited in stark black and white. The notion of the "merchant elite" setting the tone of politics within the state -- and with neighbors and other competitors -- is a bit of a wake-up call. After all, for better or for worse, what finally dragged the US out of the Great Depression was World War II, and the sudden bulge of manufacturing it brought.
The question is, are we, today, seeing self-interested corporations stimulating or antagonizing hard feelings between countries, states, tribes, or families as a way to push up profits?
And a larger question remains: Is that inherently bad?
I suppose that there are many who would think that it is not, by its nature, bad -- not if your nation, or ethnicity, or religion is not harmed. I think that this is the central question the article poses.
Given that, what is the value of a single human life? Or, more broadly, what is the value of any living thing, or living system? Is it okay kill a man through black lung, in order to maximize profit from a coal mine? Is it okay to bulldoze and pave a vast swath of land, to harvest wood, replacing the forest with a monoculture that will not support diversity? Where does that end? Is a culture safe? A nation?
There are, of course, a great number of people who think that one life lost is one too many, that an ecosystem is a living thing, that a culture is sacred.
Smith seems to hew towards regulation of business and industry -- that the watershed must be considered in mountaintop removal mining, that heroin sales on the street are not in the best interest of society. (Even though illicit drug sales are probably the very best example of a truly open and free market.) I would lean with Smith on this account. Government has NO business in business. But truly free people must be free to regulate business in their own interest.
Your second paragraph is answered by post-9/11 American foreign policy in Iraq (to say the least). But just to echo that answer, yes - Halliburton (and plenty of other private military, security, cyber security service companies) did and continues to thrive off war profiteering. War is an economy. That's why the military-industrial complex is discussed so frequently. Not many other nations subsidize an entire market segment to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. One that, again, generates profit off of the selling of weapons and arms to be used against other human beings.
Back at the dawn of the US, the one with the most votes became President; the next became Vice President. This was a good idea, as it would at the very least encourage some bipartisan discussion. Perhaps the VP would be found more often on Capitol Hill, in the role of President of the Senate.
Here's an interesting thought: That is is not true that "the business of government is business", as President Coolidge said, but more that the business of government is the regulation of business. A well-leveled playing field can accommodate the free market, assure fair competition (which will in turn assure more competitive pricing), and will protect against unwanted side effects, like a poisoned environment, or use of slave- or underpaid labor.
