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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1326 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for November 15, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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It's somewhat relevant to the discussions about the federal government workforce. The federal government employs a lot of people, and those people aren't being spewed out by a magic high-IQ-only people factory; they're just regular people, from the regular population. Some are really smart and capable; others, less so. Different agencies have different dynamics that draw from different subsets of the population.

There is a legend in the research community of a new director taking charge of one of the national labs and saying in his first appearance in front of the workforce some form of, "We know that 50% of you don't want to do anything. That's fine. We're not going to make you; we won't fire you. Just don't get in the way of the other 50%."

The reason for this legend is not overly linked with any dynamic particular to the federal government, but it has a slightly special form in such places. There is a long, complicated story about the inherent difficulty of evaluating research efforts. In every industry, you'll have people who frankly do not have the skills or ability to contribute to the actual mission/bottom line, but they obviously don't want to have that figured out. They might lose their job! So, they try to make it kind of look like they're doing something, even if it's dumb/not productive. In industries where it's harder to evaluate whether something is actually contributing, there's a lot more room for this to flourish. Also in industries that are so bloody rich that they can sort of afford to scattershot all over the place a little and not worry too much about economy. See also the tech industry in some recent times. The federal government has a bit of both floating around. Depending on the agency, their mission may be more/less well-defined. Some pockets clearly think that their mission is approximately everything. Some defense orgs definitely think this, as it's extremely easy to slide down the slope of thinking that you have to account for literally every possible situation, every possible contingency, every idea that could be used against you or by you to gain an advantage.

Couple these two things (a workforce so large really isn't drawn from just the best and brightest) and such a broad mix of groups being more-or-less mission-focused and more-or-less clear on what contributes to that mission, and you inevitably get allllllllll sorts of pretty random crap. Some is really really good; some is, well.

I'm riffing on all this in part to say that there will definitely be some obvious low-hanging fruit for Elon/Vivek, but there is also just such a massive diversity of agencies that have such different missions, different needs, different levels-of-evaluability, that it will likely be a lot more difficult than Elon just rolling in to Twitter and saying, "Everybody bring the code you've written in the last year directly to Elon." Sure, if they have the time and inclination to scratch and sniff down to small groups like this, they'd find some set of people who say, "I take the Latin from the internet and put it in the goddamn logo!" But a lot of times, they'll get some mountain of hazy documentation about 'work' that is supposedly in line with a mission that may be extremely sprawling, unclear, and questionable in the first place. But it might actually be good-ish! Hard to tell without a deep dive and lots of expertise... multiplied over and over again in thousands of different domains that require all different sorts of expertise. Godspeed, Elon... godspeed.

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