Category: Society

Of Experience and Competence, Intelligence and Wisdom

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

Stephen Hawking

There’s a basic misunderstandings that causes people to be perceived as more capable than they actually are.  A common mistake, when evaluating capability, is to associate experience with competence.  To confuse intelligence with wisdom.  In the former people have a lot of exposure to a given situation, in the latter the person has distilled that exposure in a way that allows them to gain deeper insight into future situations.

People understand this intuitively but unfortunately the vast majority of companies forget/ignore the difference when hiring people.?Even when conscience of the difference, people will go about trying to identify competence by “digging deep” into their experience or by requiring a minimal amount of experience.?Both methods are flawed and provide no correlation to the likely success of a hire.1

Experience is necessary, but not sufficient for competence (if you want to use a term from mathematical causality.)  To move from experience to competence you generally have to have done 2 things:  1) had multiple experiences to draw from that are specific to the situation you need to learn from, and 2) are intentional about questioning the lessons from those experiences. Unfortunately most people don’t question what they have done in a way that make subsequent experience testable against their assumption. Instead, they just assume the know the reasons for it. 2

For example,  I drive around 50 miles a day in my commute.  As such I almost certainly have, over the course of my professional career, driven many many more miles than rookies starting off in the Indy 500.  It lacks specificity because I don’t drive comparable car, in a comparable environment, with comparable traffic. I have lots of “experience” driving a car, but that experience lacks any validity for the wisdom need to drive in the Indy 500.   

Intentionality is much much harder to evaluate. Most people will speak with conviction of the opinions they’ve developed through their experience and will sound like they have wisdom. Assuming you have filtered someone for the specificity of their experience, what is the best way to evaluate the intentionality of those experiences.?There is no perfect solution but here are a couple handy rules-of-thumb I’ve learned are over time.

A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.

William Shakespeare

1. Don’t trust someone who gives you absolute answers. People with wisdom will almost always say things like “well it depends” and “in our situation” because they have enough understanding to know the limits of their own experience. Almost all experiences have a range of best solutions based on tons of criteria that are always dependent on outside variables. Competent people know that almost no two situations are identical and will hedge their answers accordingly.

If you’re not failing, you’re not pushing your limits, and if you’re not pushing your limits, you’re not maximizing your potential.

Ray Dalio

2. Look for people who have not only had experience but have also failed in that experiences. Inversely, distrust anyone that doesn’t offer up those failures when discussing their experience. People who have not “failed” generally lack the wisdom of those who have but much much worse are those that hide or don’t acknowledge those failures because it means they don’t value failure as a method for learning. It means they have an immature concept of what failure is, and competence can never be found in immaturity.

Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Winners use it to upgrade their performance; losers use it as an excuse to fail.

Ken Blanchard

3. How does a candidate, consultant, or colleague respond when you push back on the assumptions they developed from their experience. Do they look for more details or spend time thoughtfully considering how your experience might be different.?Are they stubborn in their convictions and see all situations as black or white. Look for people who have strong opinions, loosely held, because wisdom comes from constant feedback and continuous improvement. There is no improvement without being open to feedback.

A prudent question is one half of wisdom.

Francis Bacon

4. Great questions are the best indicator of competence. The source of the biggest mistakes people have in their career are not usually due to having the wrong answers, but having the right answer to the wrong questions. Find people who ask thoughtful questions!3 Great questions are harder to fake, take more insight, and are a much better indicator of competence than great answers.

The four techniques above are not magic bullets but they can dramatically increase the likelihood of getting a competent hire instead of just an experienced hire. The techniques also help with existing talent. One of my favorite ways to evaluate long term potential is by looking at how quickly a given person can turn experience into wisdom. People who can do that quickly are the future rock stars of your company.

  1. This can be exceptionally difficult for organizations that are looking for capabilities outside of their existing strengths.  They can filter and hire for people with experience but it is very very difficult to evaluate their overall wisdom if you don’t have someone internally who can accurately and unbiasedly evaluate their competence. ↩︎
  2. A great indicator of whither someone is moving from experience to competence is if you see them pushing the boundaries of those experiences to test the validity in edge case scenarios.  They are isolating more and more of the variables that have an opportunity to effect the outcome… thus allowing them to make more accurate assumptions about future experiences. ↩︎
  3. Evaluating these questions can be a difficult ask for companies that don’t have someone capable of evaluating good questions. In such cases it is probably best to bring in an outside expert to help because it is easy for non-technical people to be snowballed by technical answers if they don’t have domain specific experience. ↩︎

The Vacuum Clap

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

–Saul Alinsky

Nature and politics abhor a vacuum.  The moment a newly formed vacuity opens the resulting space is filled with the first onrush of whatever commodity is directly adjacent.  If authority is missing from a power structure it will quickly be occupied by multiple players looking to occupy that power vacuum, almost always with intense and sudden conflict.  Why, after 12 centuries of relative safety, was Rome conquered by the the Goths, the Huns, and the Vandals all within 4 decades?  It was because of the sudden void created by the absence of Rome’s ability to project power.  I call this sudden destructive collision caused by unexpected power gap the vacuum clap.

The ramifications of these vacuum claps can ripple for a long long time after the initial cause.  How many of the current geo-polical problems are a direct result of the sudden “clap” that resulted from abdication of European imperialist influence.  Notice how the resulting fallout happens regardless of the justice or morality of the cause of the vacuum!  It doesn’t matter that imperialism legitimately HAD to end; there were going to be violent ramifications resulting from the sudden change for decades (and centuries) to come.

Regulation created your income disparity.  The removal of regulation created your financial crisis.

— Author Unknown

Where this comes to play most on the intra-national scale seems to be in the area of state regulatory policy.  The creation of laws (regardless if they are good or bad) create an artificial “scaffolding” around a pattern of behaviors.  Instead of behavior progressing natural based on mutual interaction (again, good or bad) the behavior is artificial.  This is exacerbated by incentives that may come into direct conflict with the intended behaviors creating black markets, legal opportunist, and artificial ancillary effects.  The spread of the car culture is as much a product of government profit regulation in the passenger rail market as it is the government construction of the interstate system.

So artificial vacuums created by regulation are a problematic, but then imagine the problems created by removing those controls.  When the “scaffolding” is kicked out, even if the scaffolding was an objective bad thing, the result is an almost certain crash.  In the normal ebb and flow of markets, a natural equilibrium eventually takes hold*  but removing bureaucracy always creates a vacuum that markets will suddenly (and often destructively) will try to fill.

This is one reason why even bad laws are difficult to remove.  When critics say that getting rid of regulation will cause havoc, they are generally correct.  Of course, most of the time the regulation is demonstrably bad and often even counter-productive to the intended purpose.**  This brings about the worst in government.  The endlessly expanding dregs of our failed attempts at law, never to be removed because the pain of pulling off the bandage is worse than the slow pain of infection.

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

–Oscar Wilde

How do we shorten the time it takes for a new equilibrium after the resulting void?  My gut reaction is that the better the feedback mechanism the faster a state of balance will occur.  On the macro level this can be exceedingly difficult.  Using the imperialism example from above, notice how feedback isn’t spread equally among all the constituents.  England was more concerned with the collapse of imperialism that its colonies were, but isn’t nearly as effected by the results of that debacle.

Ultimately the best solution is to never create such voids in the first place.  In the realm of intra-national regulation it is obvious to point out that our attempts at a solution are often worse than the original symptom,  especially in the long run.  In the area of international governments the way to preempt such voids is to limit the use of force on other peoples, countries, and nations.  Power never spent will not create a vacuum.***

Footnotes

*In actuality the ebb and flow always continue because nothing ever stays the same and markets are always trying to innovate.  Part of the problem with laws is that they never innovate.

** How many billions of tons of CO2 have been created by regulating ethanol production?

*** My favorite definition of injustice is “Injustice is the abuse of power; force used against the unwilling.  Using power or authority to take from others their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits of their love or their labor”

My Creed

Over the course of the last couple years of I have been putting more thought into some of the core beliefs I hold about things other than faith or family.  How do I see the world and how does such beliefs affect my decisions and opportunities.  Piece by piece I have been writing these down and although I am certainly NOT done, have decided it is time to actually “say” them out loud.

I believe in actions and distrust intentions.  Every man believes in the cause of his behavior even when that behavior brings about pain and suffering.  Those who created socialism believes they were bringing about an egalitarian utopia and inquisitors believed they were saving the souls of men.

Concentrated power is not rendered harmless by the good intentions of those who create it. –Milton Friedman

The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding. –Albert Camus

The logical corollary to my first belief is that I believe that the ends never justify the means.  Partly because, I believe that there is no ultimate good that springs magically from a “necessary” string of injustices and evil.  But also because we become what we do and our actions ultimately sculpt us into the object of our behavior.

…let a prince have the credit of conquering and holding his state, the means will always be considered honest, and he will be praised by everybody because the vulgar are always taken by what a thing seems to be and by what comes of it; and in the world there are only the vulgar, for the few find a place there only when the many have no ground to rest on.  –Niccolò Machiavelli

I believe those who desire to “throw away and start from scratch” dramatically underestimates the complexity of a given problem.  Real change happens through evolution over time, through trail, through error, and through the accumulated power of experience to reinforce decisions.  Throwing away history for no reason other than frustration with having to deal with it, most often causes one to repeat it.

It’s important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don’t even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don’t actually have “more experience”. You’re just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren’t in the original… –Joel Spolsky

I believe people are most truly defined by the parts of ourselves that we say NO to.  I don’t drink, I don’t borrow money, I almost never drive a car, and I won’t have sex until I am married, say more about a person (good or bad) than the 10,000 things everybody does or everybody wants to do. Saying yes implies we are like everyone else, that you capitulate to the will of society.  Saying no is self sacrifice and a dramatic statement of individuality.

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.  –Bernard M. Baruch

If then follows that I believe great acts take great sacrifice and the only sacrifice this is truly great is self sacrifice.  While it may sometimes be necessary to force others to sacrifice, there is never anything admirable about it.  No man should be held in esteem for giving something that he took from someone else.  Sacrifice is not sacrifice when forced upon.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. –Mahatma Gandhi

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day. –David Foster Wallace

I believe, and can categorically prove, that the free market is the greatest vehicle for eradicating poverty, hunger, and disease that has ever existed.  Nothing, no government program, no charity organization, no religious denomination has come anywhere close to the success that the free market and capitalism has at improving the corporeal lives of the human race.

Commerce [and] entrepreneurial capitalism take more people out of poverty than aid. We need Africa to become an economic powerhouse. –Bono

It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. –Adam Smith

This is how the world end

I have a family member who recently said to me that if I posted pictures of them on Facebook, they would stop speaking to me.  This, entirely understandable, concern stems from their conscious concern that personnel information collection by large companies has a tendency to be abused.  Once you have surrender your privacy it is nearly impossible to get back.

What made the conversation stand out to me wasn’t their “fear” of business; but that this particular family member is one that inherently trusts government to solve this (and many other) issues.  There seems to be a fundamental disconnect between the perceived danger from business and the real danger of government.

Coca-cola cannot force my soda consumption (or limit the size of my cup.)  Google cannot regulate which sites I am allowed to visit, or what the content of those sites can be.  Phillip-Morris is entirely unable to limit the extent of my free speech by defining who is, or is not, a “legitimate” reporter.  And while Facebook may want to use your personnel information to sell you crap, or profile you activities; it doesn’t have the ability levy punitive damages, listen in on any phone conversation you have ever had, or target you with a drone strike.

One’s personnel privacy should certainly be safeguarded, but a healthy fear of the abuse of capitalism should always be tempered with a real fear of the only institution that has the ability to use force against us.  An institution that has demonstrated time and time again that it abuses that force to the detriment of both our privacy and our liberty.

Random Excerpts from “Just Courage”

Some notes from the book “Just Courage: God’s Great Expedition for the Restless Christian” by Gary A. Haugen:

“The sin of injustice is defined in the Bible as the abuse of power – abusing power by taking from others the good things that God intended for them, namely, their life, liberty, dignity, or the fruits of their love or their labor.  In other words, when a stronger person abuses his or her power by taking from a weaker person what God alone has given the weaker person -…”

-Gary Haugen

“Those who oppress the poor insult their Maker”

-Proverbs 14:31 NRSV

In-justice is a particularly egregious evil because the sufferer (the weaker person who is being acted on) isn’t suffering because of a random unfairness, an uncontrollable act of nature or bad luck; but because of the very intentional abuse and oppression of a stronger person.

“(caring for the poor of Africa…) is not a matter of charity; it’s a matter of justice”

-Bono

“…we can give all manner of goods and services to the poor, but if we do not restrain the hands of the bullies from taking it away, we will be disappointed in the long-term outcome of our efforts.”

-Gary Haugen

Justice consists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and upholding it, wherever found, against the wrong.

-Theodore Roosevelt

Violence is just different. Violence is intentional. Violence is scary. And violence causes deep scars.

-Gary Haugen

Those who prey upon the poor are not brave. They only prey upon the poor when they think they can… Most fundamentally the predators (the instigators of injustice) are afraid of the truth.

-Gary Haugen

Justice is the aura of God. It is something every human understands, even from the time they are small children, but something that doesn’t exist as part of “the world.” In a universe that has absolutely no concept of fairness; every being on this planet, regardless of race, creed, or belief, screams out for justice. Those that pursue it are considered the greatest examples of mankind. Those who die for it are considered martyrs and saints. And those who stand in opposition to it will forever be judged on the wrong side of history.

“Ultimately we can choose to be safe or brave.  We cannot be both.”

-Gary Haugen

Favorite Axioms

From the book axiom by Bill Hybels:

  1. –Find Owners not Hirelings.
  2. –Build a Boiler Fund.
  3. –Vision Leaks.
  4. –There are Dangers in Incrementalism.
  5. –Institutionalize Key Values.
  6. –Get the Right People around the Table.
  7. –Know Who is Driving.
  8. –Speed of the Leader, Speed of the Team.
  9. –Deliver the Bad News First.
  10. –Leaders Call Fouls.
  11. –A Bias towards Action.
  12. –Sweat the Small Stuff
  13. –Find the Critic’s Kernel of Truth.
  14. –Always Debrief.
  15. –Find Mentors, make Mentors (Obi-Wan Kenobi Isn’t for Hire)
  16. –What Life are You Waiting for?
  17. –Read All You Can.
  18. –Lead Something.
  19. –Admit Mistakes, and Your Stock Goes Up.
  20. –Finish Well.

I probably need to make a small comment about each of these. Doing so will help me “flesh them out” for myself and clarify them for myself. Especially considering my view of these leadership ideas are not the same as Mr. Hybels.  Hopefully I will add to this post later.

End of an Era

Pat Buchanan has an article titled “The Party’s Over” on Human Events. It is the best summary of the current financial crisis, its root cause, and its long term consequences. I am re-posting it here in its entirety for reference sake.

The Crash of 2008, which is now wiping out trillions of dollars of our people’s wealth, is, like the Crash of 1929, likely to mark the end of one era and the onset of another.

The new era will see a more sober and much diminished America. The “Omnipower” and “Indispensable Nation” we heard about in all the hubris and braggadocio following our Cold War victory is history.

Seizing on the crisis, the left says we are witnessing the failure of market economics, a failure of conservatism.

This is nonsense. What we are witnessing is the collapse of Gordon Gecko (“Greed Is Good!”) capitalism. What we are witnessing is what happens to a prodigal nation that ignores history, and forgets and abandons the philosophy and principles that made it great.

A true conservative cherishes prudence and believes in fiscal responsibility, balanced budgets and a self-reliant republic. He believes in saving for retirement and a rainy day, in deferred gratification, in not buying on credit what you cannot afford, in living within your means.

Is that really what got Wall Street and us into this mess — that we followed too religiously the gospel of Robert Taft and Russell Kirk?

“Government must save us!” cries the left, as ever. Yet, who got us into this mess if not the government — the Fed with its easy money, Bush with his profligate spending, and Congress and the SEC by liberating Wall Street and failing to step in and stop the drunken orgy?

For years, we Americans have spent more than we earned. We save nothing. Credit card debt, consumer debt, auto debt, mortgage debt, corporate debt — all are at record levels. And with pensions and savings being wiped out, much of that debt will never be repaid.

Our standard of living is inevitably going to fall. For foreigners will not forever buy our bonds or lend us more money if they rightly fear that they will be paid back, if at all, in cheaper dollars.

We are going to have to learn to live again without our means.

The party’s over

Up through World War II, we followed the Hamiltonian idea that America must remain economically independent of the world in order to remain politically independent.

But this generation decided that was yesterday’s bromide and we must march bravely forward into a Global Economy, where we all depend on one another. American companies morphed into “global companies” and moved plants and factories to Mexico, Asia, China and India, and we began buying more cheaply from abroad what we used to make at home: shoes, clothes, bikes, cars, radios, TVs, planes, computers.

As the trade deficits began inexorably to rise to 6 percent of GDP, we began vast borrowing from abroad to continue buying from abroad.

At home, propelled by tax cuts, war in Iraq and an explosion in social spending, surpluses vanished and deficits reappeared and began to rise. The dollar began to sink, and gold began to soar.

Yet, still, the promises of the politicians come. Barack Obama will give us national health insurance and tax cuts for all but that 2 percent of the nation that already carries 50 percent of the federal income tax load.

John McCain is going to cut taxes, expand the military, move NATO into Georgia and Ukraine, confront Russia and force Iran to stop enriching uranium or “bomb, bomb, bomb,” with Joe Lieberman as wartime consigliere.

Who are we kidding?

What we are witnessing today is how empires end.

The Last Superpower is unable to defend its borders, protect its currency, win its wars or balance its budget. Medicare and Social Security are headed for the cliff with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars.

What we are witnessing today is nothing less than a Katrina-like failure of government, of our political class, and of democracy itself, casting a cloud over the viability and longevity of the system.

Notice who is managing the crisis. Not our elected leaders. Nancy Pelosi says she had nothing to do with it. Congress is paralyzed and heading home. President Bush is nowhere to be seen.

Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs and Ben Bernanke of the Fed chose to bail out Bear Sterns but let Lehman go under. They decided to nationalize Fannie and Freddie at a cost to taxpayers of hundreds of billions, putting the U.S. government behind $5 trillion in mortgages. They decided to buy AIG with $85 billion rather than see the insurance giant sink beneath the waves.

An unelected financial elite is now entrusted with the assignment of getting us out of a disaster into which an unelected financial elite plunged the nation. We are just spectators.

What the Greatest Generation handed down to us — the richest, most powerful, most self-sufficient republic in history, with the highest standard of living any nation had ever achieved — the baby boomers, oblivious and self-indulgent to the end, have frittered away.

Notes from Ted

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never stand for or against. Struggle between “for” and “against” is the minds worst disease.

–Sent-ts’an

Some quick notes from Jonathan Haidt’s talk to Ted on the “The real difference between liberals and conservatives“.

Liberals are high on the personality trait of “openness to experience” whereby they crave novelty, verity, and diversity. Those who are low in the trait like things that are familiar, safe, and dependable. There is a juxtaposition here because being “open” primarily focuses on new experience but can often be hostile to the familiar.

Foundations of morality:

      1. Harm/Care
      2. Fairness/Reciprocity
      3. In-group/Loyalty
      4. Authority/Respect
      5. Purity/Sanctity

Liberals, in general, have a two channel morality and reject in-group, authority, and purity as foundations of morality.  Social entropy, order starts to decay, can be steamed with some kind of punishment (religion may act as such a anti-entropy.)  Additionally advanced social organization, such as creating the great piramids or going to the moon, require the use of all give moral channels.

      • Liberals speak for the weak and oppressed; want change and justice, even at the expense of chaos.
      • Conservatives speak for institutions and traditions; want order even at cost to those at the bottom.

In summary it would seem our minds were designed to 1) build us into teams, 2) separate us from other teams, and 3) blind us to the truth (of our/others teams.)

And the truth…

I have been glued to Cato-at-liberty for the last couple days. Cato-at-liberty is the official blog for The Cato Institute, the definitive classical conservative think-tank. I have become so sick of both parties (Democons and Repulicrates), and their constant hypocrisy that I haven’t even been able to blog about them. Reading the posts on Cato-at-liberty has been like a breath of fresh air for me. While I may still catch the occational literary trash; I have basically given up on intelligent political discussion, from the any mainstream media source.

Here are some of the web resources I have been reading lately. They have NOT been dumb–down for your reading pleasure: