People are fragile.
I am a giant.
I used to work in an office and I was paid a professional wage. Well, maybe a lot more than a professional wage. I felt it was important to set a precedent for hard work. So when I need to walk somewhere, I walked at a brisk pace. I thought of it as a professional pace.
Once upon a time, there was a door and it had a magnetic security lock on it. A steel plated door filled with a window with wire in the glass. I had passed through this door hundreds of times and was used to the timing of waving the badge and the door opening. One day it didn't open. Oops. It took a couple of days, but they fixed the door. Sorry.
Another day I came around the corner and another guy was also using a "professional pace" going the other way. Isaac Newton's lessons played out as expected. I was slowed and he was on the ground. Oops. Sorry.
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But I really want to talk about the other kind of fragile.
I was meeting with the IT manager about ground systems for some space craft. There will be about 25 to 30 extremely large computers, each doing different things. We need to put diagnostics software on each one and today I am designing the architecture of all diagnostics. I actually wrote a bit of an article about it
here. At the moment, I am saying that I need to ping each of these computers every two seconds. The ping is extremely fast and will probably take less than 10 milliseconds to process for every ping.
This woman, a very lovely and kind person ... the manager of the IT department which will be in charge of all of these computers and keeping them all running properly after the rocket has launched ... is telling me that no one computer can keep up with that much demand: every two seconds to have a request and the entire response is "ok". These are massive computers with massive processors that run so hot that the whole room will need to be cooled to keep all this equipment from getting too hot.
I explained that such a computer
should be able to process thousands of pings per second, and we are talking about one computer needing to process one ping every two seconds.
She explained that she had had a long meeting with her team about this very thing and they insist that none of the computers can possibly handle the load of one ping every two seconds.
I explain that if that is so then we need to reject these computers and get computers that can manage not only this load, but all of the other diagnostics that will be running in parallel with the primary function of each computer.
There is a bit of a pause.
She begins to cry.
I give her a moment.
I realize she is not fit to work in her department let alone manage it. It is possible that her team is
fucking with her and loaded her up with bullshit for her upcoming meeting with "the grim reaper" (I learned that this is, apparently, me). But this is too much - she should have some idea that a ping is a tiny spec of function and massive computers should be able to handle thousands per second and barely notice it.
I am a bull in a china shop. I am a bulldozer in a crowd of people. I once saw something where superman says "I live in a world made of thin
cardboard being careful to not knock things over."
I have met thousands of people that when they end up in a situation like this (in my shoes) they say "I am not a squealer." or "I am not a narc." Or, "It isn't my job to make sure others are doing their job." I suppose that is entirely the case with structured management, which is miserable to be part of. But this company has a more organic management style, which, I think, makes the whole company more malleable and have a stronger forward velocity. I think a professional is getting paid to move the interests of the company forward. And, I think that a large part of my overpaid job is to set a precedent for professionalism.
In the past I have visited with this woman many times. A really nice person. She is crying because she knows she has been found out: she really doesn't know what she is doing - and she is not qualified for the position she holds. To make matters worse, the people in her department set her up.
Before this point in time, i have possibly seen something like this about a thousand times. At this particular company, I have already experienced it about 50 times. Some people cry. Some people get angry. Usually they say all sorts of crazy shit - because that saved their job before. About half the time they try to get me fired before they are fired. I am very callous to it all anymore.
When I was younger and this sort of thing happened, I wanted to find a way to fix all things. Surely there is a path so everybody can be happy? It really hurt that these people would unleash all sorts of awfulness in my general direction because they have been discovered. I was young, so I would pay dearly for just knowing about their secret. And when i was older, it seemed that this sort of behavior around me was expected. It was sorta my primary function.
People are so very, very .... human.
A really nice person is crying in front of me. I feel nothing. I am now thinking about all of the possible paths she might lose her shit and how to mitigate that.
From the perspective of somebody who has landed a job with a bullshit resume: I am a monster that is hunting them.
From the perspective of somebody who has landed a job because they are qualified: I am a hero that does the ugly work that they did not have the courage to do themselves.
A really nice person is crying in front of me. She is about to lose her job. A really nice job. I do not comfort her. I do not add salt to the wound. I sit quietly and wait. Nobody else needs to know. Let her have her cry. Maybe when she is done crying she will go to her office and pack. Maybe when she is done crying she will try to physically attack me. But I'm not too worried because I'm a giant.
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I have had several people tell me that they have listened to all of my podcasts twice, and all of my podcasts with helen atthowe four times.
I like recording podcasts with helen. She is my teacher and she still knows far more than i do. And, at the same time, it would seem that there are things I know that she doesn't know. We share with each other and we end up bickering. Respecfully. I am not sure how, but it works.
Rather than being a bull that is constantly in a china shop, I am out in nature and locking horns with another bull, using all my strength. This exercise is a powerful growth
experience for me and when the podcast ends, we both feel like we accomplished something good.
She was here a couple of days ago. There were a lot of people around being especially fragile and it was good to lock horns with helen for a bit. I already miss her. As i returned to the fragile people, I thought that these interactions were a bit like "playing bumper cars with bulldozers". It would not be good for nice people to wander into the arena.
Ernie and Erica are here for the
PDC. I make a lot of podcasts with them too. And again, "playing bumper cars with bulldozers." I don't hold back. They don't hold back. We are not fragile and we have some serious shit to work through.
One time all three of us were at a
rocket mass heater workshop. Some dumbfuck loudly proclaimed that when you build a
rocket mass heater in a
greenhouse, you should not route the exhaust outside, but keep it inside. His reasoning was that plants like humidity and
carbon dioxide. The exaust of a
rocket mass heater is almost purely steam and CO2. Ernie, Erica and I spent an hour explaining to this fool why this is a terrible idea. The fool exploded and used the word "science" a lot. Maybe a few sprinkles of "scientifically proven". After an hour, he made it plain that all three of us were dumbfucks and he was brilliant and the conversation was over. He left. And there were a few people in the group that weren't sure what to think, and a few people that thought that the guy was onto something brilliant.
I felt like the three of us shut off bulldozer mode and tried to guide a very fragile person that kept throwing rocks at us. I suppose from his perspective, he was the bulldozer and we were three fragile people throwing rocks at him.
Dozens of times every day this mission is "make the best of it." Ernie, Erica and I recorded a podcast the following morning to spell out, in great detail why this is a terrible idea. Thousands of people have listened to it. I suspect that that guy conducted his lethal experiment and is now dead - so his message went no further.
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In
this thread I wrote that all of human history and 90% of psychology can fit into one sentence:
Most people NEED to hear their own opinion from all other people and are frustrated that they don't have the might to make it "right."
If you write anything in such a way that it can be read by anybody, and anybody can comment, then those people will feel the need to hear their opinion come out of your pie hole. It doesn't matter if they are right or wrong. They feel that need. And the bigger audience you have, the more important it is to them. And with a bigger audience, there will be more of them that suffer from this need. And the messages will be all different, so there is no possible way to comply.
And they are so fragile.
If you fire up the bulldozer mode, they will explore "the might to make it 'right.'".
Therefore, the question is: are you stirring the pot of psychology with a few, or are you about to make history?