Taylorism is a management philosophy based on using scientific optimization to maximize labor productivity and economic efficiency.
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@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus Pickering’s /The Mangle of Practice: Time, Agency, and Science/¹ is along similar lines, using the example of the bubble chamber (invented because Glaser wanted to do lab-top science, but ended up inventing a symbol of Big Science) and Hamilton’s quaternions (he was trying to solve a completely different problem).
¹ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/556449.The_Mangle_of_Practice
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@inthehands @fuzzychef @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus
1st, the cost of revising a text by an expert is less work than the cost of writing from scratch. Of course you should never just pass off LLM output without applying some expertise. Still revising the output saves you anywhere from 20-80% of the time.
2nd, you overestimate the importance of precision for most info worker tasks. Summarizations by definition leave out details - which ones are important is ALWAYS going to be debatable. -
@ForeverExpat
“the cost of revising a text by an expert is less work than the cost of writing from scratch”Heh, wow, that’s…preposterous. I think this discussion ends with us just parting ways here.
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@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus FYI: here’s my summary of what Pickering says about quaternions: http://www.exampler.com/old-blog/2004/02/13/index.html
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@marick
That sounds quite interesting. Thanks for the recommendation! -
@marick @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus
Nice writeup, lovely example! Brings this passage to mind:“Mathematicians enjoy thinking about the simplest possible things, and the simplest possible things are imaginary.”
“On the other hand, once you have made your choices…then your new creations do what they do, whether you like it or not. This is the amazing thing about making imaginary patterns: they talk back!”
https://worrydream.com/refs/Lockhart_2002_-_A_Mathematician's_Lament.pdf
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@inthehands @dalias @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus Well, given corporate performance recently across the industry, you CAN make a strong case for LLMs replacing CEOs.
(Mostly because the average CEO is a platinum-spoon baby who is utterly unqualified for the job.)
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@fuzzychef
It’s probably not a coincidence (but probably sample bias) that all the really excellent CEOs I’ve interacted with have run fairly small companies. -
Carl T. Bergstromreplied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
"The fundamental task of software development is not writing out the syntax that will execute a program. The task is to build a mental model of that complex system, make sense of it, and manage it over time."
YES!
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Jenniferplusplusreplied to Paul Cantrell last edited by
@inthehands @ct_bergstrom the worst part is how often those people are supposedly experienced practitioners of the job they do poorly understand
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@inthehands @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus Since you said that nice thing, may I present my sole academic sociology publication: “Agile Software Development: A Manglish Way of Working”¹, in a followup book collection: /The Mangle IN Practice/² (2009).
¹https://user.fm/files/v2-21dcabb6abbfd8ebc5fabfe1e6f8fa65/marick-truly-final-dammit.pdf
²https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-mangle-in-practice -
@marick @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus
“The Mangle of Practice” and its subsequent line of thought (including your essay) are all new to me. Thanks for the introduction! -
Adrian Segarreplied to Carl T. Bergstrom last edited by
@ct_bergstrom @inthehands @jenniferplusplus When I taught computer science from 1983-93 we called this approach "systems analysis", and taught students (as best we could) how to do it.
What happens these days?
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@ASegar @ct_bergstrom @jenniferplusplus
Well, if you’re a student in my department, it’s woven into the fabric from the start — and a little more so every year, any time I get a chance to lay hands on part of the curriculum.But the truth is that you never really truly absorb it until you’ve lived with it for a while out in the wild. I see our job as educators as being not to bypass the maturation that comes from experience, but to expedite it.