And I told her that no matter what the org chart said, my real bosses were a bunch of mice in cages and cells in a dish, and they didn’t know what the corporate goals were and they couldn’t be “Coached For Success”, the way that poster on the wall said.
This doesn’t really make sense. Just because the mice can’t be coached for success, aren’t aware of corporate goals, etc., it does not follow that they are one’s “real bosses”. Can the mice fire you? Can they give you a raise? Can they write you up for violations of corporate protocol? If you are having trouble with a coworker, can you appeal to the mice to resolve the issue? Do the mice, finally, decide what you work on? Your actual boss can take the mice away from you! Can the mice reassign you to a different boss?
There is, perhaps, a word missing from the English language. If Derek Lowe were speaking, instead of writing, he would put an exaggerated emphasis on the word real and native speakers of English would pick up on a special, metaphorical meaning for the word real in the phrase real boss. The idea is that there are hidden, behind the scenes connections more potent (more real?) than the overt connections.
There is a man in a suit, call him the actual boss, who issues orders. Perhaps one order is “run the toxicology tests”. The actual boss is the same as the real boss so far. Perhaps another order is “and show that the compound is safe.” Now power shifts to the mice. If the compound poisons the mice and they die, then the compound wasn’t safe. The actual boss has no power here. It is the mice who are the real boss. They have final say on whether the compound is safe, regardless of the orders that the actual boss gave.
Derek Lowe is giving us an offshoot of an aphorism by Francis Bacon: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” Again the point is lost if one refuses to find a poetic reading. Nature accepts no commands; there are no Harry-Potter style spells. Nature issues no commands; we do not hear and obey, we just obey. (So why is Bacon advising us to obey?)
Oh dear. It turns out I thought MoR referenced Francis Bacon, not Roger Bacon… Francis was just so much more available as a “great person from the history of rationality and science” that I must have kept misreading the name every time. I had to check Wikipedia just now to make sure I knew who Roger Bacon even was!
Thanks for correcting me, then.
It does seem a bit odd why Harry would attach such importance to Roger Bacon, compared with someone like Francis.
It might be the extra cool-factor of Roger being farther back in history (died
about 700 years before Harry Potter went to Hogwarts) than Sir Francis (about
360 years).
Roger Bacon lived in the 13th century and is credited as one of the
earliest advocates of the scientific method. Giving a scientist his
experimental diary is sort of like giving a writer the pen, not of
Shakespeare, but of someone who helped invent writing.
In the 19th century it was a widely held interpretation that Bacon was a modern experimental scientist who emerged before his time. [...] However, in the course of the 20th century, the philosophical understanding of the role of experiment in the sciences was substantially modified. [...] As a result, the picture of Bacon has changed. One recent study summarized that: “Bacon was not a modern, out of step with his age, or a harbinger of things to come, but a brilliant, combative, and somewhat eccentric schoolman of the thirteenth century, endeavoring to take advantage of the new learning just becoming available while remaining true to traditional notions… of the importance to be attached to philosophical knowledge”.[26] Bacon is thus seen as a leading, but not isolated, figure...
In other words, the things he did and wrote were always known correctly, but now it’s known that others said similar things too. He wasn’t a rationalist revolutionary or “ahead of his time”, he was a point in an uninterrupted progression towards the modern idea of science.
I’m afraid I just don’t buy it. The distinguishing feature of one’s boss is that this person has certain kinds of (formally recognized) power over you within your organization’s hierarchy. No one thinks that their boss has the power to rearrange physical reality at a whim.
My objection to the quote as a rationality quote is that it reads like this: “Because my job performance may be affected by the laws of physical reality, which my boss is powerless to alter, he (the boss) in fact has no power over me!” Which is silly. It’s a sort of sounds-like-wisdom that doesn’t actually have any interesting insight. By this logic, no one has any legal/economic/social power over anyone else, and no one is anyone’s boss, ever, because anything that anyone can do to anyone else is, in some way, limited by the laws of physics.
P.S. I think the Francis Bacon quote is either not relevant, or is equally vacuous (depending on how you interpret it). I don’t think Bacon is “advising” us to obey nature. That would be meaningless, because we are, in fact, physically incapable of not obeying nature. We can’t disobey nature — no matter how hard we try — so “advising” us to obey it is nonsense.
In a similar vein, saying that the mice have “the final say” on whether the compound is safe is nonsensical. The mice have no say whatsoever. The compound is either safe or not, regardless of the mice’s wishes or decisions. To say that the have “the final say” implies that if they wished, they might say differently.
In short, I think a “poetic reading” just misleads us into seeing nonexistent wisdom in vacuous formulations.
No one thinks that their boss has the power to rearrange physical reality at a whim.
It is a very common feature of bad bosses that they think they have the authority to order their underlings to rearrange physical reality. This seems to be exactly what’s going on in the original post.
it reads like this: “Because my job performance may be affected by the laws of physical reality, which my boss is powerless to alter, he (the boss) in fact has no power over me!”
The fact that the speaker is addressing his boss directly changes the meaning a lot. I’d read it as “No matter what official authority you have, if you order me to violate the laws of physics then the laws of physics are going to win.” Referring to the mice as his “real boss” is an attempt to explain why he’s constrained by the nature of reality to someone who spends a lot more time thinking about org charts than about the nature of reality.
The article is talking about a salary scheme in which a certain percentage of the salary was based on how performance matched against goals-so for a research guy such as Derek, his experimental results (his mice) were determining a part of his salary. No poetry required.
The distinguishing feature of one’s boss is that this person has certain kinds of (formally recognized) power over you within your organization’s hierarchy
You’re considering just the word “boss”. Consider the phrase “real boss”. Regardless of the meanings of the constituent words, the phrase itself can often be replaced with “the one with the real power”, or “the one who actually makes the decisions.” For example, “The king may have nominal power, but he’s really only a figurehead, his vizier is the real boss.”
Now, we still find something lacking in that the mice don’t actually make decisions, the people observing the mice do. However, if the people observing the mice care about doing good research, then decisions about what course of action to take in the future must take into account what happens with the mice. What happens with the mice provides evidence which forces the researchers to update their models, possibly changing the optimal course of action, or fail. The literal meaning “The mice provide evidence, forcing us to update our models, making us, in order to do our job correctly, change our decisions.” may be expressed metaphorically as “The mice make decisions on how to do our job correctly” or “The mice are the real boss.”
From the context of the article, in which he uses this as an argument for not coming up with certain specific goals before beginning research, this is likely what the author meant.
What happens with the mice provides evidence which forces the researchers to update their models, possibly changing the optimal course of action, or fail. The literal meaning “The mice provide evidence, forcing us to update our models, making us, in order to do our job correctly, change our decisions.” may be expressed metaphorically as “The mice make decisions on how to do our job correctly” or “The mice are the real boss.”
Well, except that the researchers could:
a) Ignore the evidence b) Fudge or outright falsify the evidence (horribly unethical, but it happens) c) Abandon the experiments and do something else etc.
and deciding to do any of these things is influenced heavily by what your boss does (i.e. what rules and incentives exist in your organization).
I do get the point made by wylram in the other subthread (communicating to your boss that one cannot change reality by managerial fiat), and it’s a good point, I just don’t find that it’s conveyed well by the original quote (or even the source article). The key issue here, for me, is that despite the fact that “the mice” (but really more like “the laws of reality”) are what determine the outcome of the experiment, not your boss, that does not mean that said laws of reality, much less said mice, in any way supplant your boss as the agent who is in control of your career advancement, position in the company, etc. (Incidentally, that is why the vizier / figurehead analogy does not hold.)
I read the original post. The mice are not giving anyone any raises. The mice are not capable of human-level cognition, and do not occupy positions of administrative power in the company. The mice are just mice.
Your actual, human boss decides whether to give you a raise, what you work on, etc. He or she might choose to implement a policy that ties your assigment and your compensation package, in some indirect way, to the behavior of the mice (although to be more accurate, to what you do with the mice), but to insist that it is therefore accurate to say that the mice are your bosses and are making the decisions that control your career, is absurd.
Derek Lowe
This doesn’t really make sense. Just because the mice can’t be coached for success, aren’t aware of corporate goals, etc., it does not follow that they are one’s “real bosses”. Can the mice fire you? Can they give you a raise? Can they write you up for violations of corporate protocol? If you are having trouble with a coworker, can you appeal to the mice to resolve the issue? Do the mice, finally, decide what you work on? Your actual boss can take the mice away from you! Can the mice reassign you to a different boss?
There is, perhaps, a word missing from the English language. If Derek Lowe were speaking, instead of writing, he would put an exaggerated emphasis on the word real and native speakers of English would pick up on a special, metaphorical meaning for the word real in the phrase real boss. The idea is that there are hidden, behind the scenes connections more potent (more real?) than the overt connections.
There is a man in a suit, call him the actual boss, who issues orders. Perhaps one order is “run the toxicology tests”. The actual boss is the same as the real boss so far. Perhaps another order is “and show that the compound is safe.” Now power shifts to the mice. If the compound poisons the mice and they die, then the compound wasn’t safe. The actual boss has no power here. It is the mice who are the real boss. They have final say on whether the compound is safe, regardless of the orders that the actual boss gave.
Derek Lowe is giving us an offshoot of an aphorism by Francis Bacon: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” Again the point is lost if one refuses to find a poetic reading. Nature accepts no commands; there are no Harry-Potter style spells. Nature issues no commands; we do not hear and obey, we just obey. (So why is Bacon advising us to obey?)
The answer lies in his diary...
ETA: No it doesn’t. DanArmak: scholarship fail.
That’s the other Bacon.
Do you mean the artist one? Can’t link but: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Bacon_(artist)
But Wikiquote says it was the right one...
It’s the diary of Roger Bacon.
(If I am totally confused and you were not making a Methods of Rationality reference like I thought you were, please ignore this entire subthread.)
Oh dear. It turns out I thought MoR referenced Francis Bacon, not Roger Bacon… Francis was just so much more available as a “great person from the history of rationality and science” that I must have kept misreading the name every time. I had to check Wikipedia just now to make sure I knew who Roger Bacon even was!
Thanks for correcting me, then.
It does seem a bit odd why Harry would attach such importance to Roger Bacon, compared with someone like Francis.
It might be the extra cool-factor of Roger being farther back in history (died about 700 years before Harry Potter went to Hogwarts) than Sir Francis (about 360 years).
Eliezer says (emphasis mine):
Yes, that makes sense. Although the WIkipedia article on Roger Bacon has a section called “Changing interpretations of Bacon” that says:
In other words, the things he did and wrote were always known correctly, but now it’s known that others said similar things too. He wasn’t a rationalist revolutionary or “ahead of his time”, he was a point in an uninterrupted progression towards the modern idea of science.
I’m afraid I just don’t buy it. The distinguishing feature of one’s boss is that this person has certain kinds of (formally recognized) power over you within your organization’s hierarchy. No one thinks that their boss has the power to rearrange physical reality at a whim.
My objection to the quote as a rationality quote is that it reads like this: “Because my job performance may be affected by the laws of physical reality, which my boss is powerless to alter, he (the boss) in fact has no power over me!” Which is silly. It’s a sort of sounds-like-wisdom that doesn’t actually have any interesting insight. By this logic, no one has any legal/economic/social power over anyone else, and no one is anyone’s boss, ever, because anything that anyone can do to anyone else is, in some way, limited by the laws of physics.
P.S. I think the Francis Bacon quote is either not relevant, or is equally vacuous (depending on how you interpret it). I don’t think Bacon is “advising” us to obey nature. That would be meaningless, because we are, in fact, physically incapable of not obeying nature. We can’t disobey nature — no matter how hard we try — so “advising” us to obey it is nonsense.
In a similar vein, saying that the mice have “the final say” on whether the compound is safe is nonsensical. The mice have no say whatsoever. The compound is either safe or not, regardless of the mice’s wishes or decisions. To say that the have “the final say” implies that if they wished, they might say differently.
In short, I think a “poetic reading” just misleads us into seeing nonexistent wisdom in vacuous formulations.
It is a very common feature of bad bosses that they think they have the authority to order their underlings to rearrange physical reality. This seems to be exactly what’s going on in the original post.
The fact that the speaker is addressing his boss directly changes the meaning a lot. I’d read it as “No matter what official authority you have, if you order me to violate the laws of physics then the laws of physics are going to win.” Referring to the mice as his “real boss” is an attempt to explain why he’s constrained by the nature of reality to someone who spends a lot more time thinking about org charts than about the nature of reality.
This makes sense.
The article is talking about a salary scheme in which a certain percentage of the salary was based on how performance matched against goals-so for a research guy such as Derek, his experimental results (his mice) were determining a part of his salary. No poetry required.
You’re considering just the word “boss”. Consider the phrase “real boss”. Regardless of the meanings of the constituent words, the phrase itself can often be replaced with “the one with the real power”, or “the one who actually makes the decisions.” For example, “The king may have nominal power, but he’s really only a figurehead, his vizier is the real boss.”
Now, we still find something lacking in that the mice don’t actually make decisions, the people observing the mice do. However, if the people observing the mice care about doing good research, then decisions about what course of action to take in the future must take into account what happens with the mice. What happens with the mice provides evidence which forces the researchers to update their models, possibly changing the optimal course of action, or fail. The literal meaning “The mice provide evidence, forcing us to update our models, making us, in order to do our job correctly, change our decisions.” may be expressed metaphorically as “The mice make decisions on how to do our job correctly” or “The mice are the real boss.”
From the context of the article, in which he uses this as an argument for not coming up with certain specific goals before beginning research, this is likely what the author meant.
Well, except that the researchers could:
a) Ignore the evidence
b) Fudge or outright falsify the evidence (horribly unethical, but it happens)
c) Abandon the experiments and do something else
etc.
and deciding to do any of these things is influenced heavily by what your boss does (i.e. what rules and incentives exist in your organization).
I do get the point made by wylram in the other subthread (communicating to your boss that one cannot change reality by managerial fiat), and it’s a good point, I just don’t find that it’s conveyed well by the original quote (or even the source article). The key issue here, for me, is that despite the fact that “the mice” (but really more like “the laws of reality”) are what determine the outcome of the experiment, not your boss, that does not mean that said laws of reality, much less said mice, in any way supplant your boss as the agent who is in control of your career advancement, position in the company, etc. (Incidentally, that is why the vizier / figurehead analogy does not hold.)
Yes, and yes. This is spelled out in the original post.
I read the original post. The mice are not giving anyone any raises. The mice are not capable of human-level cognition, and do not occupy positions of administrative power in the company. The mice are just mice.
Your actual, human boss decides whether to give you a raise, what you work on, etc. He or she might choose to implement a policy that ties your assigment and your compensation package, in some indirect way, to the behavior of the mice (although to be more accurate, to what you do with the mice), but to insist that it is therefore accurate to say that the mice are your bosses and are making the decisions that control your career, is absurd.