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’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.)