WITTGENSTEIN’S RULER, P2

A Nobel prize can tell us two things: how good is the recipient or how bad is the committee.

“Unless you have confidence in the ruler’s reliability, if you use a ruler to measure a table you may also be using the table to measure the ruler.” – @nntaleb
2/ I used to express Wittgenstein’s ruler as follows: the more the free parameters, the less you know what is being measured.

For example, last spring COVID mortality could have been informing us about how aggressive is the virus or how good is a country’s testing
3/ In addition, and this is the point of this new thread, it just dawned to me that Wittgenstein’s ruler is not just about the precision of the ruler but also about its choice.
4/ For example, centralization tends to result in the choice of metrics that, regardless of their precision, only measure some of the results that matter to the general population, resulting in effects such as “centralization is only efficient to the central observer”
5/ This because the central observer is the one that chooses the ruler, ie the metrics to measure.
6/ I used to intend “ruler’s reliability” as simply a matter of precision/variance; instead it’s also a matter of choice of the ruler and metrics used to conduct the measurement.

Do they reliably help estimating the purpose of the measurement, or do they estimate something else?
7/ I just wanted to highlight this second component of Wittgenstein’s ruler - we can use it even before the measurement is conducted, using the choice of the ruler to deduce properties of the measurer.

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More from @DellAnnaLuca

30 Jan
EGO

Those who put too much ego in their car do things that are good for their car (eg spending Saturdays afternoon washing it) rather than things which are good for them (eg hanging out with their friends and family).

We do what is good for what we invested our ego in.

1/4
2/ Those who put too much ego in their job stop doing things that are good for them and instead do things that are good for their job.

Those who put too much ego in their political party stop doing things that are good for them and instead do things that are good for their party
3/ Those who put too much ego into racial discrimination stop doing things that are good for them and instead do things that are good for racial discrimination.

notthebee.com/article/jim-cr…
Read 5 tweets
29 Jan
SLIPPERY SLOPES

When Twitter banned Trump, I wrote that even though I don't like Trump and thought that the world would be better off without him, I was also against its censorship for fear of a slippery slope.

3 weeks later, did it happen?

Yes. Examples & implications 👇

1/8
2/ After Twitter, FB banned him. Then, Google suspended Parler from its store, Apple did it too, and finally Amazon banned it from its infrastructure.
3/ Two comments:
– What looks inconsequential if one small company does it is very consequential if all major players do it.
– It started with banning a few bad apples, it ended up with banning full categories of users.

(the latter should give the chills; also see tweet #5)
Read 10 tweets
28 Jan
NEW BOOK! 🚨🚨🚨

Teams Are Adaptive Systems:
12 Principles For Effective Management

(thread)

luca-dellanna.com/teams
3/ Pre-order for this book started last July. Customers received via email a chapter every 2 weeks for six months. Now, you can buy it in eBook form.
Read 8 tweets
26 Jan
FRONT-LOADING CLARITY

A common scenario at the office:
– The manager sets an unclear task
– The employee does it, but not well enough
– Because of the lack of clarity, the employee thinks he did it well enough
– Now the manager faces two options, both bad:

(Thread 1/7)
2/ Either the manager accepts how the employee did the task (sending the message that subpar performance is okay and lowering standards across the team),

Or he tells the employee he didn't deliver on an unclear objective, pissing him off and/or demotivating him.
3/ Lack of clarity is a problem that:
– Always comes to bite you back
– And you will have to address it at some point, willingly or unwillingly

Better to acknowledge it and front-load clarity.
Read 9 tweets
25 Jan
I wanted to clarify the quote below,

"Over the short term, consequences that apply beyond the short-term do not matter. Over the long term, they do."

as I received a few questions regarding it. In particular, some said it's a platitude. It isn't.

1/5

2/ In the quoted thread, I made the example of a skier participating to a championship made of 10 races.
3/ In a single race, the consequences of him breaking his knee are "just" that he loses that race.

Conversely, in a championship, the consequences of him breaking his knee during a race is that he loses that race AND ALL FOLLOWING ONES (because he cannot participate to them).
Read 5 tweets
25 Jan
In school, if you partially complete a checklist, you get partial points

In life, there are checklists that give full points if partially completed and others that give no points

Much frustration comes from misunderstanding the kind of list you're dealing with

(examples below)
2/ Example #1: a checklist for authorship success could be:
– have a great idea
– write it down clearly
– promote it effectively

Only having a great idea is not sufficient. Worse, because of the lack of any success, you might learn the wrong lesson that it's a bad idea.
3/ Example #2: the checklist to write the perfect book has probably a hundred items on it. And yet, it's possible to achieve great success by only completing well a few.

But some might think that because their book doesn't check all the marks it isn't ready.
Read 4 tweets

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