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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 19, 2014 - 01:25pm PT
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Your way over your head on this one, trust me. :)
well, nice you were a technician... I used to design computers and high bandwidth data acquisition systems for high energy physics experiments, and taught classes on electronic design for physicists...
but I can see how it could be over my head. maybe I forgot it all...
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 19, 2014 - 01:25pm PT
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we might not just be a pimple on the ass of the universe, that pimple on our ass might actually be an apt Swiftian metaphor...
isn't that a quote from the movie Animal House?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 19, 2014 - 01:58pm PT
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from the nytimes link,
Perhaps, he suggests, the certain kinds of bacteria that thrive on chocolate are coaxing us to feed them.
The implications of this are HUGE, and they make sense.
my daughters whole class are hooked on this new snackfood called Takki's. i'd even say addicted. i can't swallow one, they are disgusting!
It would behoove food company's to know of "addictive ingredients"! It's true that they already use some, like MSG.
it would be a better world if we could come up with a anti-nicotine and anti -alcohol bacteria! Do away with those addictions, PLEASE!!
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 19, 2014 - 02:11pm PT
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"Thinking is so useful that we are probably wired to do it continuously. Unfortunately, much of what we think about makes us miserable."
More to the truth, we are hardwired to learn! We are learning machines!
When we're open to learn is when we're the most happiest.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 19, 2014 - 02:15pm PT
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well, nice you were a technician...
This is hilarious, lol!
I used to design computers and high bandwidth data acquisition systems for high energy physics experiments, and taught classes on electronic design for physicists...
Well then, you should know where I'm coming from, lol! Why would you choose to quibble over I=E/R in a post concerning simple scientific truths?
I suppose for the same reason you quibble over causality or causation. Or scientific "truths".
Don't get me wrong, there's a place for quibbling. One of my favorite expressions is, "The Devil's in the details." But you sometimes seem to do it in the weirdest of places (e.g., out of context) is all.
taught classes on electronic design
Okay, I'll call. Imagine a simple circuit, three components is all apart from the wiring. We have a six volt dc source supplying current to a resistor in series with and LED (your non-ohmic pn device!). Let's say the function of this simple circuit is just to test drive the LED. So far so good? Now the voltage drop across the 200 ohm resistor is 4 volts. What's going on across and through the LED?
Don't quibble with ground loops or resistance in the wiring or high energy physics equations here, just tell me in practical terms and language what characterizes the LED in the ON state?
If you're game.
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 19, 2014 - 02:22pm PT
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Management types produce nothing.
---
This assumes that only the component parts of an operation are real and valuable - a spectacular piece of blarney that has occasioned some of the greatest blunders imaginable since without an executive agency keeping track of things and making decisions and course corrections, the airplane is flying blind.
Case in point: the situation in my adopted home of Venezuela. Former president General Hugo Chavez nationalized the power company and went through the executive staff and asked everyone, basically, what they produced. Strategic planners where sh#t-canned on the spot because they clearly didn't make or produce anything at all. The were, in Chavez's mind, so many haut bourgeoisie fakers, scamming the proletariat who as we all know, "produce" all the goods.
Couple years later, the real workers built a huge power plant in Cumana, but when it came time to hook it up to the power grid, there were no towers built or cables strung because that was not the job of those producing the power plant, and the strategic planners who normally oversaw and managed those operations had all been fired.
When we work off a strictly mechanical model, a model that supposedly directs itself, sans executive (sentient) oversight, we eventually start floundering. Simple as that.
JL
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 19, 2014 - 03:14pm PT
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No one is arguing that management, per se, is completely useless. Just that ML is a little full of himself thinking that they're somehow indispensable. The fact is, most small businesses do damn well without them, and today's unemployment lines have managers outnumbering engineers 100 to 1, if not more. There's a reason for that.
----
I think that anyone married to a reductionistic, bottom-up view of reality is bound to believe that the more toward the bottom we go, the more "real" and indispensable we get. Imagine applying this model to the military. Since the Generals don't do any of the real fighting, we can dump them straight off. And then all the way down the line to the genuine ranks of privates and PFCs, who do all the heavy lifting. We'll just let them run things.
Conversely, socialism is a political and economic structure that tries to place all currency on the "workers," but in actual practice, every state agency invariably ends up ridiculously top heavy with the vast amount of people only acting like they are working. For example, the old oil and gas operations in Venezuela used to be run by X amount of people costing X amount of dollars. Now they employ X times 3 people, work at only half the efficiency, and at five times the cost.
What is required is a balanced attack. Too much top end and you become profligate and inefficient. Too little low end and the whole thing gets chaotic and disorganized and can't course correct.
JL
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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Aug 19, 2014 - 04:11pm PT
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I would agree that the orthodox managerial model, broadly defined, is rapidly becoming a flagrant anachronism , be it government or business or organizations in general. The clearest and obvious exception is in the conduct of war by the military. Yet even with war there are notorious examples of them more often being fought , especially since WW2, in atrociously inept ways ,thoroughly underscoring the failure of strictly managerial approaches to its proper execution . War in general is pretty simple, sort of like boxing : the restrictions of which is to obey a few fundamental rules but otherwise the object is to beat the holy crap out of the other guy ---or don't get in the ring at all.
Managers are outside of the ring. They derive there raison d'être when systems become so complex --- like war--- that a "broad picture" approach becomes inclusively mandatory. This is fine and usually works quite well only up to a certain level--- beyond which the "managers" are so outside of the ring that they lose all sense of causative reality. An egregious example of this negative principle are wars fought by politicians --- literally and figuratively thousands of miles from the battlefield.
The reason I used the word "anachronism" in the above is to draw attention to the fact that technology has produced a world in which information has been "liberated" and decentralized.
The "broad picture" can usually now be discerned by everyone in an organization, once they are given free access to relevant information. Part of the reason why exclusively rigid hierarchical systems flourished in bygone times is attributable to the centralized hoarding of information.
I'm not suggesting here that management per se is now dispensable --- only that it is rapidly transforming. The old model is outside of the boxing ring and has become passé. Those still espousing it have given up the fight. An obvious symptom of their disaffection takes the form of a bitter rejection of the outside world for not seeing what brilliant managers they really are.They are down and out for the count.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Aug 19, 2014 - 05:48pm PT
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Unfortunately, academia has not signed on to the new management model. I would say we are where Detroit was in the 1970's. College presidents make hundreds of thousands of dollars and every year more layers of middle managers are added, yet the people who actually produce, the instructors and researchers, make a pittance and have less and less say in education. Tuition goes up and up but mostly to management salaries.
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MH2
climber
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Aug 19, 2014 - 06:33pm PT
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Waraja Ngarlu Wanduna
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MikeL
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Aug 19, 2014 - 08:22pm PT
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Ed: . . . where "tit-for-tat" is the winning longterm strategy.
It has been the most effective "proven strategy" that has been researched.
. . . human economics is really just a subfield of ecology, and ecology is all about the relationship of an organism with the environment, . . . .
Yikes! There will be legions of economists who will march on your home, Ed, if they only knew where you lived.
Your characterization suits at a general level. On a more specifically detailed level, it ignores all sort of other things that economists like talking about . . . where market mechanisms don't or can't work. Yours might be an open-systems approach in a world where there are only scarce resources. But . . . . People can own those scarce resources outright and hence control them, and that can lead to non-efficient outcomes that become stabilized and enduring.
Resource allocation has tended to be economists' main concern, but today those of us who believe in the power of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation might argue that being "resourceful" is even more powerful. The extent to which a person thinks there is "an ecology," "a species," "an environment" that is concrete and well-defined, the less that person can create something new and exciting.
The idea that all things important are "discoverable" or "findable" is limiting.
(Not you, Ed.)
FM: . . . a product designer, or engineer, or even developer . . . .
These are what I would call technicians, and I've worked as one of them, I've managed them as people, and I've led them as a project manager. Their idea of a perfect job is a room with four walls and no door . . . just a little slit where paper, code, and requirements could be shuttled. No people contact, please.
A manager or leader is anyone who is responsible for and to other people to get something done, and does so *through people*, by the very ability to support them so that they can get things done. You may be thinking of some bad experiences that you've had in organizations. Perhaps you've never worked or been a part of an organization that worked.
Those "who can do without any management" can only get the most primitive and rudimentary objectives achieved. The very nature of organization at any sort of sophistication is organization can enable specialists to work with one another--specialists who can hardly talk to one another due to domain-specific knowledge and language. Coordinators, project managers, people managers, leaders, integrators, are all indispensable in modern organization. Perhaps you'd like to return to the days of cottage industries (which is fine), but they could never build modern dams, aircraft, automobiles, all sorts of medical equipment, high rise buildings, etc.
If your argument is that there are many managers and leaders who don't pull their weight or are paid too much, then sure, I'll agree. That same comment can be made across the board. What matters, we have been told, is what gets done; what gets done is what gets measured; what gets measured tends to be a management responsibility.
Today's more interesting management models have inverted the organizational chart, turned it into a distributed expertise model without a center, and changed management from the Russian Doll model to one that stipulated different KINDS of managerial responsibilities depending upon what level.
Look, management and leadership are complex issues, and they are discussed across so many disciplines that I could hardly list them. I think I know most of them.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 19, 2014 - 09:03pm PT
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Concerning automata and free will...
I don't fancy the word "compatibilist" so I don't identify with it; instead I recognize that there are different varieties of "free will" depending on context and as language goes, some I accept, some I reject. I think in the future these different varieties / concepts of free will be clearer to people. At least we can hope.
Concerning "urge for retribution," sorry EdH, no science or hard work of doing science on my part on this subject - maybe in my next life if I'm lucky enough to come back an evolutionary psychologist or social scientist and can remember this thread.
Then again, I still have my own opinions or judgments, hopefully science informed and not too biased - and certainly not theistic in any way, lol - on so-called free will, its relationship to accountability or responsibility and also on "urge for retribution" and how understanding of our nature in terms of genetics and enviro might mollify it.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 19, 2014 - 09:29pm PT
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Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent.[1] Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics.wiki
i can get along with the word Compatibilism. But Compatibilist, i'm with you FRuity!
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jgill
Boulder climber
Colorado
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Aug 19, 2014 - 10:04pm PT
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Their idea of a perfect job is a room with four walls and no door . . . just a little slit where paper, code, and requirements could be shuttled. No people contact, please (MikeL)
This leaves me speechless in its arrogant denigration of scientists and technicians. But sully, who despises the same social group, would probably agree with you.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 19, 2014 - 11:07pm PT
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with a 4V drop across the resistor there is 20 mA of current flowing in your circuit...
V = I R
so I = 4V/200 Ohms = 0.02 A = 20 mA
the LED is glowing, assuming it's a red LED and assuming the diode is forward biased, which is indicated in your example by voltage drop across the resistor.
What if you reverse bias the diode? is is ohmic?
What's the voltage drop across the resistor?
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Aug 20, 2014 - 12:03am PT
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^What if the light is Blue?
Would it matter if the test were done in the heat of Joshua Tree compared to the cold of Antarctica? Do LED's slow down with heat like incandescent?
And what's the deal with flourescent light, how come they haven't yet linked it to somekind of brain tumor? Sure gives me a headache
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 20, 2014 - 06:54am PT
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with a 4V drop across the resistor there is 20 mA of current flowing in your circuit...
So far so good. Now what's (a) the voltage drop and (b) resistance across the diode?
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Aug 20, 2014 - 09:05am PT
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really?
the voltage drop is 2 volts
there is 20 mA flowing, at that operating point the effective impedance is 2V/20mA = 100 Ohms
but the relationship doesn't make it an "Ohmic device" the I-V curve is not a simple line, which is the definition of "ohmic device."
what's the effective impedance of the diode when it is reversed biased with a voltage greater than the breakdown voltage?
if your point is that impedance can be defined as "R = V/I" you should say so... but to claim that is "Ohm's Law" is a misconception on your part.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Aug 20, 2014 - 09:33am PT
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really?
Yeah, really. It's too bad such baby steps had to be taken for such a simple and silly thing. But I wanted to constrain your CLEAR proclivity to quibble when it's not necessary. Even in this latest post, you introduce details that aren't necessary (relevant); I can tell (yes, because I know the subject extremely well) you're looking for an out (to duck or dodge); so unfortunate when at the start regarding scientific "truths," it was never necessary in the first place to quibble (to draw textbook distinction between Ohm's Law and I=E/R which good engineers in their labs, nine times out of ten, don't do). And it was quibbling because I only pointed out that the relation is I=E/R as opposed to some other (e.g, I=EE/R or I=E/RR). Always being a contrarian isn't always a great thing.
But you're correct in your latest post: The diode presents with a resistance (in this case, aka impedance) of 100 ohms according to R=V/I. Whether it's ohmic or nonohmic is irrelevant here.
To be clear, #1: FWIW... 20 engineers (good ones) or 200 engineers (good ones, e.g. Woz) in a lab re 999/1000 circuit types would call R=V/I "Ohm's Law" and there wouldn't be controversy (i.e., quibbling) about it.
To be clear, #2: I=V/R (cf: textbook "Ohm's Law") applies to all ohmic and pn devices (e.g., diode).
Another scientific "truth" is that a heavy object and a light object fall at the same rate. (cf: an object falls proportional to the square of its weight: falsity) Had I known better, I would've used this example - or any of ten thousand others - instead of "Ohm's Law." Live and learn. ;)
Just a thought: maybe you're spending too much time sparring with the likes of MikeL and Largo. Or those blowhards over on the climate thread? There's a place for rhetoric, ducking and dodging, playing the contrarian, never admitting an error or misunderstanding, quibbling, taking sides, etc.. But this isn't all places. Just a reminder. Have a good one.
For ref:
http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1593650&msg=2442192#msg2442192
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