>I'm certainly not idolizing Prof. Ackhoff, I hadn't even heard about him before this post. I simply engaged critically with what I was reading, meaning I took a look at the primary source that this article was based upon and looked at the academic and historic context. I think this is the minimum one should do before engaging in snarky rants like yours: Try to understand the thing that triggered you.
The article itself is incorrect. There's no point in digging deeper if the article itself has logical flaws.
>I wasn't appealing to his authority, I was simply pointing out how a little humility goes a long way if one is genuinely interested in understanding. You started your post with two rhetorical questions that weren't questions at all, you already had made up your mind. You can't fix that by evoking a nicely branded "logical fallacy" (appealing to authority).
So basically you're saying I'm right and you're wrong but I'm not humble.
>I didn't say anything of the sorts. I simply said that some ideas become so common place that we forget that they also had an origin, and that we certainly were not it. I don't know if this is true, but your usage of "bottleneck" definitely strikes me as an outgrowth of the intellectual tradition criticized by you.
You're mistaken. I am not discounting intuition. I am not advocating for a purely logical and scientific description of the world. Such an outlook can only take you so far as there are limits to what can be observed scientifically and it just takes too much effort to describe everything with mathematical rigor.
Where this article falls short is that it's too vague and too obvious and also logically flawed. Additionally systems is covered by rigorous theory already. You need to know when to deploy science, logic or intuition. Systems is not a subject to deploy pure intuition, the meaning of life is. For a topic in this context (a blog) you need a little bit of intuition and more logic to fully flesh out a more axiomatic definition. Additionally you can't have logical flaws ever. This article fails on all those counts.
>He is simply saying that a framework for improvement that is organized around local improvement (local measurement, local interventions) will lead to global failures. Examples for this principle are myriad, the book The Goal/Theory of Constraints comes to mind which is arguably one of the most influential books around bottlenecks. Why you would call that thesis trash, just because the word "bottleneck" was not used is beyond me.
And what he is saying is wrong. If the only thing that can be improved is local than a framework for local improvement will not lead to global failure. Not every system is so interdependent that all modules are equal. Some systems are ruled by one module with tertiary modules having negligible effects.
>Namely you called it "not a good way to think ''. I wouldn't even call the basis of knowing that is used in the talk "intuition". It's a collection of heuristics derived from the experiential knowledge of somebody who practiced his craft of optimizing systems in many fields spanning multiple decades, elaborating his thinking over and over in a huge body of work.
>I would love to hear your definition of "science", because I for my part have found that most intellectual self-aware avoid this kind of "Referral to Science!" (as in "I fucking love Science!").
I am calling his "systems thinking" not a good way to think and his argument for it used too much intuition with logical flaws. I never said intuition is bad. I'm saying you need to know when to use your intuition and to what degree. Anytime a logical flaw is found in your intuition, logic wins everytime which is part of what's going on here.
The meaning of life is a topic that's good for 100% intuition. Systems in the context of a blog needs some intuition and a bit more logical rigor.
As for the definition of science I'm not here to argue about the canonical definition. I have an idea I was trying to convey and science was the best word for the idea. What I mean by Science is that it is the assumption that observed events can be modelled with the axioms of probability, under this assumption observed data points can be used to establish correlations and causations to certain degrees but nothing can ever be proven. Basically using statistical data as opposed to induction or intuition to argue your points.
If you have a different definition, good for you. I don't care. I'm not talking about your definition, I'm talking about mine, this is my point.
> Knowing python isn't impressive AT ALL.
>"Woosh" would be the right response to that I guess.
It's called being humble. You asked more of it from me. I gave it to you. Guess what you just did. You took a shit on my face for being humble. What does that make you? Humble? I don't think so.
>My point was not to argue against your point. You didn't really have a point, except maybe "This article is mumbo jumbo". My point was to show you how easy it is to take a gut reaction and lazily deride something for the sake of self-elevation, while clearly displaying a total lack of critical engagement with the source material. This is literally the cancer of online communities.
Self elevation? Are you insane? This article is pure liquid BS. That's my entire motivation. Critical engagement? You can't even critically engage a single one of my arguments, you've resorted to attacking my character.
>Sorry there is so much dumbness in that one paragraph that I have to go over it in detail and feed the troll.
Did you just call me dumb? You need to check yourself right now. This is against the rules.
>Let's use the definition of the one who named this platform: "Among programmers it means a good programmer." "It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack."
>So a hacker is somebody who is very good at his craft and can either beat a system or can deal with it in non-formal "ugly" ways. So the essence of a hacker is non-scientific and very much "look-at-the-system-poke-it-and-see-what-happens", which is the only way to really deal with systems successfully, hence "systems thinking".
Who cares man. You're arguing semantics here. All of this is destroyed by a single logical flaw. I'm never against intuition, intuition is useful, but if your intuition has logical flaws or evidence against it, you're a goner plain and simple.
The audience for this site is the programmer not the business man like your original claim. The flawed explanation for systems in the blog isn't up to par. Nobody cares for your logical aerobatics here, you're misapplying axiomatic logic to a definition so broad that intuition would serve you better here.
>Exactly my point. You can't just take an article, make no effort and just piss all over it. Well you can, but it makes you look mean, insecure, lazy and reinforces the stereotypes people have about mean and insecure programmers.
I'm not pissing all over something. I'm cleaning up piss.
The article itself is incorrect. There's no point in digging deeper if the article itself has logical flaws.
>I wasn't appealing to his authority, I was simply pointing out how a little humility goes a long way if one is genuinely interested in understanding. You started your post with two rhetorical questions that weren't questions at all, you already had made up your mind. You can't fix that by evoking a nicely branded "logical fallacy" (appealing to authority).
So basically you're saying I'm right and you're wrong but I'm not humble.
>I didn't say anything of the sorts. I simply said that some ideas become so common place that we forget that they also had an origin, and that we certainly were not it. I don't know if this is true, but your usage of "bottleneck" definitely strikes me as an outgrowth of the intellectual tradition criticized by you.
You're mistaken. I am not discounting intuition. I am not advocating for a purely logical and scientific description of the world. Such an outlook can only take you so far as there are limits to what can be observed scientifically and it just takes too much effort to describe everything with mathematical rigor.
Where this article falls short is that it's too vague and too obvious and also logically flawed. Additionally systems is covered by rigorous theory already. You need to know when to deploy science, logic or intuition. Systems is not a subject to deploy pure intuition, the meaning of life is. For a topic in this context (a blog) you need a little bit of intuition and more logic to fully flesh out a more axiomatic definition. Additionally you can't have logical flaws ever. This article fails on all those counts.
>He is simply saying that a framework for improvement that is organized around local improvement (local measurement, local interventions) will lead to global failures. Examples for this principle are myriad, the book The Goal/Theory of Constraints comes to mind which is arguably one of the most influential books around bottlenecks. Why you would call that thesis trash, just because the word "bottleneck" was not used is beyond me.
And what he is saying is wrong. If the only thing that can be improved is local than a framework for local improvement will not lead to global failure. Not every system is so interdependent that all modules are equal. Some systems are ruled by one module with tertiary modules having negligible effects.
>Namely you called it "not a good way to think ''. I wouldn't even call the basis of knowing that is used in the talk "intuition". It's a collection of heuristics derived from the experiential knowledge of somebody who practiced his craft of optimizing systems in many fields spanning multiple decades, elaborating his thinking over and over in a huge body of work.
>I would love to hear your definition of "science", because I for my part have found that most intellectual self-aware avoid this kind of "Referral to Science!" (as in "I fucking love Science!").
I am calling his "systems thinking" not a good way to think and his argument for it used too much intuition with logical flaws. I never said intuition is bad. I'm saying you need to know when to use your intuition and to what degree. Anytime a logical flaw is found in your intuition, logic wins everytime which is part of what's going on here.
The meaning of life is a topic that's good for 100% intuition. Systems in the context of a blog needs some intuition and a bit more logical rigor.
As for the definition of science I'm not here to argue about the canonical definition. I have an idea I was trying to convey and science was the best word for the idea. What I mean by Science is that it is the assumption that observed events can be modelled with the axioms of probability, under this assumption observed data points can be used to establish correlations and causations to certain degrees but nothing can ever be proven. Basically using statistical data as opposed to induction or intuition to argue your points.
If you have a different definition, good for you. I don't care. I'm not talking about your definition, I'm talking about mine, this is my point.
> Knowing python isn't impressive AT ALL.
>"Woosh" would be the right response to that I guess.
It's called being humble. You asked more of it from me. I gave it to you. Guess what you just did. You took a shit on my face for being humble. What does that make you? Humble? I don't think so.
>My point was not to argue against your point. You didn't really have a point, except maybe "This article is mumbo jumbo". My point was to show you how easy it is to take a gut reaction and lazily deride something for the sake of self-elevation, while clearly displaying a total lack of critical engagement with the source material. This is literally the cancer of online communities.
Self elevation? Are you insane? This article is pure liquid BS. That's my entire motivation. Critical engagement? You can't even critically engage a single one of my arguments, you've resorted to attacking my character.
>Sorry there is so much dumbness in that one paragraph that I have to go over it in detail and feed the troll.
Did you just call me dumb? You need to check yourself right now. This is against the rules.
>Let's use the definition of the one who named this platform: "Among programmers it means a good programmer." "It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system, that's also called a hack."
>So a hacker is somebody who is very good at his craft and can either beat a system or can deal with it in non-formal "ugly" ways. So the essence of a hacker is non-scientific and very much "look-at-the-system-poke-it-and-see-what-happens", which is the only way to really deal with systems successfully, hence "systems thinking".
Who cares man. You're arguing semantics here. All of this is destroyed by a single logical flaw. I'm never against intuition, intuition is useful, but if your intuition has logical flaws or evidence against it, you're a goner plain and simple.
The audience for this site is the programmer not the business man like your original claim. The flawed explanation for systems in the blog isn't up to par. Nobody cares for your logical aerobatics here, you're misapplying axiomatic logic to a definition so broad that intuition would serve you better here.
>Exactly my point. You can't just take an article, make no effort and just piss all over it. Well you can, but it makes you look mean, insecure, lazy and reinforces the stereotypes people have about mean and insecure programmers.
I'm not pissing all over something. I'm cleaning up piss.