
The Curse of Development - norswap
https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2010/04/14/the-gervais-principle-iii-the-curse-of-development/
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TheMagicHorsey
This is how nonsense is written by smart people to bamboozle the rest.

This is some truths, mixed with half truths, mixed with made up pop
psychology, wrapped in a rug of made up bullshit, served on a platter of
popular culture references for consumption by people that are starving for
structure.

~~~
alexandercrohde
"to bamboozle the rest." What do you mean by this? Do you suggest the author
is trying to confuse/deceive people, because he clearly puts LOTS of work into
his blog and I don't imagine he directly gets profit from it [so I have no
idea what his motivation would be].

That's a very poetic criticism and all, but I guess it doesn't really mean
anything.

The situation is this: Many professionals (such as myself) find the world of
business entirely irrational and unpredictable. Those like me are trying to
make heads or tails of it and often just resort to humor (Dilbert, the Office,
Silicon Valley) which gives us the simplistic narrative -> other people are
crazy.

But some of us know there's more to it than that, and are actually trying to
wrap our heads around it. It's not clear if you don't think understanding work
matters or if you think there's a better source of truth for explaining the
massive irrationalities of work.

Either way, poetry doesn't really establish or disprove anything.

\---

Edit: For those like me who are searching for patterns among the chaos of
human group behavior, I suggest the books "Moral Mazes" and "Games People
Play"

~~~
Noxchi
He puts a lot of work trying to weasel out a theory based on a caricuturized
comedy.

It reminded me of some ideas from socionics though, mainly how strengths and
weaknesses create relationship types

[http://www.socionics.com/rel/rel.htm](http://www.socionics.com/rel/rel.htm)

~~~
Pyxl101
That wasn't how I understood it. Rather, my impression is that the theory is
not _based on_ the comedy, but is rather explained using the language and
situations of the comedy.

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roystonvassey
When I chanced upon Ribbonfarm a few years back, I was super impressed and in
fact, invested many hours of my life to watch 'The Office'.

In hindsight, I was bit of an idiot. I fell for spruced-up language that was
clearly trying to mask the absence of serious content or thought. A few good
ideas, sure, but they're mostly common-sensical and could've been delivered in
an easier manner.

~~~
daliwali
Many important concepts start as unknown, and then once explained in great
detail, seem plainly obvious. It took a lot of reasoning to convince people
that in fact zero is a number (but zero doesn't exist!) and now it's taken for
granted.

~~~
roystonvassey
Sure but I don't even think that the ideas on Ribbonfarm are extremely radical
(definitely not the same as 'zero is a number')

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yakult
The main problem about this is that the author is basing his arguments on a
show. A show written by writers who might even read the same pop-psych. Then
he goes to reason from this show, into real-life. It's arguing from fictional
evidence. If some of the actors behaves in a completely different way one week
because there's a writer's strike or something, does it invalidate his
theories?

IRL nobody behaves like people from The Show so any theory with this as the
only basis is worthless.

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meesterdude
I feel that most of this article is not understandable without having watched
the office. There were a few nuggets of insight though, but the rest is lost
in references to a show i've never seen.

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Chris2048
> If you’ve ever poked fun at a French-quoting pedant..

Is the implication that someone who speaks French is "more developed"? It
doesn't seem to me that speaking French represents a more sophisticated
argument - it's just another, different language.

~~~
thedatamonger
your comment on the surface seems right but let's be real, languages are
created (or evolved in the case of natural languages) to suit a purpose. The
Eskimos have 50 different words for snow, so when conversing about snow I'd
say using the Eskimo language makes you much more intelligent or at least more
articulate... now I'd also image that the amount of content that went into
evolving a language differs from language to language and given this obvious
fact some are more "smart" than others ... now I am not on the side of any one
language, just making an observation.

~~~
Chris2048
The basis of your observation isn't True:

[https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/no-the-inuit-dont-
have-1...](https://www.buzzfeed.com/tomchivers/no-the-inuit-dont-
have-100-words-for-snow)

However, even if there were a language that specialised in snow, that's an
entirely different thing to one language being 'smarter' than another. In this
case, why would French be any more evolved in general than English?

~~~
thedatamonger
One good link deserves another.
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/there...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-
science/there-really-are-50-eskimo-words-for-
snow/2013/01/14/e0e3f4e0-59a0-11e2-beee-6e38f5215402_story.html?utm_term=.0ff0107504ae)
The point I was trying to make is the same. Some languages are more
descriptive about a given domain in a shorter space and thus can convey an
idea in vastly less time than another language. Now you could do some hand
waiving and say we use prefixes and suffixes all the time and you could make
up words till the end of time but the important fact here is that people
speaking a given language actually USE those words, because of their need to
be descriptive within a given domain, and WITHIN that domain I'd say they are
smarter by my definition of smart. More articulate, more succinct, more versed
(within a given domain), and more experienced. Every profession has it's own
language, and rightly so, because time is precious and we need to convey
meaning quickly. Words created and collected for a given purpose are still
words, just look at a medical dictionary.

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cdevs
Are these the words from the robot voice in "portal"? The cake is a lie.

------
epx
Y A W N

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matt4077
This starts with:

    
    
        [..] the archetypes that inhabit 
        organizations (Sociopaths, Losers, Clueless)
    

...which is quite clueless itself, and mean-spirited to boot. I guess it plays
well with the libertarian every-man-for-himself fantasy.

~~~
scandox
Isn't the whole thing an over extended joke based on The Office?

~~~
mamon
That was my interpretation of the whole series. The author however, seems to
be dead serious about it, like he discovered true meaning of life.

~~~
tinym
He maintains that attitude deliberately (it's part of the joke).

