This is not who we are

@jesslynnrose offers an allegory for an unnamed technology company with dubious ethics.

The function of a system is its output.

If you have dog grooming machine that sometimes smashes puppies and you keep running it, you're in the dog smashing business.

If you work for a mass surveillance company that keeps enabling genocide and undermining democracy...

— Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose) January 7, 2021

 

You might try to guess whether there is any particular technology company she is talking about. People from at least three different companies thought she might be referring to them.

I've had people from three different companies message to ask if I'm attacking them personally and this feels like Schrodinger's take on self knowledge. pic.twitter.com/a2xV1aMJQv

— Jessica Rose (@jesslynnrose) January 8, 2021

A common form of defensive denial takes the form This is not who we are, which @AlexGraul describes as an oxymoron. @ayourtch reinforces this point by quoting from Donella Meadows: Purposes are deduced from behaviour, not from rhetoric or stated goals

In other words, POSIWID.

 

But why does this count as an oxymoron? Because it seems to be openly acknowledging the behaviour that contradicts the espoused identity. 

In some cases, the contradiction appears to be resolved if we believe that the behaviour of a minority is not characteristic of the majority - as if the minority were not fully part of the "we". Bill Clinton used the phrase in 1995 following the verdict in the O.J. Simpson trial, and Barack Obama used the phrase many times. It has also been used on the Republican side. Christopher Scalia calls this a rhetorical sleight-of-hand.

In a corporate setting, executives use this kind of language to blame bad things on the actions of individual rogue employees rather than the corporation as a whole. Yeah, right.

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Donella Meadows, Thinking in Systems (2008). The quote is on page 14 of my copy.

Christopher J. Scalia, Why Obama says That's not who we are (USA Today, 8 February 2016)

See also The Fallacy of Rotten Apples (July 2004)

Purpose of Denial 3

The more the American mainstream media deny that President Obama is a Moslem, the more Americans choose to believe that he is.

Apparently this belief is more prevalent among college-educated Republicans than the rest of the population. How Republicans Learn That Obama Is Muslim (New Republic, 27 August 2010) This raises some intriguing questions about the relationship between education and knowledge.

Jeff Poor suggests that the media are to blame. "By consistently using questions about Obama's faith and his citizenship as fodder to demean conservatives, specifically the Tea Party movement and thereby creating a general mistrust by saying vile things, have the mainstream media perpetuated the very allegations they are abhorred by (sic)?" (Newsbusters, 19 August 2010) At least on this point, Charlie Brooker seems to agree. "Seriously, broadcasters, journalists: just give up now. Because either you're making things worse, or no one's paying attention anyway."  'Ground Zero mosque'? The reality is less provocative (Guardian 23 August 2010). Brooker complains that the terms of the debate are grossly misleading, and grudgingly admires right-wingers for their ability to create snappy-but-misleading nicknames – like fun-size chocolate bars and the Ground Zero mosque. Buzzwords for blowhards (Guardian 30 August 2010).

Jeff Poor quotes CNN political analyst James Carville, who describes himself as "flummoxed" by this result, and claims that "the quality of information to people today is exponentially higher than it was in 19th century England". Now I wouldn't necessarily expect a political journalist to know what the word "exponential" meant, but I wonder whether the quality is higher at all.

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Once upon a time, some people were bothered whether Disraeli was Christian or Jew, and some people were uncomfortable about electing Kennedy as a Catholic president. But they are now mainly remembered for what they achieved while in office, not their religious affiliation. Meanwhile, Mrs Thatcher's legacy is not feminism but Thatcherism. Obama will not be remembered for his birthplace, or the religion of his forefathers, nor even for being the first black president; he will be remembered for the successes and failures of his presidency. And perhaps one day, people will wonder why anyone cared whether he was a Moslem or not, and moderate Moslems will be as accepted in mainstream American politics as Catholics are now. (Let it not be forgotten that large sums of money were once raised from American Catholics to support Irish terrorism.)

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John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby Catholics, Muslims, and the Mosque Controversy (New York Review, 27 August 2010)

Adam Serwer, Build More Mosques (American Prospect, August 26, 2010)

Negative Campaigning

There have been many comments about negative tactics in the 2008 US election

• Jon Kelly, US Election takes a negative turn (BBC News, 6 August 2008)

Of course this is nothing new

• Wikipedia: Negative Campaigning
  
• Carl Pyrdum, Negative Campaigning, Medieval Style (22 October 2008)

And what's wrong with negative campaigning anyway, providing it is based on an honest appraisal of your opponent's weaknesses?

• Steve Chapman, Some Positive Thoughts About Negative Campaigning (Reason Online, January 2008)
• Dick Morris, Negative Campaigning is Good for America (US News, 6 October 2008)
  

Are negative tactics counterproductive, and did they backfire on this occasion? Do they damage the candidate who uses them, either during the election or when elected?

• James Leach, Negative Political Ads Hurt the United States (US News, 6 October 2008)
• Jonathan Freedland, The End of Attack Politics (Guardian, 16 October 2008)

And do they work at all?

• Do Negative Campaign Ads Work? (This Nation)

What's the purpose of negative tactics? There are two possible effects that negative campaigners might be aiming at. One is to reduce the approval ratings of your opponent, and the other is to discourage people from voting at all.

At least in this election, neither of these effects have materialized. Negative tactics were used on both sides, and yet both candidates seem to have ended the campaign with personal approval ratings over 50%. (McCain's campaign may have been dented by the widespread public perception that it was relying more than Obama's campaign on negative tactics, but many people seem willing to blame the party and the campaign team rather than the candidate himself. Who is the real McCain?)

And turnout has been staggering. When I vote in a British election it takes a few minutes, maybe ten minutes if I go at a busy time. I just cannot imagine any British elector being willing to stand in the cold and rain for three hours or more waiting to vote. What passion for democracy is expressed by a nation that is willing to stand in line for several hours in order to play with an unreliable voting machine.

(There is a cultural difference here. The British voting process is designed to save wasting the time of the electorate: we collect the votes as quickly and reliably as possible, and then spend all night counting and checking them. The US voting process is designed to get the result to the TV networks as quickly as possible. Americans are far more patient than the British when it comes to voting, but much more impatient to know the result. And yet in Britain the new elected leader takes over the following day, whereas in America the leader-elect has to wait a couple of months. Different subjective views of time and the proper amount of time things should take.)

What will campaigners remember about this election next time around, and what lessons will they learn? Will they abjure negative tactics - at least until they perceive their opponents doing it? Or will they just develop more sophisticated negative tactics?

Blame Obama

My friend Phil from Iowa has long been a passionate McCain supporter, and circulated numerous emails during McCain's previous bid for the presidency. Yesterday he sent me a copy of an article apparently blaming Senator Obama for single-handedly causing the current financial catastrophe. Diana West: Social Engineering Derailed Our Economy.

The argument goes like this. As a community organizer, Barack Obama encouraged poor people (yes there's a racial element to this argument) to take advantage of the available finance. As a politician, Barack Obama supported the availability of finance to poor people. Therefore the collapse of the American banking system is a dastardly communist plot orchestrated by Barack Obama.

Who is the principal beneficiary of this collapse? Why, Senator Obama of course, who now commands a healthy lead in the opinion polls. Therefore the primary purpose of this social engineering was to cheat Senator McCain from his rightful job as President Maverick.

If all this were true, of course, it would rather undermine the standard Republican argument that Obama has no management experience. A president capable of orchestrating such a dramatic outcome, and with such consummate timing, would make an outstanding President.

Of course this is nonsense. As if the weak-minded banks were coerced into dodgy finance by left-wing politicians!? If the capitalist system can be subverted by a handful of left-wing activists, then it isn't quite as robust as the End-of-History ideologues like to think.

Of course the current state of regulation over the banking system is a complete mess - both nationally and internationally. In the USA, regulation has been a battleground between Republicans and Democrats, with the latter blaming everything on Reagan-era deregulation, and the former blaming everything either on Clinton or on the refusal of the Democrats to support partial reintroduction of regulation under Bush.

One of the principles of systems thinking is that a regulation system needs to have requisite variety - in other words, it needs to have just enough complexity to respond intelligently to the complexity of the system being regulated. It is difficult to imagine politicians of any stripe being capable of designing an effective regulatory system. Conversely, it is difficult to imagine someone capable of real systems thinking becoming an effective President. Look at Jimmy Carter: the exception proves the rule.

 

See also Relationships built on self-interest (January 2009)

A Bit of a Dump

I may have underestimated the cleverness of BAA, when I criticized the pointless security delays at Heathrow in previous posts. BAA gets a fair proportion of its revenue from retailers in its airports, but obviously passengers aren't going to be shopping while they are stuck in a queue. So the clever trick is to delay the air crew, which delays the flights, leaving the passengers with nothing better to do than shop. Aircrew go through a separate security check, which is always understaffed, and can easily take an hour or more.

On a BBC radio programme broadcast this evening, an American Airlines executive complained bitterly about the failures at Heathrow, which he described as "a bit of a dump". [BBC File On Four, 29 April 2008] EasyJet doesn't operate out of Heathrow, so an EasyJet manager complained about Gatwick instead.

BAA of course points the blame elsewhere: it's the regulators, it's the lack of capacity, it's the job market, you've got to remember that Heathrow is more complex than other airports. As I explained in my previous post Regulated Asset Base, BAA makes more money from building new assets than by operating the existing assets cost-effectively. Indeed, this means it has a real incentive to run Heathrow and Gatwick badly, if this has the effect of persuading planners that more capacity is needed. Clever.

DNA and Crime

I blame the parents.

The Fallacy of Rotten Apples

The belief that if there is a large and diverse class of something, then it is to be expected (and perhaps even tolerated) that some of them may have a selected (bad) property. 

For example, the belief that if there are a few corrupt or racist individuals in a certain public organization, or a few greedy executives in the boardroom, or a few unprofessional individuals in a professional organization, or a few lazy and miserable employees, that doesn't imply that there is anything wrong with the organization or its culture. 

This belief is justified by the slogan: There's always one Rotten Apple in every Barrel. 

But this slogan is of course rubbish. One bad apple spoils the barrel. A corrupt or lazy individual (if unchecked) may infect his colleagues. Weak individuals are quickly corrupted, while some strong and morally upright ones may be forced out. 

That isn't to say that corruption is immediate and universal, or that such organizations are necessarily beyond repair and redemption. But the presence (and survival) of even one single corrupt individual within an organization must raise some concerns about the organization which cannot and should not be superficially dismissed. 

In a blame culture, the preferred solution is to discipline or expel a few individuals where the bad property is most evident, and to hope that the problem goes away. This only works on the assumption that those individuals who do not openly manifest the property do not currently have it, have not been infected by it, and will not develop it. It doesn't deal with the root cause. 

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See also

Catarina Fake, And the Bushel Goes Bad (Bizwerk, 25 July 2004)

Lori Howard, One Bad Apple (StickyMinds, 31 December 2003)

Originally published on my Fallacy page
http://veryard.com/demcha/fallacy.htm

Referenced in the following posts: Notes on Failure and Blame (July 2004), KITA and Voter Apathy (November 2004), This Is Not Who We Are (September 2021)