Marco and I have been talking a lot about the role of leadership in organizations. We’ve gotten on to a lot of different tangents, but there’s one important point I’d like to make out in the clear.

Marco’s Bro writes:

When I put someone in charge it’s because I want them to use their discretion — I believe they can be successful. I trust their judgment.

I expect that their team members will support them. I don’t expect unquestioning obedience or anything, but I expect everyone to realize that Leader Guy is, in fact, Leader Guy because I thought he was the best person for the job.

I know Marco’s Bro and, in real life, would probably accept most of his decisions. However, I disagree with this way of thinking in a general sense. My response to his statement goes like this:

What if you made a mistake? What if Leader Guy deceived you into thinking he’s more capable than he really is? What if he’s no longer as capable as he once was (personal problems, brain injury, etc)? What if he’s now out of his area of competence (see: the Peter Principle). What if you only rationalized to yourself that he’s trustworthy, when in actual fact you installed him because he’s dating your sister? What if your trust in him stems from his Harvard degree that his father bought for him? What if your boss chose you because he knew you’d choose That Guy, who happens to be his nephew?

Authority is a dangerous thing. When you trust in vested authority over other qualities then you put all of your eggs in the basket of the authority figure; your risk has gone up dramatically. That may turn out OK if the leader happens to be a good decision maker. However, thousands of years of history have shown us that following the leader doesn’t always work out well, and can often be disastrous. I’m sure everyone has been in a situation where they’ve had to accept the authority of someone who, on the face of it, shouldn’t have been given that power (I know that everyone in the U.S. has).

Marco and His Bro have stated that they don’t expect unquestioning obedience in the leader, but that when the leader has made a decision, they expect the rest of the team to go along with it, even if they think it’s wrong. This strengthens my argument against authority while at the same time cuts its legs out from under it. Yes, you want your leader to be taking the arguments of his subordinates into consideration. If, at the end of the day, he rejects them regardless of their validity, then they may as well not have been voiced in the first place. Both Marco and His Bro have said that if they’d heard of dissent escaping from the confines of the team and propagating up to their level, they’d tend to trust the leader and think of the dissenter as a troublemaker. Of course, that may true in a some cases, but this policy definitely puts a chilling effect on dissent that could be beneficial (or even critical).

In one of my instant messaging chats with Marco, the topic of religion (very briefly) came up. Religion is, of course, the ultimate in authority, both in a supernatural and in a real-world sense. Especially in monotheism, a deity has overwhelming power over its followers, who in turn have none over it. That deity, in turn “installs” its own hierarchy of people to act as a local authority on its behalf — at least according to the people in the hierarchy. Since these people supposedly have privileged access to the deity, they are effectively granted authority by the followers. Religion is particularly good at suppressing dissent, through everything from genocide down to making virtues out of trust and belief without evidence.

Evidence and reasoning are the keys to overcoming the risks associated with authority. They are the great equalizers, because Nature doesn’t care one bit about who has granted authority to whom — but with enough evidence and reasoning you can navigate the rules that Nature has put in place and use them to achieve your goals.

It may very well be that the chosen leader makes successful decisions because she applies the best evidence and reasoning to a problem. Ideally, this should be true in every case; you can make the best decision possible in the shortest amount of time when you don’t have to explain and justify it to others. But we all know that this doesn’t happen every time. Even if the leader has the best reasoning skills, she may not have the best evidence, and so her conclusions might be suboptimal.

This is why I reject authority that exists for its own sake. If an authority figure makes a decision, let the decision stand on its own merits, not on the position of the person who makes it. If it’s a good decision (based on the reasoning and on the evidence), then it’s worth supporting. If there’s an better one, let it be the course of action, regardless of who proposed it. If gathering evidence is too costly (and it often is), then it’s OK to go with the assumptions of the most “experienced” person on the team, but be prepared to reject those assumptions when the evidence contradicts it. Personal experience is a valid argument (we rely on it for a great many decisions), but it’s a weak one, and it should be overridden and/or augmented by objective evidence whenever possible.

Authority, at best, illegitimately takes credit for success. At worst, it leads to failure. Be skeptical of it at all times.

In many (most?) organizations, “being a team player” is code for “being nice” &emdash; which, in turn, is often code for “not contradicting anyone.” The problem with this is that it leads to groupthink and mediocre (or often just plain wrong) results.

I think that this Slashdotter has it right: (emphasis added by me)

I’ve worked for years in highly effective teams, and with success. I can tell you what made all the difference: The presence of equals to debate issues with, so that we could talk each other through the problems and emerge from the session with the feeling that we had defined better solutions. Perhaps we are all arrogant nuisances, but as long as we understand and respect each other we keep each other in check, and can function as effective team members.

The “respect among equals” also translates to “respect among people above and below you in the hierarchy” when such hierarchies exist:

• Listen to & consider what your boss says, but call him out on it when he’s wrong or hasn’t justified his assertions.
• Listen to & consider the objections of those below your skill and/or station, but correct them when they’re mistaken and clarify the reasoning behind your positions.

You should only be stating agreement when you reach the same conclusions based on the available information. If you don’t think you have enough information to defend a contrary position, it’s better to state that outright rather than agree by default. The lack of agreement, even without the presence of opposition, might be enough to show that the position is potentially unreliable.

Being a helpful member of a team means working to achieve the same goal as the other team members. It does not necessarily mean following the same process.

Update: Fixed the link to Slashdot. Sorry for that.

Marco has blogged about the recent Freakonomics blog series on the politics of happiness. He’s tied the discussion to biases within the political and social system against certain people (in particular women and black people; he’s viewing it in light of the current U.S. Presidential race).

He asked the blogosphere:

Given this amazing election year, if I look at the race as a “happy religious conservative”, seeing two people with the societal deck stacked against them, one of whom is very possibly the next POTUS, what am I to conclude about how they got there?

To which I responded:

If you’re willing to not put much thought into it, you can conclude absolutely anything you like.

If you are willing to put thought into it, you can only conclude that the situation is far to complex to assign it to any handful of factors that can be explained with one-word descriptions. We simply can’t measure these things accurately enough to really have any good idea.

Marco, in turn, responded with the question that prompted this post:

Do you, yourself, have a feeling about any of that? Does finding the situation too-complex-to-assess make you happier? Sadder? Or does it just lead to not really caring about inequity?

Firstly, I’d like to thank Marco for an excellent question.

I can say that my goal is to be indifferent to the complexity itself — it is what it is, and getting an emotional response to it one way or the other doesn’t help things much.

On the other hand, I do have an inherent desire to know *why* things like this occur, so the fact that we can’t here is a bit depressing.

On the third hand, complexity itself can indeed be interesting; the interconnectedness of things means that we’re always being surprised and intrigued. I enjoy it when we find out things that are non-obvious (which is why I like reading Freakonomics blog myself; their whole purpose is to point out socioeconomic novelties).

Now, Marco’s question (and blog post to a larger extent) also asked how inequality makes me feel. My answer to this is that it depends very much on the nature of the inequality.

Some inequalities are caused by forces that I’ll label as “natural”. Effectively, they are ones that we cannot (currently) change. For example, if you are born with a severe mental handicap, then your chances of wealthy (or even independently living comfortably) are slim to non-existent. That stems largely from the fact that you are incapable of creating the sort of economic value that humanity desires and rewards. You could definitely call this “unfair”, but there’s little point in doing so, because you’d be rebuking a universe that doesn’t listen, much less care. Assuming you cannot change these things, there’s no benefit to feeling bad about them; you lose a bit of your happiness without any corresponding increase in the happiness of anyone else.

Another class of inequality is that which is unnecessary and/or changeable: you can call it “unnatural” inequality if you like. For example, if you are a woman or black (or Catholic in the not-so-distant past), your chances of becoming President of the U.S. are reduced (and at one point they too were slim to non-existent). The bias against women and non-whites is largely based on faulty or non-existent reasoning — in particular, assuming the properties of a group also apply to an individual is not valid. This type of inequality means that humanity loses some of its potential, and is definitely something to be upset over. Ideally, we would be upset enough to change the situation so that the bias no longer occurs.

Lastly, there is inequality that is actually desireable. For example, if you have a useful skill (take your pick, there’s lots; medical is the most palatable example), then you can use your advantage to produce more value. You will typically benefit from the value you produce; since we share our value with the less fortunate (to varying degrees), others will benefit as well. Trying to bring equality to these situations is actually counterproductive. If you force the skillful to produce at the same rate as everyone else, then there’s a missed opportunity for more vale. You can try to make the less skilled produce value at the same rate as the most skilled, but most often this is impossible (the top producers are usually at the top due to some combination of factors that can’t be replicated). This kind of equality makes me happy, because I see the benefits that come with it.

So, I don’t not care about inequality. It’s not easy to see which type of inequality is in play at any given time (and it’s usually a combination of the three), and it’s even less easy to know what to do about it. I try my best to do what is appropriate depending on the circumstances. With that philosophy, it’s relatively easy to avoid unhappiness for the bad kinds to gain happiness from the good kinds.

I don’t much like quoting myself, as it seems immodest — but in this particular case I like what I wrote on another site well enough that I’ll violate that principle.

Marco and I enjoy political discussion, and on occasions that we end up on opposite sides we generate some good debate. There’s lots of good stuff in this thread (and in many others on his blog; I recommend subscribing). Here’s part of what I just posted:

[Voters] are not so much Republicans/Democrats as voters who have a personal laundry list of issues, each with a position and a priority. Since your voting options are extremely limited (two viable options at best), you choose the one who you hope will serve your interests best.

…

Many (most?) people do not always consider current [political party] policies when placing their votes — they just see the party name, think “they’ve felt the way I do in the past; they probably still do”, and mark their ballot. The parties can exploit this by shifting their actual behavior one way or another to acquire additional voters / influence while still (undeservedly) retaining their core.

I’ll go on to add that this condition is far worse in a lot of other parts of the world than it is in the U.S. or Canada. Latin America seems to be particularly bad. Laura has described Costa Rican voters as voting strictly for their “chosen” party over multiple generations (i.e.: your family votes for party X so you do too). Paraguay just ended a 61-year reign; Mexico had the same party in power for over 70 years. These happen in the context of war, poverty, and famine. At least in the U.S. you can be sure that bad economic times mean a power shift.

Quick, in which country do you have greater freedom: China or the United States?

The answer is definitely the U.S., where the laws ensuring freedom have been on the books for over two hundred years. Freedom is at the core of the American legal and political system.

However, take away all the laws written on paper for the moment. How free are you in real, every day situations?

Elliotte Rusty Harold just got back from China, and he says that he felt freer on the streets of Beijing:

Entering China, I was prepared to be polite to cops, show my passport as necessary, and explain as best I could just why I was walking around sewage treatment plants with camera and binoculars. To my surprise I never had to. The simple fact is that I could walk absolutely anywhere I felt like in Beijing without being hassled by anyone. … There were surveillance cameras, but fewer than in the U.S. or London. Getting on the subway, no one wanted to look inside my bags. All transactions were cash.

…

I saw fewer traffic stops, arrests, and police actions against other citizens than I do in a typical week in the states. In fact, I think I saw a grand total of two, both related to car accidents; and neither looked very serious.

Somehow I thought a one-party, authoritarian state would be more oppressive than this. At least in the capital, Beijing compares favorably to major U.S. cities. To be honest, that doesn’t speak well for the U.S. If we can’t be less of a police state than a one-party, nominally Communist nation like China, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Disclaimer: the plural of anecdote is not data — and this is only a singular anecdote. But I thought it was interesting and postworthy nonetheless.

What important here is that actions speak louder than words. I think that it’s very important to have freedom built into the laws (one thing that the U.S. does better than Canada). However, those laws are only written on goddamn pieces of paper, and if they’re not enforced / respected, then they’re meaningless.

Alberta Premiere Ed Stelmach has called a provincial election for March 3. I already am quite sure who I’m voting for: Mike Robinson, Liberal Candidate for Calgary-Foothills.

I don’t know anything about Mike personally. I don’t know a heck of a lot about the Liberals either. I do know that what I’ve seen I don’t terribly like:

• Their theme is “The Conservatives don’t have a plan, we do.” They’re (publicly) assuming that the province needs fixing and that the government needs to take action. I don’t necessarily agree with either of these points.
• I also take issue with specific items in their platform:
  • Health care premiums should stay. They’re easily affordable for anyone with a solid income. There’s already price reductions for lower incomes. The absurd employee demand means that nearly everyone can have an income that can support health care (rent on the other hand is another matter entirely). Eliminating health care premiums won’t create much economic value (it’ll just save the collection costs), but instead would shift the cost onto the tax base. What problem would that solve? The Liberals don’t say. It’s just a slogan.
  • Electricity (and gas) rates aren’t unreasonably high; they’re a very minor portion of our overall expenses. I certainly don’t think they should be subsidized with tax money; the Liberals don’t say how else they would lower them. If anything, the rates should be higher, as that will give incentives to reduce demand and/or find alternative energy sources (which would help fight global warming). I don’t think there’s terribly good evidence to show that re-regulating the utilities would make them more efficient; I doubt that the existing “competitors” in the market are particularly regulation-free anyway.
  • Investing royalties “now before its too late” is a straw man plus fear mongering. Is there some investment apocalypse that I’m not aware of? It’s not like royalty money is going to sit idle anyway; as the overall tax/royalty surplus grows it’ll either get spent (which is what the Liberals mean by “investing” anyway), invested in securities (which is basically what happens by default), or reduced through tax cuts (which is a very economically sound option).
  • Providing hospitals and health care workers is a very good idea, but doing it “now” is exaggeration. You can start building & training now, but it won’t pay off for years.

  I’m neutral on the greenhouse gas cap; it’s not necessarily the best solution, but it may be better than nothing at all, so if it’s achievable then it’s worthwhole.

So why vote Liberal? I’m not upset with the provincial Conservatives; by and large I agree with their policies, and I think they should stay in power. However, I think that any government works best when it’s kept in check. Harper’s minority government has, in general, played ball with the rest of the political spectrum because of the real threat of a non-confidence vote. They’ve effectively been prevented from screwing things up too badly. I’d like to see that sort of balance in Alberta too. The Liberals have very little chance of winning the province, but they’re the only ones who are any threat at all. Thus, I’ll support them as much as I can (without trying too hard of course; they’re not going to see a dime of my money). If in some bizzaro universe they actually stood a chance of winning the whole thing, I’d be more careful when placing my vote.

… how last night’s New Hampshire Democratic Primary can repeatedly be called a win for Hillary Clinton. As I understand it (and I’ve paid little attention to the lower-level workings of the wacky U.S. election system) both Clinton and Obama got the same number of delegates and thus effectively tied, even though Clinton got a scant 2% more of the popular vote. Given that she was the heavy favorite everywhere up until Iowa, anything less than an actual win in delegates seems like poor performance to me. Is this anything other than media bias in favor of Hillary shining through?

File this under “things that you hope would get funding so that they can fail miserably and become a lesson to others”: free nationwide wireless porn-free Internet.

There are some goods and services that, for various reasons, you just can’t get in Canada: warm weather in January, pictures of yourself hugging Mickey Mouse, a view of the Mona Lisa. If you want those, you have to travel to some other place.

You can also add doctor-assisted suicide to that list. Unlike the others though, getting that service will get your loved ones questioned by police… and, if the lobbyists have their way, arrested, charged, tried, convicted, and imprisoned.

This service is obviously in demand (Sue Rodriguez made big headlines for weeks back when I was in high school). There’s some very sound ethical arguments for allowing it. But the laws in Canada don’t allow for it, potentially to the point of prosecuting those who seek the service off of Canadian soil.

Something else to note: by forcing assisted-suicide seekers to foreign countries, you in turn:

• Limit its availability to those who can afford the travel expenses.
• Limit its availability to those who can physically make the trip — thus forcing a life-or-death decision earlier than would otherwise be required.

I don’t think that that serves much purpose.

I discovered OpenPolitics.ca while reading about the leader of Canada’s Green Party suing several web sites for defamation. I haven’t looked into it in detail yet, but it looks promising so far.

One of the first things I’ve investigated is their
Political Personality Quiz, which is very much like the one at Political Compass which I wrote about earlier, except that it has 6 axes instead of two. According to my results, I’m an “Anti-Nationalist”, which is a harsh-sounding term, but the writeup describes me pretty accurately. Further down they give an “alternate nickname” of “post-nationalist”, which I think is a better name: it implies that nationalism is a obsolete system rather than a bad one.

I’m sure I’ll be posting more from this site in the future.