- E04 - Leadership! Google, Guido van Rossum, PSF

[Anton Vredegoor]

Michael Sparks wrote:

> Sorry to reply to the thread so late in the day, but I noticed (via
> QOTW :-( ) that Anton got worked up at me suggesting that congratulating
> someone with a new job was a nice idea (surprised me too - all the
> Google employees I've met have been very nice people), read the
> thread (got sad) and then saw this:

Strange, I *did* get worked up at you some (long) time ago, probably
without you ever noticing, it was about your pythagorean proof about
anyone being able to learn kamelia quickly because you had some student
who had no problems whatsoever with it,

http://www.atopia.tk/anamnesis/kittleren.htm

while I could not find a clue what your software was supposed to do,
except being something very exciting (and I think I know python well
enough to not often have that problem), but I did not get worked up at
you because of you congratulating Guido. To make it more clear :
Congratulations Guido, with your new job!

However I still maintain that I was never able to meet these fine
people you speak about and which you seem to know because the cost
involved (a few hundred euro to visit pycon for example) was too high
compared to my food budget.

What I was trying to explain was that the world gets closer and closer
to the singularity (something I believe other people got worked up at
*me* about) and the world is now at the stage where everything gets
reinvented in about 5 years. This means that during the next 2.5 years
some phenomenon like Google changing internet history (which happened
in the last five years) will happen again (in a shorter time period).

Since we are going to reinvent ourselves faster and faster there is no
need to take old corrupt methods with us into the future. Some people
(maybe suffering from a wierd kind of conceptual static typing) equate
me talking about 'people having a backstabbing history' with implying
those exact people actually stab other people in the back literally.
'Having a backstabbing history' can also be explained as having been
into places where backstabbing was common, without implying any actual
backstabbing of these people themselves, except maybe the greater whole
they belonged to being instrumental to backstabbing, for example
mathemathics professors helping to crack codes which are used to
decipher or encode messages in a war situation.

I've already mentioned somewhere that I meant it figuratively and I
will further qualify it now by saying that Googles selection process
does them and the world a disservice by using some kind of elitist
criteria, or by hiring people who can prove that they -forced by market
mechanisms no doubt- have in the past collaborated with or worked for
companies that selected them on the basis of elitist criteria.

The elitist selection process suffers from the same problems that for
example IQ-tests have: Trying to scale something in one (or at least
too few) dimensions, where that something is very, very, very
multidimensional. It is insulting, inappropriate and denigrating when
applied to humans. Of course, irony will have people using elitist
selection processes being very personally offended by people pointing
out that it is unfair. Just like those who stole my money and job
opportunities now claim I'm a parasite or some wrathfull loser who
doesn't want to work.

In fact, although I still don't condone corruption, my vision has
cleared up a lot by not eating its fruits anymore. I am not jealous at
anyone still 'inside' and although I dream about trying to save people
from places where people get murdered randomly (the dreaded
backstabbing reference again), it gets less and less often as time goes
by. My current worry is about how I can survive for another 2.5 years
(the projected time period for the world to renew itself again) without
me jumping off a ledge because I dont want to be (and possibly live
forever without dying) with irrational people who don't deserve my
company or get offed by someone who can't stand me not joining
corruption.

It's possible some next generation of people don't want the current
population to survive because they are not advancing fast enough or
lack compassion with lower lifeforms. If anything, my post was about
trying to save the world from that fate by trying to induce that
compassion into this newsgroup.  I think it would be beneficial for our
people working for google (and for google itself) if they freed
themselves of any remaining corruption so that world evolution will be
synchronized with social evolution and no unnecessary tensions will
occur.

Anton

'workout'