[cen4]

Well these observations have nothing with to do with the main conundrum -

How do you keep a group of chimps who all have different interests, personalities, needs, beliefs, values, upbringings, culture, religion, language, history etc etc in sync?

And these days groups grow quite large quite fast.

Historically, if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination and manipulation out of the story, the babblers/non threatening people can bridge differences as groups grow larger and larger in size.

No solution is perfect, cause its quite an unnatural thing for groups to form around anything. Given all the differences.

Just try to work with your entire extended family on a project, and watch what kind of strange rituals, stories and behaviors keep the group from breaking apart.

[mgblogg]

> if you take rewards, bribery, force, domination and manipulation ...

That is a big "if". It works on the family level, but in the real world babbling is coupled with dominance, coercion, blackmail, exploitation etc.

It is easy to see in any average company that no one believes the babbler but is forced to listen to them and applaud.

[sulandor]

though the shared disdain for the babbler creates a "common enemy" which is probably better than being forced to work directly

[blitzar]

> How do you keep a group of chimps ... in sync?

Modern management theory says you put the one that throws the most shit and chimps the loudest in charge; give them 90% of the banannas and tell all the others they should be more like that one if they want nice things.

[Lammy]

> How do you keep a group of chimps who all have different interests, personalities, needs, beliefs, values, upbringings, culture, religion, language, history etc etc in sync?

Humans aren't chimps. Our closest animal relative is the Bonobo, and the corporate world would be a much more interesting place if we solved our conflicts the way they do: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bonobo-sex-and-so...

[627467]

I feel like we forgot (or deprioritized - or maybe never genuinely prioritized) how to NOT have to sync on everything all the time.

not everyone needs to be in a group.

not everyone in a group needs to be in sync with interests AND personalities AND needs AND beliefs AND...

but I see the paradox here: we need to believe the above is true to live happier and more meaningfully

[stavros]

By "groups" we mean "working with people". How are you going to do anything without working with people?

[627467]

no one needs to work with EVERY people. exit is an option.

[JumpCrisscross]

> not everyone needs to be in a group

Not everyone is in a civilisation. Few people in a civilisation would rather be in e.g. Sudan or Ethiopia.

[consteval]

Right but I don't need to successfully get along with everyone else in the US for the US to be a successful country.

Lower the sizes of groups and increase async communication, and the burden/overhead of management goes down. Groups small enough can manage themselves, in fact.

[627467]

there's over 170mil people in those 2 countries. maybe a majority wishes buy a one-way ticket to Disneyland but a non-irrelevant numbers of people decides to live their dreams and struggles with those nearby in that group. again: not everyone needs to be ANY given group

[JumpCrisscross]

Most people in those countries are part of small groups. Humans are a social species. That doesn’t require anyone to be part of a group. But it’s a bit ridiculous to try and manage a society by assuming it away.

[verisimi]

"the main conundrum" .. is not my conundrum.

[WJW]

I think you missed the point of the GP: Venkatesh Rao has written so much posts around this idea that he's now positioned himself as an authority on the topic of workplace power dynamics, regardless of if what he wrote is actually accurate or not.

He is also quite fond of using poorly defined (in this context) words like "dialectical" and "illegibility" that makes the reader doubt whether he's actually full of shit or that he is actually so brilliant that the reader simply doesn't comprehend him.

[swed420]

ctrl+f for "dialectical" yields no results in the OP. What are you referring to?

[lupire]

That's not what the GP said. That's your contributing opinion.

[mgblogg]

I think the main point of his principle is roughly correct. Classic companies are started by sociopaths and an initial amount of losers. Then the clueless come in the middle of the pyramid. The clueless section expands as the company grows until the company implodes.

I do not agree with his idea of promotion of overachievers into middle management and many other things. Some of his points are self-contradictory.

There are many variations on the main principle like Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:

https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html

(None of this applies applies to startups that are founded by actual programmers.)