New Yorker arcticle via Jorn.
Interesting comparison of individual IQ vs tacit knowledge and inter-personal relationships and correlations with “performance” of organisations, with some powerful evidence from McKinsey and connections with Enron / Andersens downfall. No suprises to discover it’s not what you know but who you know that matters, but its good to have better than anecdotal evidence of common sense.
In this hiatus in proceedings, still reading several different threads. Almost finished DNA’s Salmon of Doubt – a good compendium of existing published articles, plus 25 / 30% of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel (stangely – reviews by DNA and others of the work in progress suggest it was better plot material for an H2G2 novel, but I have to say it carries on where holistic detecting left off for me.) Confirms the guy really was a genius.
Have put Quine’s Word and Object to one side in the meantime, but still very interesting. Cogitating on Quine’s rather scathing analysis of scientific method, I’m also forming a new thread of complexity vs simplicity. Complex systems theory and the like are used by many in describing both the nature of true knowledge and the nature of human organisations, and of course, many people warn of applying “scientific method” to analysis of human organisations, along the lines that social science is not a science. Blindingly obvious I guess, but simplicity is at the heart of scientific method – logical induction by virtue of controlled experiments, with minimum numbers of variable changing at any given time in order to able to claim evidence as “proof”. By definition, complex systems are not like this. Quine doesn’t mention Occam’s Razor, but he’s talking about the same principle. If knowledge is about tacit understanding and relationships between people, then we should not expect to find any simple rational model for knowledge. Can I go home now ?