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[[Data modernism|This philosophy]] has systematically undermined the organisational importance of ''people with [[ineffable]] expertise''. Over thirty or forty years the poor professional has, by a thousand literal cuts, been denuded of her status. It has been a slow, inevitable descent into the quotidian. First they came for her assistants — typists, receptionists, proof-readers, mail and fax room attendants — then her kit — company cars, laptops, mobile devices — then her space —  that once commodious office became communal, then lost its door, then its walls, diminished to a dedicated space along a row, and most recently has become a conditional promise of a sanitised space at a [[telescreen]] somewhere in the building, assuming you’re quick or enough people are out sick or on holiday.  
[[Data modernism|This philosophy]] has systematically undermined the organisational importance of ''people with [[ineffable]] expertise''. Over thirty or forty years the poor professional has, by a thousand literal cuts, been denuded of her status. It has been a slow, inevitable descent into the quotidian. First they came for her assistants — typists, receptionists, proof-readers, mail and fax room attendants — then her kit — company cars, laptops, mobile devices — then her space —  that once commodious office became communal, then lost its door, then its walls, diminished to a dedicated space along a row, and most recently has become a conditional promise of a sanitised space at a [[telescreen]] somewhere in the building, assuming you’re quick or enough people are out sick or on holiday.  


This managed deprecation of the value of [[expert|expertise]] is a logical consequence of [[data modernism]]: human “magic” is not good, but a necessary evil: risky, inconstant, evanescent, fragile, expensive, inconstant and, most of all, ''hard to quantify'' — and if can’t quantify it, you can’t evaluate it, and if you can’t evaluate it you shouldn’t, in a data-optimised world, ''do'' it. As our tools have developed — thanks to the explosion in the power of information processing since 1980 —
This managed deprecation of the value of [[expert|expertise]] is a logical consequence of [[data modernism]]: human “magic” is not good, but a necessary evil: risky, inconstant, evanescent, fragile, expensive, inconstant and, most of all, ''hard to quantify'' — and if you can’t quantify it, you can’t evaluate it, and if you can’t evaluate it you shouldn’t, in a data-optimised world, ''do'' it. As our tools have developed — thanks to the explosion in the power of information processing since 1980 —
the range of things on which we must still rely on meatware has diminished. Many [[thought leader]]s<ref>The most prominent is [[Ray Kurzweil]], though honourable mention to DB’s former CEO John Cryan and, of course, there is the redoubtable [[Richard Susskind|Suss]]. </ref> foretell it is only a matter of time until there are none left at all.
the range of things on which we must still rely on meatware has diminished. Many [[thought leader]]s<ref>The most prominent is [[Ray Kurzweil]], though honourable mention to DB’s former CEO John Cryan and, of course, there is the redoubtable [[Richard Susskind|Suss]]. </ref> foretell it is only a matter of time until there are none left at all.
====Sciencing the shit out of business====
====Sciencing the shit out of business====
The [[metaphor]] works best if we consider the workforce to be carbon-based Turing machines. A [[distributed network]] of such automatons is best optimised centrally, from the place with the best view of the big picture: the top.<ref>Curiously, this is not the theory behind distributed computing, which is rather [[end-to-end principle|controlled from the edges]]. But still.</ref> All relevant information can be articulated as [[data]] — you know: “[[Signal-to-noise ratio|In God we trust, all others must bring data]]” — and, with enough data everything about the organisation’s present can be known — the more data you have, the more you can converge on the essential truth of the matter — and its future extrapolated: this is the promise of science and technology.<ref>It isn’t. It really, really isn’t. But still.</ref>  
[[Data modernism]]’s central [[metaphor]] works by treating humans in the workforce as if they were carbon-based [[Turing machine]]s, and “the firm” a [[distributed network]] of automatons. Such a network is best optimised centrally, from the place with the best view of the big picture: the top.<ref>Curiously, this is not the theory behind distributed computing, which is rather [[end-to-end principle|controlled from the edges]]. But still.</ref>  
 
From the top, the only legible information is [[data]], and so all germane information about the organisation must take the form of [[data]] — you know: “[[Signal-to-noise ratio|In God we trust, all others must bring data]]”. With enough data, so the theory goes, everything about the organisation’s ''present'' can be known, and from a more or less complete picture of the present one can extrapolate to the future. This, says [[data modernism]] is the promise of science and technology.<ref>It isn’t. It really, really isn’t. But still.</ref>  


Armed with all the data, the organisation’s permanent infrastructure can be honed down and dedicated to its core business, and peripheral functions — [[operation]]s, [[personnel]], [[legal]] and ''~ cough ~'' strategic [[management consultant|management advice]] — genericised and outsourced to specialist service providers who can be scaled up or down as requirements dictate<ref>“Surge pricing” in times of crisis, though.</ref> or switched out should they malfunction or otherwise be surplus to requirements.<ref>A former general counsel of UBS once had the bright idea of creating a “shared service” out of its legal function that could be contracted out to other banks, like Credit Suisse. He kept bringing the idea up, though it was rapidly pooh-poohed each time. Who knew it would work out so well in practice?</ref>
Armed with all the data, the organisation’s permanent infrastructure can be honed down and dedicated to its core business, and peripheral functions — [[operation]]s, [[personnel]], [[legal]] and ''~ cough ~'' strategic [[management consultant|management advice]] — genericised and outsourced to specialist service providers who can be scaled up or down as requirements dictate<ref>“Surge pricing” in times of crisis, though.</ref> or switched out should they malfunction or otherwise be surplus to requirements.<ref>A former general counsel of UBS once had the bright idea of creating a “shared service” out of its legal function that could be contracted out to other banks, like Credit Suisse. He kept bringing the idea up, though it was rapidly pooh-poohed each time. Who knew it would work out so well in practice?</ref>
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====Pareto triage====
====Pareto triage====
We call this effect “[[Pareto triage]]”. Great, for the huddled masses who just want the normal thing. But it poorly serves the long tail of oddities and opportunities. Those just beyond that “[[Pareto triage|Pareto threshold]]” have little choice but to manage their expectations and take a marginally unsatisfactory experience as the best they are likely to get. Customers subordinate their own priorities to the preferences of the model. This is a poor business outcome. And, unless you are McDonald’s, the idea that 80% of your customers ''want'' exactly the same thing — as opposed to being prepared to put up with it in, the absence of a better alternative — is a kind of wishful [[averagarianism]].
We call this effect “[[Pareto triage]]”. Great, for the huddled masses who just want the normal thing. But it poorly serves the long tail of oddities and opportunities. Those just beyond that “[[Pareto triage|Pareto threshold]]” have little choice but to manage their expectations and take a marginally unsatisfactory experience as the best they are likely to get. Customers subordinate their own priorities to the preferences of the model. This is a poor business outcome. And, unless you are McDonald’s, the idea that 80% of your customers ''want'' exactly the same thing — as opposed to being prepared to put up with it, in the absence of a better alternative — is a kind of wishful [[averagarianism]].
====The Moneyball effect: experts are bogus====
====The Moneyball effect: experts are bogus====
It gets worse for the poor old [[subject matter expert]]s. Even though, inevitably, one has less than perfect information, extrapolations, mathematical derivations and [[Large language model|algorithmic pattern matches]] from a large but finite data set will, it is ''deduced'' — have better predictive value than the gut feel of “[[ineffable]] [[expert]]ise”.  
It gets worse for the poor old [[subject matter expert]]s. Even though, inevitably, one has less than perfect information, extrapolations, mathematical derivations and [[Large language model|algorithmic pattern matches]] from a large but finite data set will, it is ''deduced'' — have better predictive value than the gut feel of “[[ineffable]] [[expert]]ise”.  
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Since the world overflows with data, we can programmatise business. Optimisation is now just a hard mathematical problem to be solved and, now we have computer processing power to burn, it is a [[knowable unknown]]. To the extent we fail, we can put it down to not enough data or computing power — ''yet''. But the singularity is coming, soon.
Since the world overflows with data, we can programmatise business. Optimisation is now just a hard mathematical problem to be solved and, now we have computer processing power to burn, it is a [[knowable unknown]]. To the extent we fail, we can put it down to not enough data or computing power — ''yet''. But the singularity is coming, soon.
====The persistence of rubbish====
====The persistence of rubbish====
It’s worth asking again: if we’re getting nearer some kind of optimised nirvana, how come everything seems so joyless and glum?
All the same, it’s worth asking again: if we’re getting nearer some kind of optimised nirvana, how come everything seems so joyless and glum?


Since data quantity and computing horsepower have exploded in the last few decades, the [[high-modernist]]s have grown ever surer that their time — the [[Singularity]] — is nigh. Before long ''everything will be solved''. Our only dilemma: what to do with all our leisure-time.  
Since data quantity and computing horsepower have exploded in the last few decades, the [[high-modernist]]s have grown ever surer that their time — the [[Singularity]] — is nigh. Before long ''everything will be solved''. Our only dilemma: what to do with all our leisure-time.  
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That would explain a curious dissonance: these modernising techniques arrive and flourish, while traditional modes of working requiring skill, craftsmanship and tact are outsourced, computerised, right-sized and AI-enhanced — but yet the end product gets no less cumbersome, no faster, no leaner, and no less risky.  ''[[Tedium]] remains constant''.<ref>This may be a [[sixteenth law of worker entropy]].</ref>
That would explain a curious dissonance: these modernising techniques arrive and flourish, while traditional modes of working requiring skill, craftsmanship and tact are outsourced, computerised, right-sized and AI-enhanced — but yet the end product gets no less cumbersome, no faster, no leaner, and no less risky.  ''[[Tedium]] remains constant''.<ref>This may be a [[sixteenth law of worker entropy]].</ref>


There may be fewer [[subject matter expert]]s around, but there seem to be more [[software-as-a-service]] providers, [[Master of Business Administration|MBA]]s,  [[COO]]s, [[workstream lead]]s and [[Proverbial school-leaver from Bucharest|itinerant school-leavers in call-centres on the outskirts of Brașov]]
There may be fewer [[subject matter expert]]s around, but there seem to be more [[software-as-a-service]] providers, [[Master of Business Administration|MBA]]s,  [[COO]]s, [[workstream lead]]s and [[Proverbial school-leaver from Bucharest|itinerant school-leavers in call-centres on the outskirts of Brașov]].


We present therefore the [[JC]]’s [[sixteenth law of worker entropy]] — the “[[law of conservation of tedium]]”:
{{quote|The total amount of tedium in an isolated system remains constant. Tedium can be neither created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed from one form to another, or transferred from one system to another.}}
====Taylorism====
====Taylorism====
Done of this is new: just our enthusiasm for it. The prophet of [[data modernism]] was [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]], progenitor of the maximally efficient production line. His inheritors say things like, “[[The Singularity is Near|the singularity is near]]” and “[[Software is eating the world|software will eat the world]]” but for all their millenarianism the on-the-ground experience at the business end of this all world-eating software is as grim as it ever was.
None of this is new: just our enthusiasm for it. The prophet of [[data modernism]] was [[Frederick Winslow Taylor]], progenitor of the maximally efficient production line. His inheritors say things like, “[[The Singularity is Near|the singularity is near]]” and “[[Software is eating the world|software will eat the world]]” but for all their millenarianism the on-the-ground experience at the business end of this all world-eating software is as grim as it ever was.
====Time====
====Time====
We have a theory that in reducing everything to measured inputs and outputs, [[data modernism]] collapses into a kind of ''[[reductionism]]'', only about ''time'': just as reductionists see all knowledge as being reducible to infinitesimally small, sub-atomic essences — in other words, all laws of nature are a function of theoretical physics — so [[data modernist]]s see socio-economics as reducible to infinitesimally small windows — “frames” — of ''time'': so thin as to be static, resembling the still frames of a movie reel. The beauty of static frames is they don’t move, so can’t do anything unexpected. By compiling a sequence of consecutive frames you can create a “cinematic” ''appearance'' of movement. In this way we replace ''actually'' passing time with ''apparently'' passing time.
In reducing everything to measured inputs and outputs, [[data modernism]] collapses into a kind of ''[[reductionism]]'', only about ''time'': just as reductionists see all knowledge as being reducible to infinitesimally small, sub-atomic essences — in other words, all laws of nature are a function of theoretical physics — so [[data modernist]]s see socio-economics as reducible to infinitesimally small windows — “frames” — of ''time'': so thin as to be static, resembling the still frames of a movie reel. The beauty of static frames is they don’t move, so can’t do anything unexpected. By compiling a sequence of consecutive frames you can create a “cinematic” ''appearance'' of movement. In this way we replace ''actually'' passing time with ''apparently'' passing time.


For the computer code in which it data modernism is written has do [[tense|''tense'']]: it is permanently in the present. Its continuity is a card trick on its user: in fact, we ascribe our own sense of continuity, from our own language, to the code. Like all good magic it relies on misdirection. It is odd we are so willing to ascribe to a box the magic in our heads.
For the computer code on which [[data modernism]] depends does not do ''[[tense]]'': it is, permanently, in the ''present''. The apparent continuity through time vouchsafed by computers is, like cinematography, a conjuring trick: in fact, there is no continuity: we ascribe our own sense of continuity, from our own language, to what we see. Like all good magic it relies on misdirection. The “magic” is all our own. It is odd we are so willing to ascribe to a box the magic in our heads.


For existential continuity, backwards and forwards in “time”, is precisely the problem that the human brain solves: this is the thing that demands continuously existing “things”, just one of which is “me”, moving through a spatio-temporal universe, interacting with each other and hence requiring definitive boundaries. This is a construction out of whole cloth.<ref>{{author|David Hume}} wrestled with this idea of continuity: if I see you, then look away, then look back at you, what ''grounds'' do I have for believing it is still “you”?  Computer code makes no such assumption. It captures property A, timestamp 1; property A timestamp 2, property A timestamp 3: these are discrete objects with common property, in a permanent present — code imputes no necessary link between them, not does it extrapolate intermediate states. It is the human genius to make that logical leap. How we do it, ''when'' we do it — generally, how human consciousness works, defies explanation. {{author|Daniel Dennett}} made a virtuoso attempt to apply this algorithmic [[reductionist]] approach to the problem of mind in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}, but ended up defining away the very thing he claimed to explain, effectively concluding “consciouness is an illusion”. But on whom?</ref>
For existential continuity, backwards and forwards in “time”, is precisely the problem that the human brain evolved to solve: this is the thing that demands continuously existing “things” with definitive boundaries, just one of which is “me”, moving through a spatio-temporal universe, interacting with each other. This is a human construction out of whole cloth. None of this continuity is in the data.<ref>{{author|David Hume}} wrestled with this idea of continuity: if I see you, then look away, then look back at you, what ''grounds'' do I have for believing it is still “you”?  Computer code makes no such assumption. It captures property A, timestamp 1; property A timestamp 2, property A timestamp 3: these are discrete objects with common property, in a permanent present — code imputes no necessary link between them, not does it extrapolate intermediate states. It is the human genius to make that logical leap. How we do it, ''when'' we do it — generally, how human consciousness works, defies explanation. {{author|Daniel Dennett}} made a virtuoso attempt to apply this algorithmic [[reductionist]] approach to the problem of mind in {{br|Consciousness Explained}}, but ended up defining away the very thing he claimed to explain, effectively concluding “consciouness is an illusion”. But on whom?</ref>


[[Data modernism]] thereby does away with the need for time and continuity altogether, but rather ''simulates'' it through a succession of static slices — but continuity vanishes when one regards the picture show as a sequence of frames.  
[[Data modernism]] does away with the need for time and continuity altogether, instead ''simulating'' it through a succession of static slices — but that continuity vanishes when one regards the picture show as a sequence of still frames.  


But dealing with history is exactly the challenge.
But existential continuity is not the sort of problem you can define away. Dealing with history and continuity is exactly the thing we are trying to solve.


Gerd Gigerenzer has a nice example that illustrates the importance of continuity.  
[[Gerd Gigerenzer]] has a nice example that illustrates the importance of continuity.  


Imagine a still frame of two pint glasses, A and B, each containing half a pint of beer.<Ref>One that costs more than a fortnight’s subscription to the JC, by the way.</ref> Which is half-full and which is half-empty?  
Imagine a still frame of two pint glasses, A and B, each containing half a pint of beer.<Ref>One that costs more than a fortnight’s subscription to the JC, by the way.</ref> Which is half-full and which is half-empty?  


Now, imagine a short film in which glass A is full and glass B empty, then a little Cartesian homunculus tips half of the contents of glass A into glass B. ''Now'' which is half-full and which is half-empty?  
Now, imagine a short film in which glass A is full and glass B empty, then a little Cartesian imp arrives, picks up glass A and tips half of its contents into glass B. ''Now'' which is half-full and which is half-empty? We can see that glass A is half-empty and glass B is half-full. ''That history makes a difference''.  
 
The first scenario seems to pose a stupid question. The second scenario tells us something small  about the history of the world. To capture that information using code is possible, sure, but it is extremely complicated.
 
And it is partly because having to cope with history, the passage of time, and the continued existence of objects, makes things exponentially more complex than they already are. An atomically thin snapshot of the world as data is enough of a beast to be still well beyond the operating parameters of even the most powerful quantum machines: that level of detail extending into the future and back from the past is, literally, infinitely more complicated. The modernist programme is to suppose that “time” is really just comprised of billions of infinitesimally thin, static slices, each functionally identical to any other, so by measuring the [[delta]] between them we have a means of handling that complexity.


In any case, just in time rationalisers take a cycle and code for that.  What is the process, start to finish, what are the dependencies, what are the plausible unknowns, and how do we optimise for efficiency of movement, components and materials, to manage
The first, static scenario poses an apparently stupid question. The second time-bound scenario tells us something small about the history of the world.


=== It’s the long run, stupid===
=== It’s the long run, stupid===
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