A lot of CEOs are openly misanthropic, they dehumanise people as another expense in their sheet. Very open statements like the ‘New tech is going to do all the jobs, we do not need to hire humans anymore” are presented to drive insecurities among people. Historically, every revolution has required lesser and lesser humans for an activity thereby contributing to more people to higher order work. One single farmer can easily feed another 10 while a hunter-gatherer could not feed beyond their family; which meant farming communities had a lot of people available to figure out to do more than just try to figure out how to eat day in and out.
What if everyone loses their job to AI? It will lead to extreme poverty and zero buying power leaving the companies with no buyers which is nothing but a self destruction. Another issue is with the thinking, every other leader I come across, hate humans and see them as expenses. A very bad mindset where the very nature of human existence is questioned. Society truly advances when there is boredom, not enough work to do while still being able to afford a living. When an executive only thinks about a cheaper present and not an advanced future, it is not anything about progression but regression disguised as progress.
If the executives still push for a cheaper present in a misanthropic manner, then governments have to turn to being socialist. Pay people a living wage, healthcare and basic shelter which will build boredom in people’s life to do something meaningful to create a higher order future that results in progress. If that does not happen and no one takes any step against misanthropy, there will be a collapse in the society to reach a breaking point, before misanthropists are dethroned but not before extreme regression resembling feudal societies.
During my school holidays, I used to visit my hometown and also the nearby villages. In the 80s and early 90s farms were dominated by use of animals for transport, ploughing, milling etc. I used to jokingly refer to as being in a self driving car as the bulls when leaving the farm will always go by default to the home without anyone controlling them. On narrow roads, the bulls drag the cart to the side and give way for the oncoming traffic.
Human and animal power was so intertwined in the life that when mopeds and tractors became affordable and available, a few people started switching to it once they gave a try and saw the promise. Mopeds helped to ferry small loads very far and frequently, helped supply on demand mobility. Tractor’s raw power was visible when it was able to till big swathes of land in the first of half of the day.
It was a dream to adopt technology and reap the benefits, but it was often short-lived. A majority of the village population lived a cycle of food – work – entertainment until they became too ill. They visited a doc only when major ailments arise, often getting very late treatment for preventable diseases. This mindset went into use of vehicles. No one cared to do pre-emptive maintenance, rampant misuse of kerosene as fuel because it was cheaper due to rationing.
When I visited a farm one summer, I noticed a tv program on how to get the best out of your tractor and a few people watching very eagerly. The tips were simple, it was educating on using the right gears. A good portion of them were selecting a high gear and keeping it that way instead of starting low and shifting up when needed. A more shocking thing I learnt was on the maintenance, no one was informed enough that coolant, brake oil and engine oil needs change or topup. The list went on, not a single person in the village fixed their tractor until it ground to a halt just like how they were using animals on the farm. Using a tractor meant slowing down in many areas whereas it was supposed to speed up and ease things.
The next generation picked up these issues and fixed it; I thought that is it, until I visited a farm in Europe later that used tractors that had features like GPS navigation and auto steer for precise tilling and planting reducing a lot of human labour needed to take care of large farms. This came with an even steeper learning curve, but with far greater productivity. Technology isn’t usually additive like a telephone enabling anyone to make calls; it is sometimes a multiplier which requires the baseline capabilities to be higher to reap large benefits.
A doctor whom I met, was upset about dealing with a lot of people coming to clinic equipped with wikipedia and LLM generated knowledge. Years of education and practice puts a doctor in the zone of unconscious competence, but for an expert beginner with no formal education or practice it is just a fact in some context without reflecting what is in hand. The doctor’s intuition will be right and often arrived without conscious thought, asking them to explain in detail may prove counter effective, in some case make the doctor doubt their judgement and end up treating poorly.
Let us take a few other examples from other domain. If you have come across the Monty Hall problem, where a host in a game shows 3 doors to a contestant, behind 2 doors are goats and the remaining 1 door with a huge reward. Once a door has been chosen, the host will open a door which has a goat behind it and give the contestant an option to switch the door if they think they would have made the wrong choice. If we do not think deeply, we think the odds are always 1/3rd irrespective of switching or not. In reality the odds are 2/3 if you switch and that has even stumped degree holders in math.
Another counter intuitive one is bank teller queue management. I read at this blog, which mentions that an average five hour waiting time to service a customer can be reduced to 3 minutes to just by adding one teller extra. That is 90x productivity jump by doubling cost yet a lot of decision makers won’t believe the expert who analyses the situation and recommends them the solution because it does not make sense for a non expert. The example is dramatic but can happen in real situations as well.
When I observe a lot of people with expertise, their unconscious competence helps them navigate with ease without even thinking about it. The moment you question their judgement, their instincts take a back seat and suddenly their competency goes down. I was at a restaurant, I requested a cook for fried eggs. The cook asked if I wanted both sides to be cooked, and I said “yes, but don’t break the yolk”. The cook left out a nervous laughter and when turning the eggs to the other side, the yolk broke. I disrupted the cook’s flow just by doubting their ability.
This happens frequently at work. Decision makers who are expert beginners often want to get into the details, what this does is, it interrupts the flow mode of expertise. Explaining the solutions and decision making process which would otherwise be unconscious nature, requires a good deal of effort and often leads to sub optimal solutions. If you have an expertise on some area and are tasked with solutions, then keep in mind that you have to explain your decisions to people who know details at a surface level. People are naturally curious and LLMs feed their curiosity a great deal.
For this reason, whenever I come up with solutions, I make it a multi step approach. This is I learnt from many different sources which help you harvest your unconscious competence.
Step 1 – Read the problem statement, re-read and think very hard to solve the problem. Too often no solution emerges, but all of a sudden when you are at a break, a solution emerges and when it happens immediately write it down. Beware, this solution is ephemeral and its details vanishes within a few minutes. Keep noting down the solutions that pop up at odd times like driving, cleaning etc.
Step 2 – Find reference material from internet and previous assignments to back your solutions. If it is a novel solution, dive deeper to explain but do not change the solution because you can’t find explanations.
Step 3 – KYEB (Know Your Expert Beginners) and be equipped with ELI5 answers to anticipated questions to impart confidence of the solution.
Before presenting your solution, establish your credentials which helps setting the right expectation using info from the KYEB research. This helps to present your views as an expert without getting into a loop of explanations and doubts. For the doctor’s case I discussed at the beginning, I recently see a few doctors have a dossier to quickly explain their decisions and cut short the questioning from the patients. We also will be expert beginners at many topics, the best we can help there is to let the experts do their job.
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