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vgr's profile
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
Venkatesh Rao
@vgr

Tweets

Venkatesh Rao

@vgr

This is my conversational account. For my work follow @ribbonfarm, @breaking_smart, @artofgig. Tweets are 90% vacuous views, apathetically held. Mediocritopian.

Los Angeles, CA
venkateshrao.com
Joined August 2007

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    1. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      Just as there is "science envy" in parts of liberal arts/humanities leading to pseudo-scientific superstructures on their subjects, there is a sort of "engineering envy" that leads adjacent fields to create engineering-like agency fictions on their fields.

      2 replies 14 retweets 47 likes
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    2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      In both cases, what actually undermines these attempts at imitating the epistemic structures of science and engineering is that you cargo-cult the processes without taking on equivalent uncertainties or risks of failure

      1 reply 6 retweets 23 likes
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    3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      In science, experiments can fail. In engineering, prototypes can blow up. Such failure represents the phenomenology of irreversible historical movement, however you narrativize it ("falsifiability" is metaphysical aestheticization of this irreversibility by non scitech types)

      1 reply 4 retweets 21 likes
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    4. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      By contrast, though critical theory, management theory, or design theory can have the procedural trappings of science or engineering, there is a lack of clear-cut failures marking the evolution of the discipline's history. There is only endlessly clever renarrativization

      2 replies 7 retweets 25 likes
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    5. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      When I moved from engineering (a particularly applied-science/math kind) to these HSS type fields, while I greatly enjoyed the new intellectual challenges and curiosities to pursue, there was no denying the clear step-function decrease in actual agency

      1 reply 2 retweets 11 likes
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    6. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      And before you jump to the conclusion that I'm bad at this new domain, no, I'm actually unreasonably effective at traditionally "soft" things like management problem solving, *because* I have no illusions about the reality of seemingly "engineering" like processes.

      1 reply 3 retweets 9 likes
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    7. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      Invariably, when I've picked battles (either in my past career, or now as a consultant), the adversary is a pseudo-engineering management "process" or a pseudo-scientific marketing or strategy approach.

      1 reply 3 retweets 15 likes
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    8. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      By contrast, when I like something native to management, it's because it doesn't pretend to be engineering and owns the softer, subtler, poetic aspects which are hard to cast into an engineering. I'll take a poetry spouting marketer over a lean-six-sigma ideologue any day

      2 replies 4 retweets 23 likes
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      Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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      While I have sympathy for a lot of engineering-adjacent types who are often mistreated or undervalued in engineering culture, the fact that they have to resort to rights advocacy rather than just fait-accompli doing what they want tells you where the agency lies.

      3:53 PM - 8 Sep 2019
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      • rapturist UcKema -THE THREE STRIKES - 𝕓𝕒𝕤𝕖𝕕 ⭐️⭐️⭐️ 𝕚𝕟𝕕𝕚𝕘𝕠𝕡𝕚𝕝𝕝𝕖𝕕 Nick Rock Eric Richards Jeffrey Coleman Stefan Rotenberg
      1 reply 0 retweets 7 likes
        1. New conversation
        2. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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          By contrast, asshole linchpin engineers can be so irreplaceable that they can be effectively dictatorial in their decisions and others have to adapt to them (good managers know how to tame them). A sign of how critical you are is how much you can get away with being an asshole.

          2 replies 1 retweet 16 likes
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        3. Venkatesh Rao‏ @vgr 8 Sep 2019
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          Which is not to say you should... When you look at indispensable-assholery in the non-engineering professions, invariably you'll find that they're the ones who ignore the pseudo-engineering stuff, have no engineering envy, and just get things done their own inimitable way.

          1 reply 1 retweet 10 likes
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        4. End of conversation

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