House of Eratosthenes

Way way back in the olden days, back when going to a movie or dinner at a restaurant was simple, I had comments to make about process vs. outcome. Since then, the Trump Era has come & gone…for now…and we’ve been battling the China Virus. I’m reminded of what my Uncle Wally told me about what one of his editors used to say to him: “The world is divided into two groups of people, the ones who go around dividing everyone into two groups, and everyone else…”

There are “process people” and there are “outcome people.” How do you tell them apart? Remember that old saying that insanity is repeating a consistent behavior with the expectation of an inconsistent result; that’s how.

Process people engaged in a bad process headed toward a bad outcome, won’t care about the outcome. They’ll defend their adherence to the details of the process, nevermind the fact that the process, also, is bad. Their defense is that there’s some authority or weight invested in this bad process, and they’re adhering to it. Their hope is that whoever is in a position to adjudicate, will put all the emphasis on following process and ignore outcome, the way they did. If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t work, they just appeal to a higher authority. So they never learn they did it the wrong way, because there’s no reason for them to learn this.

If you listen to them carefully, you can hear them ‘fessing up that this is how it works. “Our response was/is in line with guidance from the CDC.” It’s an answer to a question no one was asking.

No-on-recall, keep Gavin Newsom, was all about process versus outcome. Who in their right mind is going to defend the outcome of having Newsom in charge? Taxpaying residents heading for the hills, shit on the sidewalk, the place is literally in flames…but our guy in charge does have a defense. It’s all about “gonna follow the science!” — not about what’s supposed to be the whole point of leadership, leaving things in a condition better than how you found them.

When process people defend themselves this way, things get awkward fast because they’re bolstering a claim of premiere excellence, atop an accumulation of evidence that supports nothing better than adequacy. You can’t do an excellent job of following a process; that’s strictly pass-fail. But this doesn’t stop them from trying. Lookit me following the science! I’m following the CDC! They yell jump, I say how high? Clearly, I’m irreplaceable!

Everybody likes to be thought of as intelligent, but intelligence is the ability and the willingness to learn. Learning is a non-instinctive behavioral change. You have to screw up and admit you did it wrong. Only outcome people can do this, because only they monitor the outcome, with a genuine potential for saying to themselves, if the situation calls for it: “Well, that sucks. Let’s do it differently next time.”

When we debate taxing businesses, we’re actually debating destroying businesses. Outcome people tend to be pro-business, because you really can’t run a business while ignoring outcomes, unless your “business” is some government agency that never runs out of money. Conversely, you aren’t going to fit into any of those “businesses” in any capacity, unless you’re a process person.

The China Virus has polarized us deeply, because we’ve responded with a thorny thicket of rules rules and more rules, which are refined day-to-day by process people. You’ll notice this refinement, back to the very beginning, has had very little to do with results. That’s why. Meanwhile, the people who are fixated on these rules rules and more rules, and obliged to live under them, are outcome people. We care about the results. “But my shelter in place order was the approved method at the time” doesn’t mean an awful lot to us.

“Masks are how we keep each other safe!” is fraud, not because it’s demonstrably untrue (although certainly, support for it is lacking). It’s a deceitful statement because it’s what process people say when they’re pretending to be outcome people. They don’t care about keeping each other safe. They’d prefer people be safe versus not safe…maybe….but they really care about following and enforcing rules.

“I’m following the guidance from the CDC” is, at least, honest. It’s a process person presenting himself or herself as a process person. The final outcome which is on everybody’s mind, is a mere afterthought to such a person, but at least there’s no effort spent to pretend otherwise.

When people are forced to give up one thing for another thing, and thereby make clear what their priorities really are, the thing that rates highest to everyone with a working brain is a good outcome. When push comes to shove, no one with functioning intellect really cares about process, except as a means to an end. We’d sacrifice it in a heartbeat for the other, because we’re rational. But we’re not letting outcome-people actually make any decisions about anything. From the beginning, we have invested all the authority in process people. Here we are a year and a half into it, wondering what we did wrong. That’s what.

Overgeneralizing just a bit, and at the risk of annoying any ladies asking your audience, I think we can go ahead and call process people “women.” It’s rule by the HR Department; life as an endless series of hoops to jump through, for no reason but hoop jumping. Take the “education” system — say what you will about the SJWs, they just applied the coup de grace to a mortally wounded institution. Boys had already checked out long before, because school became nothing but rules and standardized tests, for the sake of rules and standardized tests. Focusing solely on the process lets the hen party continue indefinitely, since by design it will never achieve a result.

(n.b. that since “gender is just a social construction,” 75% at least of all people these days, of both sexes and however many genders, are effectively women).
- Severian | 09/26/2021 @ 06:01
Yeah, I was going to point out my standard disclaimer: Even when it seems to make the most sense, the effectiveness of gender stereotyping is in a state of rapid decline because we’re living in a time in which men are behaving more and more like women, and the women, compensating for the manufactured deficiency, are forced to think & act more like men.

It brings us to the one question the self-identifying and die-hard liberal absolutely, positively, cannot answer: “Define ‘woman’.”
- mkfreeberg | 09/26/2021 @ 11:02
[…] brought this to mind is this definitive post at Eratosthenes that examines the root of the current WuFlu […]
- Rule by the HR Witches | 09/28/2021 @ 10:05
[…] Movie Noble Sacrifices Is the Science Tinged with Politics, or the Politics Tinged with Science? Process and Outcome Masks and Manners The Hystericals Death Wishers We’re Arguing About the A-Word Again […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 12/03/2021 @ 06:31

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Process and OutcomeSaturday, September 25th, 2021

Process and Outcome
Saturday, September 25th, 2021