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Comment by throwaway47292 | Hacker News Reader

> A fish rots from the head.

Are you sure about that? Doesn't it rot from the guts outwards?

It's a widely used proverb with versions of it found all over Europe and Asia, alluding to the idea that organisations fail due to bad leadership. One early version I've found is "a fish rots from the head, not the tail", which avoids the issue you raised, so it's likely it has become abbreviated over time as it became more widely known.

Hmm in theory it would start to rot from where it has the biggest exposure to air and or bacteria...so my highly scientific theory:

It starts from the head because gills, but the stink comes from the guts (lack of fresh air) ;)

i think the original proverb is actually the fish stinks from the head, which later became the fish rots from the head, but this is biologically incorrect.

https://australian.museum/learn/science/stages-of-decomposit...

for example you can see the decomposition of a pig, it looks like the head is first, but it is actually the bacteria in the gut.

But you can also see that maggots start in the ear, i don't know enough about Fish-gut bacteria, but you can check a Fish freshness when you smell the Gills the Colors of them and if the Eye is milky...well and sometimes the slime on the fish-skin....maybe that's the history of that proverb (freshness indicator mostly from the gills/eyes...head)

yea, visibly it looks like its starting from the head, and probably the smell comes from there as well, and of course thats where insects can start eating first (eyes, mouth etc)

it is funny though, i have used this proverb hundreds of times, until today i decided to think a bit about it, and look up how bodies decompose.

i wonder if in those big companies actually the leadership takes all the fault, maybe like in 1984, the real power is in the proles, they can change everything if they want.. they just dont seem to want change.

It's not about taking it literally... it's a proverb. It means organization or militaries or whatever else usually goes bad due to leadership, not due to the people at the bottom of the hierarchy. I thought this was obvious.

>It's not about taking it literally... it's a proverb.

Like "no BS Sherlock"?

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