Lazy Expert Syndrome
riskology.co
riskology.co
Mature evaluation of risks increases the weighting given to tail events, black swans etc., particularly if the outcome is severe. Teaching this perspective ought to be effective in keeping it in mind for the teacher too.
He also suggested that rather than just looking at a car, you look at the position of the car, who's driving, the age, have I seen them drive weirdly yet? This way you can build up a much better mental model of how they're going to react to something. This has saved me numerous times where I've judged what a car will do just by how they're placed in the road, even if they look like they may do something else to a normal driver.
It's a technique that I've shown to my girlfriend and it's changed her driving (for the better) and what I'll be teaching my kids when the time comes.
Should I say that observing every vehicle across the median on the oncoming carriageway is inefficient? Well I can't say that because occasionally some small cargo or even a wheel falls off and bounds across to the oncoming lane - something you definitely want to see coming.
Perhaps taking a zonal approach is as effective and certainly less taxing on the driver.
Scan each zone, some zones get scanned more frequently, and look for anything unusual.
Well, what else are you doing while driving?
For the most part, whatever your answer is to that question, stop it. (Reasonable exceptions apply; conversation with another in the car isn't too big a deal, of course.)
Now that you're just driving and not doing anything else, you might as well be active about it and be on the lookout for long-tail risks, since really long-tail risks are all you ever have to worry about. Driving is fairly safe and almost everything that ever happens bad is long-tail in the first place or we wouldn't drive.
I'm not sure I agree that "driving is fairly safe" though. We have mitigated much of the risk associated with driving with vehicle impact standards and road design. I still really feel that most drivers don't understand the magnitude of what they are doing - they become accustomed to the relative safety and start doing other things. It seems the more safety we "build into the system" the more risks people are willing to take. I'm not suggesting we take safety out of the system though!
Some things need to be brute forced.
It's not that you're consciously looking at each car and saying "Is this car going to be a problem? Is this one a problem?" Instead, you recognize patterns. If a car suddenly weaves out of its lane, it triggers a tinge of fear and you give that car a wide berth until you can pass him and leave him behind. If you see brake lights go on 10 cars ahead of you, you know that you're going to have to slow down, so get ready for it (oftentimes, I'll let up on the gas as soon as I see brake lights go on a quarter mile down the road, and by the time I get to the traffic, I'll be going their speed anyway). If you're in a car's blind spot, pay extra careful attention to turn signals or any deviation from his lane, and try to pull forward or behind so he can see you. If a car is clearly in a rush, it's a good bet he's going to weave in front of you, so hang back and make sure you have room to adjust if he does. If two cars try to enter the same spot in the same line (this is my personal biggest fear, they're both in each other's blind spot and each has reason to believe the lane they're switching into is clear), hang back, and honk if it's clear that they don't see each other.
It's about pattern recognition, knowing which situations are dangerous so you can be extra careful whenever it looks like one of those situations is happening.
I think defensive driving is a good way to introduce that kind of prudence to people who would otherwise not pay close attention to things because piloting an auto is frightening at first so makes a person receptive to whatever makes them safer and gives them confidence.
The opposite is to drive Offensively (ha ha) which I guess is to assume that every other car will do the right thing and it's okay if I take a few risks.
In the morning, I drive with the assumption that everyone is half blind and too aged to drive. I work next to an eye clinic, so this is also true.
Drive like everyone else is a fool and you should make it back home safe.
[0]: http://www.iam.org.uk/ [1]: http://www.amazon.com/Roadcraft-Police-Drivers-Handbook-Foun...
My wife didn't understand at first, but after 12 years of driving with zero accidents, it becomes apparent that it works.
In my experience a shortcut to this level of awareness is to regularly cycle in commuting traffic. Not only does one notice much more, but one also notices the classes of things that it's actually impossible to notice from an autocage. (Examples: what most drivers are doing in addition to driving, where pedestrians are hiding, how a line of traffic moves through signals in fits and starts, etc.)
At first, everything is new and scary, so they'll ask for help with even basic things, and maybe keep meticulous notes or comments about what they're doing.
Later, after they've gotten more and more comfortable, they'll stop keeping good notes and asking for help.
Finally, after being bitten in the ass a few times, they'll start to regard all computer systems as being in active conspiracy to make their life and their code miserable, and at last they'll finally have the correct mindset to get quality work done.
I've been falling out of planes for over 20 years, and have seen the equipment progress in design and function such that people don't die due to the same things which used to claim skydivers. However the yearly rate of death remains about the same. The dark joke is that as the sport has gotten safer people have had to come up with new, more stupid ways to die.
Smarter people than me point to the theory of risk homeostasis. Basically, you accept a level of risk of an activity, if the safety of this act increases you'll find new ways to make it as risky as it was previously.
https://www.google.com/search?q=risk+homeostasis
In skydiving this is jumping smaller and smaller canopies (aka parachutes), swooping, base jumping, big way formations, aggressive angle flying, etc.
There are old pilots and there are bold pilots. There are no old, bold pilots.
More people need to read the "I learned about flying from that" series of books, which is a collection of columns.
In terms of experience - I see a LOT of experienced motorcycle riders that have "1 year of experience 10 times". I'm not saying that I'm a better rider than other experienced riders, however motorcycle riding is something that requires constant discipline (moreso than other forms of transportation that people generally do).
edit: Please don't take this comment as any indication of your friends experience. I'm speaking in generalities.
From Wikipedia's article on Motorcycle Safety: Per vehicle mile traveled, motorcyclists' risk of a fatal crash is 35 times greater than a passenger car.
Motorcycles are insanely dangerous. There are 23 fatalities per 100 million miles ridden in the US. If you ride 4,000 miles a year for 40 years, that gives you just over a 4% chance of dying. Compare to a 0.1% chance for doing the same in a car. And that's just the risk of death. It doesn't include risk of paralysis, brain damage, or losing a limb. Even if you are a perfect rider, half of all fatal motorcycle accidents are collisions with cars. Many of those simply cannot be avoided.
People would rightly call you insane for driving a car that had 35x more fatalities than average. I fail to see how removing two wheels makes it OK.
(Note: I've been riding for seven years and had no accidents. There are some good reasons for riding a motorcycle, but they don't involve recreation.)
Motorcycle touring is my primary leisure activity. It's what I do during summer holidays. A 300cc scooter is my primary means of travel in London. Riding on motorized two wheels is so integrated into my life that it would be hard for me to imagine a life without it.
It's almost a physical need. After a few days of snow, or a spending some time somewhere without a motorcycle, I start getting cravings. I'll frequently go out for a wander on weekends for no other reason than to ride.
Riding has a meditative quality. You can't think about anything else; you're forced to be in the moment, in flow, in a constant planning and reactive mode. Worries and concerns and any other busy thoughts disappear.
Maybe I don't correctly evaluate the risk or I just assign too much value to the benefits I get. It's very hard to calculate with a cost of own life. Moreover this cost is changing. It can temporarily increase for example when you support a family. But how do you account for the fact that you have a finite amount of time here no matter what you do? There are much less risky things to do and also much riskier ones than riding a motorbike. Are all the people who take more than the smallest possible amount of risk crazy or unable to assess the values? Honestly, I still don't know.
http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2012-06-10/health/fl-motorc...
The documented risk of dying from a serious head wound while riding without a helmet is so high, bare-headed motorcyclists are considered ideal organ donors: They're typically young, otherwise healthy and at high risk of brain death from sudden trauma.
Its interesting that I was just having a conversation about this yesterday. In today's world, you simply can't stop learning after you've got a job. You have to keep learning, not only new technologies, but also revisit the fundamentals every now and then. To be sure, if you work in a field that you like (as I do) it is much easier to do this. If not, you can rationalize the time investment as going towards making you better at your job.
We are short of IT staff and the lab staff seem to have more free time. Why not involve them in the process? I communicate with them, get to understand what they need better, and save time on writing tests that would probably be obsolete a few months down the line, due to the rapidly changing nature of our business. "Individuals and interactions over processes and tools".
Coding to best standards is a nice ideal to have, but in almost every place I have worked getting something working quickly has been a far higher priority.
Sad but true.
Not writing the tests gets one to bed earlier, ergo well-rested programmer, ergo no release bugs.
Jokes apart, the solution is good and practical.
Why do we have rules at all? If we all knew everything about everything, then we wouldn't need rules; we'd just make every decision correctly on our own. But we don't know everything about everything, so rules provide simple heuristics to guide our behavior.
But sometimes a person knows everything about 1 or 2 things. And in those things, if they really know what we're doing, they don't need rules, because their understanding exceeds simple heuristics.
So, I think the word "expert" is misplaced here, which is IMO part of the problem. Just because you've done something for a long time, that doesn't make you an expert. And expertise is a narrow lane--an expert in bricklaying might not be an expert in construction safety.
All that said, I have found that teaching is a great way to develop personal competence. But it's not because I'm lazy, it's because teaching forces me to examine the rules, and the basis for their creation, which builds real competence and ultimately expertise.
I doubt he was all there when this was going down.
I guess mentoring would be a great thing to do.
A student always fails exam. And takes extra classes - the professors explains and explains. But the student - "I don't get it, I don't get it". Finally the professor loses his mind "Oh, come on - I already got it from that much explaining"
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1) constantly compliment, in extremely general terms, their employees : "The world is better off without Capone’s expertise, but it’s not better off without yours", "how even the smartest people in the world can destroy their lives and careers with a tiny mistake". But only in general terms.
2) their only purpose is to increase their own money : "We were obsessed with safety. Insurance for construction companies is extremely expensive; one way to stay competitive was to make sure no employees got hurt". The article itself is just attention-grabbing, and it's obviously succeeded with very little actual content.
3) Between the lines it is clear what they really think about their employees : "You see, you’ve been blessed with the ability to think, reason, and do math". In other words, he thinks his (ex-)employees are morons. "That’s how the brain works—it fears what it doesn’t understand.". He proceeds to "explain how your mind words", again patronizing, childish and confirming his own superiority.
4) They suggest having the solution. Just read the titles "How To Stay On Top Of Your Game And Never Make Rookie Mistakes", "Why You Suffer From Lazy Expert Syndrome"
5) Of course, they don't have the solution. The problem is that the solution is the point where the good balances out the bad. Where your way of working prevents you getting fired, or even gets you good review, but otherwise is as little work and as little risk as possible. But of course, there is zero guidance in the article about where to find this point.
Probably there's 2 reasons for this. Firstly, they don't want you to think in your own interest. The interest of the manager comes first (I'd say the company's interest, but let's be honest here), and that means maximizing output (as alluded to in the skills of an expert cook. Inaccurate, of course. My dad's a cook and I've asked this many times. The thing that distinguishes an expert cook is consistently good food. NOT more of it, even though a significant part of training for cooks is how to increase food output to a point without degrading quality too much. But consistently good food, that's bloody hard)
6) Due to lack of a solution, an extremely general advice is given. "Become a mentor". Right. Supremely unhelpful of course. Like all of management. You could make a list of 10 inspirational lines and you'd have a good summary of hundreds of terabytes of these pieces.
Also, I've studied AI and the idea that the brain "fears what it doesn't understand". That is just so wrong it's ridiculous. When you train a person for something new, what happens is that the higher (and MUCH slower) brain processes train the lower ones to perform a task. There is no fear involved (in non-extreme situations, not talking about learning to skydive here), there is simply switching from working from an abstract model (e.g. from a book, from a trainer) to working in an extremely non-abstract situation (the real world). For abstract models, the brain is very, very slow, inaccurate and also very, very much non-parallel. Non-abstract reflexive models - very, very fast, extremely accurate and massively parallel (10-15 neurons involved at most in decision making, you can combine it with dozens of other tasks without effort, very fast and appears even faster because the brain responds to it's prediction of a future situation, not to the impulses it's actually receiving, creating the -usually good enough- illusion of infinitely fast reactions as long as the prediction is accurate (e.g. nobody has a brain fast enough to make a tennis racket track a tennis ball. That is impossible with a feedback loop that takes 0.10-0.15s to react, it needs thousands of hertz. Yet lots of humans do so). And of course, hilarity ensues, often painfully, if the prediction is wrong).