I’m always a believer that if you trust someone enough to let him do a job for you, then let him do it in his own terms. Additional oversight is not always the solution every time there is a failure in a deletegated task.
I agree with Tyler. If you have your boss always looking over your shoulder, you become more risk-averse. You just want to avoid making mistakes. More oversight may discourage “imaginative, long-run thinking”, and promote groupthink. Generally I prefer less oversight, make people more independent rather than more accountable. “Give them a culture of internal pride”. Then,, they will be accountable to themselves. See also Ibnu Khaldun on child rearing.
The question then is when to oversee and to what extent. To this I’m reminded of Ki Hajar Dewantara’s saying: “ing ngarsa sungtulada, ing madya mangun karsa, tut wuri handayani“. Leaders should be everywhere, playing different roles in different places.
I’m writing this blog just to get away from doing other more important things.
John Perry: “Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.
Read more, maybe you can become an effective and useful procrastinator.
Masuk milis SMA mengingatkan saya ke banyak hal. Banyak kenangan.
Saya tidak akan mengatakan bahwa kenangan itu berguna karena kita bisa menarik pelajaran darinya. Pelajaran apa? Bagaimana menariknya? Kapan kepakainya? Setiap titik di kehidupan ini punya latar, warna dan koordinat yang berbeda. Kenangan dulu kadang malah merusak garis kita sekarang.
Ah, tapi mengenang juga memberikan diri kita ini identitas. Masak sih? Bukannya identitas setiap orang selalu berubah setiap saat di setiap titik. Banyak orang yang sekarang ada di koordinat yang berdekatan dengan kita, tapi punya kenangan masa lalu yang jauh dengan kita. Dan orang-orang yang kita kenang, bukannya sekarang identitas mereka sudah berjauhan dengan kita? Buktinya? Mereka harus kita kenang untuk hadir.
Saya ingin bisa mengenang harapan masa lalu. Tapi apa ada, berapa panjang? Semua harapan lalu itu pendek, selalu berubah. Itu yang harus diubah.
Saya ingin mengenang masa depan. Biar juga ingat masa depanku bukan melulu masa laluku.
Biar aku melihat titik yang menunggu di depan, dan belajar mencapainya.
Biar aku merasakan, mengharapkan, bergidik melihat calon-calon identitasku di masa depan.
Biar anak-anakku punya harapan yang dikenang, dan kenangan yang penuh harap.
Biar aku selalu berkenang ke hari penantian.
This pretty much sums it all (the school part).
Sometimes you wonder if, having moral virtues, whether people can police themselves. Not directly related, but this article gives you a picture of the need to have institution/system to maintain and control the rule of law:
“International law and transparency, we are told, are unnecessary because, unlike all of the other countries in the world, we are Americans, and we naturally believe in human rights and the rule of law. We need no special incentives to be good. But if history teaches us anything, it is that when governments, no matter how well they think of themselves, decide to free themselves from constraints, they become unconstrained, and when they refuse to make themselves accountable, they abuse their power. The only thing that has been lacking until now has been the proof of what everyone should already have known: that unchecked power leads to hubris, hubris leads to corruption, and corruption leads to violations of human rights.
Americans are proud of their devotion to democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. But these cannot exist without institutional preconditions: they cannot exist if government officials insist on complete secrecy, mock international covenants, and refuse to allow their actions to be tested and constrained by law.”
I honestly don’t know why there hasn’t been an outrage in the US. Do people really have such low expectations of their leaders? “The soft bigotry of low expectations means you can be seen to outperform by merely getting by.”
This cartoon really captures the nuances.
I know this is an old book. I just listened to the audio, and for a few moments, the book really inspired my spiritual senses. I think the fact this book was written in 1968 made it much more moving, especially in these two occasions.
I was so awestruck by Arthur C. Clarke’s description of Discovery passing Jupiter that it made me contemplate on the greatness of the creation.
The other moment was Clarke’s explanation of Hal ‘s action. Hal was feeling guilty for keeping a secret. And somehow for him this guilt was something wrong, some error. However, being a supercomputer, he was unable to admit that he had made errors. This secret kept him in denial and drove him “crazy“. This got me thinking of the saying that everyone is born in a state of pure, but the actions of people around him can change him.
I read a lot of political blogs recently, it’s part of my daily routine now. I always enjoy reading op-ed pieces in newspapers, and the blogs I read are just op-eds with a few more express shots. They opine and take stands on everything.
Now, this is in contrast to what happens back home. A lot of academics are becoming arm-chair quarterbacks, providing instant analysis on various subjects to the media. I don’t want to be too critical here, let’s just say there a lot of reasons for them to do this. They are also in great demand due to media and society obsession of high academic titles.
However, in the name of academic integrity and independence, the opinions offered are sometimes too stale and shallow. They comment on policies while trying to avoid alienating the policy makers. I’d like them to play real quarterbacking one of these days. Then they really have to choose their strategy and who to throw the ball to.
I don’t disagree with the quote Arianto has about human capital. But if it were me, I’d find some other athletes to make an example of. Maybe Ali, or Jordan. There are plenty of pitchers (and even more athletes) comparable to Clemens.
If you want to compare pitchers with economists, may I suggest the smartest pitcher who ever lived? He might not have Clemens’ arm, but he’s very economical in his pitches, maximizing on his strengths and always resourceful in exploiting opponents’ weaknesses. Now that has to be the very thing economists love.
Did I mention he’s very smart? Just look at him pitching, he looks like Clark Kent wearing Superman baseball uniform. The Superman logo is a C not an S.
Off topic. This link is for you, Arianto.
I was bored, and googled my name (forgive me).
The 29th entry gives me this:
Solution for hw3 ;; ;; This solution is suggested …
… for hw3 ;; ;; This solution is suggested by Aria Prima Novianto ;;—beta-redex? …
www.cs.ucla.edu/~palsberg/course/purdue/ cs565/F96/solutions/solutions3
(go down to about the middle of the page).
I know that Palsberg moved to UCLA. But other than that, I don’t remember anything about the Programming Language class, let alone lambda calculus. It seems so long ago.
But, I remember I didn’t do that well in the class to have my solution in there. Oh, well.