Deepening MTG Story & Insight Sought

 Saw your report on MTG with Hasbro,

I saw a report by Jason Haas on MTG. 

Some thoughts to "deepen" the story for analysts--and in exchange, a request [to the person this was shared with] for insight... 

If this seems a little long please forgive me--it is "reduced-thorough" to be thorough in my own autistic(ish) sort of way, but to be (I hope) not-overwhelming, and actually worth your time (the first part anyway).

I was a player a long time ago, learning (badly) MTG from a friend in my middle school days.

By high school, given limited resources to buy any cards, I would use statistical tests (playing self and computing from results the effects resulting from adjustments to decks) to help compile cards into very effective decks with a very limited set of cards.

I was that poor kid with the same (varying only slightly) deck for YEARS who...kept beating the kids with decks of cards that could rival the cost of a car (average, used, at that time).

By the end of my sophomore year, however, I had begun experimenting and changing-up decks. I walked into a tournament once where it was a 20-on-20 free-for-all. I won in just a couple of turns, against more monied opponents and against far-longer-term players (more experience) than I.

This is what made MTG so grand: they all LAUGHED about this (I beat them with a deck of creatures whose type was...squirrels). It was an ultra fun, free-wheeling, inclusive, non-judgmental community (even if the occassional "very serious player(TM)" got very upset after losing despite that his deck cost $700): I, a nobody with no income or money to speak of and only a very slowly built, questionable collection, could stomp 20 other players with far more money (read, intact families! typically), time, experience, collections, and decks to pull from... and yes, it was surprising to them that I had, but not because that was unlikely: it was COMMON to be surprised like this... A peer at our school jumped-in on a game one day, pulling together haphazardly a deck from cards he borrowed, and beat us all with "commons" and "uncommons" cards -- that was surprising given what other people had (carefully curated decks with expensive choice cards), but not uncommon in MTG where skill mattered (he had a LOT of prior experience) and where how even those not-rare, not-expensive cards could be used together in a skillful way.

By my college days MTG was changing. I had stopped playing to focus on studies. Over a break visiting friends, I noticed a deck that was "broken"--all the cards seemed to work together TOO well and easily, and that was ALL of them doing that. I would examine this card then that card that was being played--their "mana costs" were quite low, and even if the creature stats weren't all that high, they were filled with special abilities and effects--and they weren't even rare much of the time.

It wasn't long after, on another visit to my hometown with buddies, I saw this again...and again. "It doesn't seem like they're prioritizing BALANCE anymore--I could have never afforded to play this game in high school. Heck, I couldn't afford to play it now. You would just constantly have to buy more cards, not because they're cool or exciting or special or well thought of, but because all your old cards will no longer have even the slightest chance in a game with those who have bought the new cards. They've turned the game into[ the] Yu-Gi-Oh[ card game]."

+ + +

The "deepen" bit is the over-issuance of cards and players finding they "can't keep up" is not new--it is a predictable, emergent phenomenon of throwing-out the old principles that made the game so welcoming and inclusive. From releases and individual cards being carefully crafted/tailored, tested, etc. so they were "balanced" in play, to that care leading to releases being not too frequent, and extending even to the numbers of cards issued or not, and re-issued, as as not to "break" the game.

It was HARD to make decks that had effects, special "combos", and other violations of expectations of players: Magic was a game for normies, geeks, gamers, even hackers, all alike--someone with powerful cards could be overcome through someone with junk they got partly from a lost and found, partly from a donor box, partly from a thrift shop, "playing the rules." (We would actually do events where rules were, you had to have a card from each of the sources mentioned--sources like these!) Fast-forward and the game's new ownership was simplifying the rules heavily (things like "mana burn", which are literally expected/assumed by older cards, or mentioned by them, etc., were eliminated).

It isn't obvious to an outsider, but a game like MTG is an passionates', artisal game: the kind of thing you would get at the dingy nerd-and-gamers-and-readers-and-records combination shop that's a dingy place a couple of suites down from the local abortion mill (aka "makes rent cheap), stacked with old things and has the aisle for new board games that happen to be completely unheard of in the mainstream, which arises from carefully deliberated discussion by the kinds of people in those places, who want to be as inclusive as possible (it is, after all, their livelihood)... the kind of place that does game nights for promos.

When MTG was sold, it eventually leaked that the new persons doing the crafting inside basically hated their audience--this alone drove a lot of people to stop buying new cards. Why give money to people who despite you but pretend otherwise? But...it showed in the decisions being made, you could tell players could feel it even when they didn't see those leaks. And when a company has a product they sell to people they don't particularly empathize with they...are tempted to milk their audience for all they are worth: I'm not alone in being someone who hasn't played with any newer cards for many years unless they were gifts from a friend. I figured it would go on a while because young kids would think the packs looked cool in the aisles at target...but they think the same thing of e.g. Yu-Gi-Oh!, and they always drop that after a few years for the same "broken" reasons.

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The reason to reach was to not just provide this deeper dive, but also this: I haven't seen an "analyst" in years who seemed to be aware of more than spreadsheets or conventional, formal matters of interest to suits and understandable to them. It is remarkable to see a little more than that--e.g. not just that people are talking of the ruin of value as the market is flooded by Hasbro, but the players' frustration that they cannot keep-up unless they play a "format" that makes old cards viable: Commander.

In fact, two weekends back I played with two buddies (only the second time in several years) using a deck built by one of them playing...Commander. It has not been worth it (to really anyone) to play "real Magic" for years. We ONLY ever play Commander anymore.

What intrigued me is that your analysis went beyond superficial, can-put-it-on-a-spreadsheet analysis. 

I am a ...slightly?... autistic (the kind who tries to accommodate rather than ask for accomodation--it makes one grow and fits much of the advice you get from e.g. Temple Grandin) semi-wonky guy who stares in awe whenever I'm in a big firm and see...how badly everything seems to go and yet firms can skate through reviews by investment analysts as golden. 

I've had a thought for several years to "work to where I can save back, go finish school, then perhaps go into the financial space" due to this--nobody seems to be looking under the right rocks, they look under the well-crafted false rocks put in aesthetic places to seem like they're running as smoothly as a monk's mood in a Zen garden. Everything to do with actual operations and other important factors (morale, the "in the trenches" knowledge and tribal knowledge of the foot soldiers and the technicians and the engineers, etc.), go completely missed.

So seeing you go beyond just financials and scarcity and mentioning players' thoughts and feelings...puts you vastly ahead of other analysts in terms of quality of the reporting. Have you any ideas or recommendations or insights into how one can become and work in analysis in this space in a more non-traditional manner?

Perhaps putting it another way: managment knows what gets analyzed, so they optimize for those things -- but per Goodhart's law, that means that those things which we measure cease to be valid measures. From my own experience, I know I need to work on some issues of verbal processing, as well as "import" from domains that provide some incredibly useful analogies to aspects of operations, and to hammer these out into formal papers or descriptions that others could review and use and understand, which takes time. But once I do, there will be a new approach to reviewing firms for their investment and future potential.

What I have never run into though is this info: how one then finds people to work with using that kind of thing. It is, after all, talk of new approaches... and at that point you're talking about something that people will have a hard time with hearing and evaluating, much less understanding any of it! (Then, layer-on the communications issues!) 

The Blessings and Curses of Picking-Up/Worsening Communications Impairments

 An experience goes thus: an idea is formed in mind, it is clear, and one even finds the words to express it clearly--laid out in a manner orderly so as to be ready to marshall them through the voice box and speak to another human being.

Then flex those muscles and begin, and it is disorderly, like the troops marshalled were all fired upon and sent into a jumbled panic as they moved from one area of the brain to the other that directs the nerves of your vocal chords.

I was asked some months ago to submit paperwork, after a coworker tattled...but reported people were, let's say, "messing" with me, due to matters related to disability. I'm an oddball who persists in working rather than seeking to quit, and in pursuing one's work whatever it may be at that time with an excellence that "scares" people, according to an engineer who would pass me information about what people were saying from day to day: if you're reading and entering data, for example, but simultaneously considering the layout of a program and choices--which language, how to simplify, optimizations, who else could benefit and what adjustments would be made, and you mention "yeah, for that I have this program in my head", this apparently scares even the engineers.

Of course, programs themselves are...language, that you may be able to order in mind, but not then express!

When I was asked to submit accommodations paperwork, which I hadn't been doing out of fear of the inevitable (suddenly being treated like "the re**ded kid"...which did in fact begin once word was out to confirm suspicions about "that guy with weird interests" (e.g. if I'm in logistics I'll be thinking about Amdahl's law, rather than small talking about football and other distractions, as do the normal people...and what else would I be doing, when I cannot often retrieve words upon demand, even when they're in mind sitting there going "come. ON. I AM RIGHT HERE!!!")), which is counter-productive to...forcing oneself to deal with people and keep practicing "for rehab", so to speak, I looked at these documents I would have to fill-out, and realized I would have to go get re-assessed formally to nail-down current capacities, and find and begin treatment (for speech processing) JUST TO FILL-OUT THE ACCOMMODATIONS PAPERWORK. 

It's odd when you have to ask for help from HR, but if the conversation could take 5 minutes, you may have to prepare for...a week. And by "prepare", I mean dedicated serious time, daily--so imagine it's really two to three weeks. So what if the topic will REALLY be complex to navigate? Well...months of thought and prep, and struggling with this experience: 

Often, in trying to prepare--like organize thoughts on the page in a sensible way, and write coherently, you find the organization becomes WORSE, like the areas of your brain involved are...already very weak or tired, and by doing these activities (beyond normal talking with people--one way you overcome the smalltalk problem is to stick to themes and repeat things, by the way) you're not so much exercising, as taxing them, or even blowing them out. 

(

Sometimes I think "perhaps I should learn not just another language" -- that is, besides English and Spanish and the remaining bits of classical/ancient ones I've had interests in through the years -- "but a language that is VERY different--such as in another language family altogether with few to no overlapping phonemes, grammar, etc. with English." The reasoning here being "that way, it forces far more rewiring"--we know that in the brain adding languages means forcing the brain itself to make choices...and that it's a total re-org of the brain overall, so I figure it might serve as a major way to rejuvenate things.

)

In the last few days, I've had to really contend with the "layout and organization" problem again... and lo and behold, the Googlez made a suggestion on the YT that was directly relevant: "How do I get thoughts out of my head? (New Idea for Sharing Content...)" by the channel "Autism from the Inside" (aka "Paul"). I've run into Paul's videos in the past, they're always nigh directly relevant--immensely detailed descriptions of ME TOO in terms of the struggle and way one must go about things.

The process he goes about explaining (having to "chain Monkies" together, for example, arm by arm, to get somewhere) is a good analogy--the idea that you have to talk to discover the words to use is not *as* true *all the time* though it is some of the time. e.g. as I described above, sometimes the word are clearly there in mind, but not accessible to speak, so "rambling" becomes a way to...wander through the thicket and try to retrieve them, often only to get lost along the way, and offend or drive away your audience in disgust or contempt. When he describes that "when I'm trying to be articulate, it's like riding a bike, I have to go a certain speed or I fall off--forget what I was saying/thinking about", it hits like an ultra-familiar gut-punch: this single thing constantly drives people you wish to connect with away, as you're communicating and...suddenly sitting there lost.

One odd...grace(?) of it all is to sympathize with someone who mattered: I lost an aunt many years ago who had suffered damage during childbirth due to a doctor's error--something like choking on the umbilical cord and then he put her into an O2 tent...on pure Oxygen, which wasn't something he should have done (among other errors). This caused her brain damage. 

She (and one other aunt!) and I, as it turns out, shared in common certain traits--e.g. gobbling-down the books in the libraries (all of them available), though she as a child was probably far more prolific, vs. I who I liked to do a lot of grazing and may be read through specific series of books rather than one by one across shelves. 

One of the things that really made me "wonder" (like "how is that possible?") as a very small child was when I was told, "she gets very frustrated, because she feels trapped in her head--the words are there, and she finds she cannot say them, and then she bursts out into fits of frustration at times." When I was very young this led to a few slightly traumatic (hence, getting this explained to me) experiences with her...and then coming to understand the need for patience and why people all around would protect and help her.

Come along through these years and I found myself having suffered some damage...and in the same boat: "verbally, it's like being trapped..." While my own version of "frustration" is these struggles often lead to...being "talked at" even more than the oddities lead people to do to you already.

Beyond the "frustration" and "trapped", it is also (severe) isolation. "Communication" isn't just throwing information at someone (Edit: for an HFA, maybe it FUNCTIONS in that manner--as though it is, but then when you learn to "fix" this approach and practice through time, less so, and even for you the following is true:) communication is about CONNECTING with someone--or sharing with someone to which you feel a connection, and reinforcing that connection by inducing them to feel it to. For the HFA, however, the means to reinforce it are very different in many cases: like everyone else, sharing common experience is the same, but then sharing and talking about matters of interest far out of the Overton window of "stuff normal people small talk about for mutual entertainment and distraction" come into the equation for HFAs. When a friend wanted to share with me his findings, techniques, and technical details about 3D modeling, which I was worse-than-a-novice about, and spent three hours numbing my mind with all that new info...I didn't glaze-over and run the way normal people do to autistic folks (who share what they love like this), but listened...not just because it's what I can find myself doing too easily, but because I knew (instinctually) this was him connecting. (Also, if you do this, and do this seriously, it's a signal to the neurons of "pay attention given how much energy we're expending to listen to all this completely useless and alien stuff", and later on if you encounter that same or related material or problems, it is...less challenging and scary to grapple with.)

As a male I had to figure-out quickly not to "burst out" in any way in frustration, say as my aunt did--people would take it very wrong should I do so. Which is a nice-to-have regardless, and was an option for me. (I wonder if this was just something not within my aunt's reach, and always may given we can no longer ask her.) 

And there's an odd side-effect in that it's an auto-inducement to be or learn to be more laconic and tight lipped. This has the fun side-effect of becoming somewhat automatically more attractive as a man to many healthy women... "Oh, the strong" (not altogether by constitution, but just through taking beating after beating after beating in life) ", silent type!" (if for other-than-usual reasons). And, that is, IF I've been maintaining myself properly in physique. 

In some sense, however, that also is just "normal" progression/learning for men: HFAs or and somewhat smart ASD-traited men just...may have longer lead times on development, or enough detachment from social awareness that they might never learn...and always ramble on.  
Or they may learn but not be able to not stop rambling-on. 

One odd "finding" from getting stopped due to impairments (and intense recent trauma) is another benefit: by being forced to "shut down" and become isolated, you don't drive people away so much, and they're more willing to connect and come to you... 

Meanwhile, the effect on women would be more fun if I had any energy to give someone and therefore interest, but after the last whirlwind romance and fallout, and problems to solve in life...you would need someone REALLY worth it, anyway: if you do one long relationship that goes south and before you've learned that the sunk cost fallacy applies in romance TOO, and you also thicken-up your skin and become faaaar more skeptical and guarded about heart...and the peace-and-quiet you come to price when you get home day to day!

So in some ways, all these problems are also very weird blessings (or have been for me, anyway). But it's still being "trapped" all the time, for now, and unable even to specify details of help needed (even when you're legally due that help and they may even be willing to accommodate!), and so...off to the speech therapy route to begin working the "plastic" and rewiring "the brains" AGAIN, but quite intentionally.

Helping Autists Get Useful Work/Contribute to the World

[I was writing this rambly essay, and I saw <this story about a man's son who despite (1) a great degree in computer science and (2) the desperation of firms for talent, he cannot get hired anywhere he goes in the Valley>(https://www.cnbc.com/2019/08/25/brian-jacobs-started-moai-capital-to-invest-in-autism-employment.html), which is a very familiar story that you hear over and over for those...who are autistic. 

Which seems very...relevant. So I'm including this bracketed section, and publishing the [rough] rant/ramble of thoughts about this topic below--with some "lite" editing/changes given that article matter.]

Now I'm someone with autistic traits enough that everywhere I go, some coworker who speaks with me always asks, 

"are you autistic? My cousin/uncle/daughter/son/etc. is autistic, and you're like [that person]." 

I'm not diagnosed. I'm not even CERTAIN it's a genetic thing for me (may be acquired, which is suspected by me and a neurologist for other reasons--but it may also be that you must be on the edge of the spectrum or "susceptible" to acquire it in the way that this may have occurred), but it's sufficient that if I read about and follow advice for autistics (masking, learning patter/small talk, strategies about "austistic minds vs. normal minds" and their conceptualizations of the world, etc.), my life gets extraordinarily better, quickly.

I've been employed despite myself and find (in company including e.g. Peter Thiel or Elon Musk--controversial people, but both people who point-out that they prefer in many cases to hire autistics over non) that "Normal" dynamics are so filled with intrigues and egos they're literally toxic for everyone--but especially for autistic people. It has been a real struggle...despite that any time I'm in a job with valid metrics I do, and this is a quote, "impossible" things. e.g. in an IT position with an ISP I had CSAT scores that "according to our twenty years of data should not be possible", and so had accusations, praise, and a lot of confusion out of management (across various companies, the telehelp company that provided co-employment staff, the ISP, the actuarial-type/analyst mathematicians who made such determinations about numbers for these firms...) 

Yet whether there, or in companies with "performance evaluations" and "personal reviews", regardless of measurable good, I've constantly suffered attacks, put-downs, and other "Issues" with the supervision... 

Autistic people are either bullied or persecuted in the dynamics of "normal" with today's culture.

Basically, in a world of tribes and teams, autistics have to go it alone: to do so therefore we wrap ourselves in logic and reason (and the process documents of a company, and language like "does you ordering me around/harming me like that improve or harm shareholder EVA, sir?"), and go to profound lengths to keep hostiles off our backs... We're sorta the magnet for punches that brings out the so-called "toxic masculinity" (women in management prove endlessly kind and more creative).

Only once I was within a truly subjective environment that was very hierarchical and very lacking in accountability for members of that hierarchy, with everything needing to go "through your supervisor", did I really begin to personally see and understand (possibly due to abstractive impairments--also something common to autistics) what certain people may validly mean (vs. politically abuse terms to mean) by certain terms. (e.g. toxic masculinity, exploitation, etc.). 

One example of those "wrap in logic and reason" kinds of self-defenses (that you must know, often through past sorrowful experiences) to do I simply call "logging everything": 

In one role I didn't just create a logging system to prevent errors and losses to aerospace materials and equipment being transported around, but logs OF THE STATE OF THE LOGS to prevent false claims about what was or was not delivered to pickup locations at given times...and a method of permanently preserving log state with a third party efficiently as I moved about...and a code for those logs of logs to be able to encode it (key left with a good supervisor) such that only those involved in the movement of these critical and expensive goods could possible read any of it.  (And that is just one role I filled.)

When the loner (you) becomes the scapegoat, you go "nope, I have a log for that." I've upset supervisors immensely trying to find someone (they don't like) to blame with this habit, to the point that I've had shouted at me STOP KEEPING LOGS very recently, after a "you did such and such" followed by me pulling-out a couple inches of paper logs...

(That last one was when I was being told I was "losing" things in the inventory by mis-placing them, but my inches of hand-written, detailed logs of everything I had touched (outside of the electronic logging system they keep) showed "um, no.")

The culture produced both managerially in B-School and of the labor or employed class however they happen to be educated are such, that likeability and other personable and subjective opinions, not objective and professional factors of competence and performance, now rule the roost--almost everywhere.

The design--if you're like MOAI and you want to help autistics--should perhaps be to help autistic not just avoid, but escape such employers, who have gotten such employment. If I could go back to my self before I came into this company...I would equip him (my younger self) with MORE logging/self-protection habits, but let myself proceed because you can only learn via experience in many cases (and often only--or better--through failure), but I'd have saved some sanity and suffered a lot less cortisol damage: so much so that if it was ANOTHER person like me about to enter I' would warn him or her away--as you never know what happens if they break-down (and it's likely they would).

Right now though, "such employers" are the norm not exception--I've talked to similar guys about the same and they tell me "yeah, it's been that way a few decades, that is why I had to leave the workforce and strike out on my own, but when I talk to friends 'still in' they only tell me 'culturally it keeps getting worse and worse, less scientific and less professional, and I'm glad I'm near retirement--I'm thinking of going early." A common theme among the autistics (i.e. the ones who actually know the technical do-dads and how to do things) is "it's like a slow rolling train wreck, we're all on that train, watching and panicking from the cars behind things, but management is atop the roofs having tea and congratulating themselves on how swimmingly it is all proceeding."

Helping autistics escape is THE big help: after all, they too tend to have to keep working, but suffer immensely for it: just look at the statistics, many autistics are dead very early in life, and often by suicide. 

Another bit of help is to counsel and mentor so they can get some catharsis but also acquire skills to deal and get to know "the inside" of "normal" (dysfuction) so when they leave they can still "interface" (e.g. trade with, sell to, help., etc.) later. THIS is perhaps the BIG need of YOUNG autistics.

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And I'm actually treated as an oddball even among my friends and acquaintances (nearly all who are on or very near to being on the spectrum and if not diagnosed, are undergoing examinations now or shortly) because I seem to have this odd constitution that even when I'm severely damaged...I want to persist among "the normies" to learn more from them, keep working on skills, keep practicing.... Several I've come to know have become so traumatized through the years that they gave-up and become permanent wards of the state on "disability", and validly so, but that's sooo limiting when you want to...make the world a better place. It's just not for me. When I describe to any of them (including those who are still working) what I go through they just can't really "get" why I can...be okay rather than losing it.

I say this as someone who is diagnosed PTSD literally because two supervisors in a row feel "threatened" and "scared" (warnings about them by engineers in one room over!) because...things that they have in some cases (management overall, not necessarily these two) talked about in their "meetings" for TWENTY YEARS (according to a 4-decade lifer-peer at my current aerospace firm) are things I go "oh, if we do x,y,z we can solve that in about five minutes!" Before finding out that "yeah, you just put a target on your back" (the four-decade lifer telling me in private after that volunteering of insight). 

But perhaps THE big problem we have in employment, besides these kinds of "that guy knows waaaaaaaay too much for his position/for working under me, I'm gonna be rid of him!" situations that autistics face (repeatedly/constantly, and get constantly persecuted for), is also that people completely mis-read us. So we induce paranoia one moment...and in the next the guy who has been threatening is mentoring...then he's frantically trying to elicit information ("Remind me who in HR you were working with again?). 

I was researching what in the world is wrong with people recently and stumbled into a succinct explanation of difference that goes a long way in explanatory power: normal people have heuristics (which you might connect and be correct to "cognitive biases") they're operating from (usually unwittingly), and autistic people have...none. Or almost none. On average. (Maybe this is behind the behavior commonly seen in high functioning autistics (HFAs) that has been described as being "infovores" and "information mongers" and "obsessive classifiers." e.g. I created logographic writing assembling radicals into symbols (numbering several thousands) before I was in middle school,  because this made more sense (being that if you had meaningful things and combined them to make more meaningful things, you could make logical consistently of writing and neatly classify and organize it, rather than have the large random assemblage of "words" we have now). I used to keep tens of thousands of link organized...and notebooks (referencing notebooks) of info, articles found useful, etc... everyone who is like me that I talk to has similar tendencies.)

But that lack of heuristics does mean that someone who has been constantly toyed with (to the point of inducing PTSD) as an autistic may, for example, give chances over and over "because they still have value/things you can learn from them!" (all true) yet they're predatory/causing you severe pain/stress/treating you with extreme hostility, making things toxic, trying to put you into constructive or managed failure (then write you up as though you're at fault), subject you to all kinds of "illegal" much of the time... All the normal people I know who get treated with even a percent of such disrespect or disdain tend to come to devalue those acting toward them in that way--I feel bad if I even come close to thinking "well, I might finally be forced to report him" and think about what GOOD I've actually been able to glean and gain from cooperating/dealing with that person. It is like a gut-punch. (Statements like "the Obstacle is the way" have a LOT of value if you listen to them.) 

In one sense this is a great advantage: if I'm put among a bunch of people working together, despite that I'll be ostracized/left out all day and often beaten-on like this...whereas others around me are getting hurt egos and placing people as convenient to their own career ambitions and "visionary leadership..." I'm taking notes what I can learn from people and where they would actually be excellent (vs. where HR has put them in that given company), in the optimal way for maximal effect for the mission of the firm, and for optimizing their place in the world: I know people who are literally terrible people as managers who are almost godlike as mentors and counselors...and oh yeah, they're also treated like poo by everyone around them as Supervisor I's, so everyone under them gets it raw, harder.

Part of my philosophy is "the normal people can't help it and explaining it to one of those responsible is like trying to explain water to a fish...or perhaps why you shouldn't prey on people to a predator..." So why worry about that part when you could possibly re-arrange things and bring out the best of people, despite that people can be the worst? (A common finding in things like "sensitivity" and "bias" training is...it makes things worse. So sometimes the best battle won really is the one not fought and losing, even hard, is better than being shot in the head. In connection with this, however, is that you see the biases serve a purpose and can, again, be arranged such that the normies can be tremendous in their contributions...but nobody among them seems to see this macro kind of view of people as valuable regardless of how awful their bad sides are.) 

But again, this heuristic-void is also why so many autistics suffer immense traumas, bullying, exploitation, and even get murdered. Now that I am realizing how serious this really is (because the trauma/treatment/bullying is just sooo constantly bad through life), I'm considering going back and doing neurology/psychology just to equip myself with some defense....and to learn to flow and roll and redirect the often-hostile and crazy energy.

Normal people build-up feelings about people and collaborate or work against based on past history...autistics are not thinking personally but going "are they competent in what they do/what I have to work with them on?" 

+ + 

One suggestion I have about businesses for autistics (for the people I've reached out to and shared this link with):

Instead of having them simply start new things hoping to scale or strike big riches (though I noticed in the article, it's stated that is not your goal!), 

if you can help autistics be hired...

to go into existing businesses by investors, or used to examine acquired businesses while pretending to be normal employees and not anybody special, 

(much like that show that sends executives into the lower rungs of their organizations to spy out what is going on in their business)

then you're helping them leverage their "lack of heuristics aka cognitive biases" and keen attention to detail toward amazing things:

if any given area relates to interests of the autistic, the keen attention to detail and their immense overload-all-the-time collection of details means they can make optimal decisions without the interference of normal cognitive biases and social motivation like reputation management and politicking. 

e.g. I've had, several times, world-class people (such as one of the interns on the team behind Unix in Bell Labs) that I've shared something with, and gotten a reply that went something like "well you just solved a general problem in computer/process science, and it would save us 100s of 1000s or million$ of dollars per day, but we'll never ever get it approved through all the hands that would have to touch it." 

This kind of block arises from in modern "democratic" (but hierarchical! a conundrous contradiction that's very real) businesses lacking any true "principal" either in ownership or in oversight. (The Principal-Agent problem.) And often it simply doesn't matter: the normal people would never see the simple way forward regardless.

I'm not sure how generalizable the following is but...in cases like mine I find the details overwhelming (so understand why management has been talking for 20 years rather than fixing the darn problems) and personally am energy limited...so I look for very salient/important points, and I solve those, or better put, "instead of improvement through addition, how about substraction?" 

Which, as it turns out (I've checked), is not just hyper-rare and unusual for any human mind, but apparently extraordinarily difficult for human beings to do...therefore, for normal people to understand or not get upset about. "You know all those 'me too' suggestions for features? No ta damn one! Let's figure-out how to build a layer-cake, rather than spaghetti bowl, THEN we can consider where your feature goes, okay?"

Eliminate all the nonsense/distraction/extraneous and you constantly find these elegantly simple (and powerful) solutions to troubling problems and drags on the business. 

+ + 

Beyond this kind of thing for autistics: if you want to help, just help them stand-up simple things they can optimize the hell out of until they have a revenue stream to support them and...they'll then focus on their interests. If their interests related to problems in the world, an autistic will never stop until they have solved that thing: then you just help them spread the solution. 

The unique thing about them is they'll focus and do ANYTHING to continue and solve: I once stayed awake for like a week and a half with only black-out minutes here and there, devouring books on javascript and bug reports to hack a browser to get an overlay to work for a company with a limited budget that needed to use a service in a way that required directly interacting with the service javascript from the browser despite the browsers' security wall between local and page javascript, for example.

As another example, I recently learned about "state machines" being immensely faster than recursion and found a paper whose examples use the C programming language (ANSI 1989)...so I'm now learning the C programming language from the 2nd (ANSI) Edition of Kernighan and Ritchie and hope some day to swap-out the implementation of recursion in certain systems (e.g. Python) for Regex using their plan9 library rewritten or leveraged to do the same using those state machine and reduce the cost or an immensity of code (often used in Data science, finance, and AI) and if someone else did this tomorrow...I'd still continue doing this so I could get this all under my belt. 

If the paper I found hadn't been translated to use C from the original, which used machine code of an ancient computer from many decades ago, I'd be on eBay finding a working version of that machine and its manuals, and then finding old materials on that machine code, so I could read the original paper...I've never run into "normal" people who are willing to "abuse" themselves like this over interests.

And I do that all despite having very badly broken memory (though finally found the specialists to begin helping me rehab properly!) and problems (all the time) relative to other people, soul (and health) crippling stress due to toxic treatment at work (illegal, but if I bitch or complain too much I could lose the opportunity to learn from people, and practice interacting with, people), and due to work, a lack of control of my time: while I could, for a while, I'd learn by just staying-up to 3am each night (couldn't sleep anyway, so why not?). (These days I find (now that I've figured-out how to get to sleep) it's worth a lot more sleeping, because maybe you have less time, but you remember more.) 

+ + 

One key differentiator might be a quality, or degree of a quality: you notice that you help some autistics and they'll proceed to behave as that old school description went (autistic psyhopaths): I've kept some "code artists" alive (literally) by checking-in on them and making sure they had food and water (or when hit by a car, making them go to a hospital rather than walking to and from the houes and going back to their code), but once they had all they needed they have been aloof--busy with just enough work to pay for...games and interests that solve nothing. 

Of course, there is also just the reality that a lot of people like this aren't truly psycho/cold etc., they're just ABSORBED in whatever they're doing...and if that's towards a solution of a hard problem, God help anyone who bets against them.

You want people who do actually have a larger interest in the world and not just exclusively in...games or other things that have no impact. And the neuroatypicality to simply refuse to give up "come hell or high water". 

Ohhhhh the fun of managers...(Or, BIG tip for Directors & Shareholders, at the end...)

SCENARIO: Imagine you've done a job to comply with formally defined process and principles, and worked-out the kinks, interpretative, and practical issues over 5ish years, cooperating with 2+ managers, many meetings with them after their discussions with other departments, directly with other departments, and even much input to correct (and correctly interpret) the formal documents (such as "oh, since these things are defined, but they are defined in ISO standards we are subject to, we have to read them a certain way unless we revise them or add formal definitions before the content). 

Now imagine a new guy who has been there a few months and keeps mis-reading things keeps "documenting" your "issues" and "problems", that is, for...following what you've worked-out with prior management, auditors, and been told to do. Then, when he learns you're doing them because that is what prior managers required and understood with you, he responds with, "well, I'M the manager now!" (and doesn't realize the 20+ odd year people in the department next door are eye-bulging as he says this since he is a Supervisor, not a Manager, there is a difference, and the people above him--VERY smart people--DO respect and care about that difference) "From now on you will..." 

Then he writes you up anyway as though you were violating one of his orders/expectations (as though you could know...as you were doing things as you had worked-out with all his predecessors to...strictly comply with the formally defined, audited, government-required processes...) 

Imagine he...literally has no clue. e.g. "you need to open EVERY THING and count and..." (Yeah, let's touch the possible satellite parts, without federal certification, requirement in the job descriptions and standards, and with the eye-popping HE WHAT!? response from the actual inspectors when you tell him he is demanding this).

Imagine he keeps telling you how he's going to "make sure everyone is receiving the same way" (across locations that handle DIFFERENT things and exist for different purposes, with VERY varied levels of training and experience) "so we don't have a problem with the auditors" (and you're a friend with a former auditor who literally knows this stuff in-and-out because you just had to ask...and you have let him know this--and offered to give him the former-auditor's information to verify... and did I mention the mis-reading/non-understanding of those very requirements the auditors rely on!?). 

SCENARIO: Imagine he pulls you aside for yet another implied-threat "documenting this" session and goes on to tell you how "you don't need to be 'creative'" (one the various adjectives he'll apply in this conversation to steps/actions you take in "processing" in order to...be compliant, but he doesn't understand this because HE NEVER ASKS AND 'TAKES CHARGE' AS THAT GREAT NEW GUY WHO JUST KNOWS 'I'M THE BOSS!') and proceeds with further remarks like "look, you don't need to go on solving all the problems around here--you stay in your box, and if you do, over time I'll add things to that box, but it's not your job to fix things, **I** do that"... Imagine he says that and doesn't even know that four years prior the company had an engineering shadowing you in another role to figure-out how to document everything in that work to stand-up a new department, resulting in that engineer (1) reporting "He is a walking encyclopedia of information about the company, process--even that others don't know exist" and (2) adding you to the SIX SIGMA CONTINUOUS PROCESS-IMPROVEMENT CONTACTS for the company. (For which various levels of people from lower managers to admins to Directors occassionally calling you up or scheduling meetings to get information, suggestions, clarification, etc.) 

Imagine he goes on "and that um...'notepad' thing you have--it's not authorized. Stop using it NOW! If an auditor came through and saw it, it would be different from what others are doing, and be a big problem..." Of course, that's an IT-approved tool running a loop that takes scanned input of tracking #'s and saves it to...a text file. FOR TRACEABILITY COMPLIANCE. Something you can do with actual-MS- Notepad... or with Excel. Both apporoved tools (as well) with which neither IT, nor the auditors, have any problem (unless they're arresting people at all the big firms that the government relies upon for this newfangled "Excel" thingy!) AND it's something...that prior manager (there for TWENTY YEARS AND WHO WROTE THE PROCESS DOCUMENTATION) was shown and know about...and that IT/security have both been shown...not just any monkey in IT, but a PRINCIPAL (title, not that they're really a Lord-King in the org, ha!) of IT.

The troubling bit isn't that HE JUST DOESN'T ASK (or harassment when you're just sullen/frustrated with the endless behavior that comes from this guy comparable to an assumption I'M A MANAGER, AND LIKE RETAIL, I ORDER PEOPLE AROUND, OR ELSE! Like telling you how you're going to properly yada yada and you're like "yeah so, did you spend several years in training with the inspectors and working-out problems across all these departments more than I did? Cool...") . Yeah, let's keep modifying things TO PLEASE PEOPLE IN OTHER DEPARTMENTS WITH VASTLY DIFFERENT INTERESTS, PROCESS, INCENTIVES... IN OTHER WORDS WHO AREN'T RELEVANT TO YOUR DECISIONS TO **NOT** SCREW-UP PROCESS IN YOUR OWN AREA! **WHICH ISN'T SIMPLE STUFF.**

Of course, the more it goes on, the more it's troubling from other angles: toxic workplace, actual harassment, [...], telling you "you shall not" (while policy requires otherwise up to and including in areas where in the past Directors have had to publish threatening letters)...

But American firms anymore...seem to suffer egregiously from the principal-agent problem. So you never really know who to go to in order to get help: instead of having proper, independent channels (I don't mean those stupid ethics hotlines, since these things often aren't ethics issues anyway, just internal matters of "hey, this guy is ****ing with requirements and has an ego so massive we'll lose extraordinary talent and important people if someone doesn't stop him ASAP...or anyone treated like me with far less patience could begin bringing lawsuits), you have a mess of weird alliances of middle managers, hierarchies where the people who are supposed to be supervising always tell people "if you have a problem, report THROUGH YOUR MANAGER OR SUPERVISOR UP THROUGH THE CHAIN OF COMMND." You know, like if your manager or supervisor IS the problem (and like, not just for you, but to insure critical functions and materials are NOT put at risk because he can't formulate proper instructions due to lack of enough details--and then rolls his eyes back in his head and breathes deeply like he's about to have a psychological break if you, in a perfectly friendly manner, say "oh, so just so you know relevant to that..." and fill him in). 

It's no wonder the guy walks around telling people "have you considered therapy..." As he himself later adds "I've done therapy...it really helped." 

But I do not understand how it is people with these sorts of personality issues are getting into leadership. I certainly know that given my traits of being "meticulous" and "beyond analytic"  (quoting others telling me what they noticed) that I DO NOT ASPIRE TO TRYING TO LEAD/MANAGE PEOPLE! And I try NOT to get angry if someone fills me in on a "need to know" matter that I'm wrong/in deficit about: not bottling-up a potential explosion and then... doubling-down on the "I know best" positions etc. I try to be accommodating because...well the more you learn (not just facts, but of the world as you experience, and about yourself as you experience), the more you realize this is just a reeeeeaaaaally good idea. 

Though you start to realize "maybe I should be mad" once you realize...you're literally just being screwed with.

+ + +

Firms and people today though... supposedly they wonder why they can't save money, get ideas, Six Sigmas kinda-sorta (but not really) takes-off... people like this STRANGLE the people around them with their "bright" thinking and "My way..." ... ... 

... "thinking."

"I know you think...but I AM THE MANAGER" (um...you're literally not, you are A SUPERVISOR--subject just as much to standards...that you're not allowed to change (especially not you), and you're new, and you're putting things at risk, and contradicting more than 60 years of combined experience of your predecessors, and keep citing the wrong segments of the process reqs at me, and writing me up FOR DOING MY JOB, and implicitly threatening me with statements like "I have to document this, and I'm not saying that documentation will lead to termination, but...")

Given what these kinds of folks do to your company's economic potential, return on capital, efficiencies, willingness of anyone to contribute, however... well, you again (I've mentioned this in prior posts) "put more money into stock here, or crypto?" 

If I actually had a lot of money (sad reality: I don't), it would be the latter. :\ 

A fun thought (and valuable): Directors of companies are among that upper-echelon that may actually really try sometimes...but everyone is filtering-out all that "bad" info before it can reach them. 

They're also those people supposedly acting on behalf of shareholders to insure max utilization of talents and capital for returns....

Sometimes they get wise and force middle-managers "reapply for your own jobs" to subject them to review (and in the interrim, have people investigate by scrutinizing the subordinates for intel). 

A fun one is this:

    "Each and every month you've been here, how many--exactly--creative ideas have you humbly noted from subordinates to have implemented in process, insured was properly credited to them for the EVA calculations so we can pay their bonuses..." 


That would be a BIG signal to them: it's not like the people in the trenches do not actually know how to VASTLY improve things--nor that their lives are so wonderfully awesome and satisfying already that they wouldn't fall over themselves to tell any manager that asked who was (a) serious and (b) powerful and willing to insure they were crushed for telling. This question even works, nearly immediately, for those "new" people (there for a month or two). 

The next step? You go (unannounced, simultaneously and separately) to interview subordinates... 

Edit: after this edit, archiving so this is third-party date-stamped and a verifiable record. In case of further hostilities, misbehavior, toxic behavior, ada violations, etc. by this manager.

Almost Everything Said by Everyone Online Seems to Be...Wrong

Maybe it's because people are trying to appeal to emotion rather than actually say anything real.

Maybe it is just me. 

But almost everything everyone said by everyone [saying anything] online seems to be...wrong. 

Back in my youth--and even by the time I was in college, this was still something that was no big deal. Society wasn't so mediated by the internet that being wrong on the internet mattered. This was still funny: 

The internet even seemed to be something, per the Cyberpunks' thinking, that would spread true gnosisf, verification and checking, and open-up the frontiers for human flourishing in facts and truth, rather than narrative lies.[1] Perhaps the Cyberpunks were, instead, rather too optimistic--idealistic--about human nature and potential not just on average, but under the dynamics that occur en mass. [They] thought [people were] just like [themselves].

+ + + 

But now, however, I repeat myself: it seems like everything said online is...wrong.

There are exceptions--but you have to really look. 

The exceptions aren't ideologically monolithic or non-diverse. Anything but. 

But you really have to look! 

Oftentimes people talk of algorithms, censorship, suppression...even without the political fears of speech leading to censorship, I think there generally is a case to be made that businesses find tickling ears and keeping real things from the marketplace is generally valuable to them. 

I'm not certain most people truly want or care for "truth" or anything near it. Whether they are right or left, in-between, at another level, or in another dimension altogether.

+ + +

Given that civilization is, however, determined ultimately by averages...

What happens when all of society (1) communications online where (2) all communications are noise? 

Where they are marketing, disinformation, emotionalism--dragnets for emotions and praise and approval?

When everyone is a politician, a "performer", and nobody a producer: when all the world truly is a stage...

and nobody is getting anything done, saying anything, etc., unless perhaps you're an Elona Musk? 

+ + + 

What happens when the effective are tyrannized by the masses, who are empowered and enabled via internetworking? 

Sure, the right is happy about this when it's the left-establishment getting panned...but when you actually need people to mask or something worse than the cooph is actually spreading?

+ + + 

What happens when "education" is ideologically conformed to "concepts not facts" rather than "concepts from facts [and circumstances [and contingencies]]"?

When interpersonal relationships are subjugated to parameters of highly socially conformist tyrannies and the superficial, shallow demands and expectations pulled right out of the pages of "How to Win Friends and..."? 

When (due to the corruption of education--ironically, in origin often for formerly "conservative" corporate firms' own bottom-line needs rather than just by the supposedly "fringe radical lefties!"), 

the remainder of people who aren't just too dumb to "read the room", but who are actually too skeptical to sniff the air and conform to the supposed ideological bent of "the right kind of people" or "of the better schools" or "who have power" or "of dominant society" (various ways this gets described sociologically and by observers)...the people, that is, who are society's "out" back to a sane road, are themselves ill-equipped and without preparation to champion truth, sanity, and decency--that is, in more than rhetoric for more than sound bites on a campaign trail against a crassly perceived opponent--and lead that charge out of mass hysterics, panics, delusions, and madness? 

“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche (per "BrainyQuote", not a valid source giving proper citation!)

+ + + 

I'm not certain these are hypotheticals, or thought experiments. 

I think the vast bulk of humanity--whether in "western liberal democracy" or under "eastern despotism" (to use the current and classical phraseology)--is stewing in this kind of toxic mess.

A nihilism, but not a nihlism of no belief--a nihilism of socially imposed avoidance and appeals for approvals...so any beliefs left themselves become[2] nonsense?

= NOTES

[1] Maybe I was just lucky, to have such prescient teachers. I somehow passed, as I was moved from school to school (single family household, following opportunities), through one program after another with rather insightful, thoughtful technical educators. We were taught about reviewing and comparing sources, being suspect, being aware, minimizing (as children, at least) giving-out personal info... And though we couldn't have enough experience to be critical or understand, coached to eventually become suspect and circumspect about infosources: we could look at anything, but suspect it all, and believe nobody too certainly.

[2] --like the new-evangelicals (in their dearth of theology) parroting words orthodox perhaps in form, but sans definitions--  

Change Incentives & Oversight to Alter the Flow of Capital and Leadership

You notice as you move startup to startup, firm to firm, that best practices are often not found across all of them--they aren't portable. Or nobody has made them into portable versions.

Nor do service businesses and "APIs as business" normally solve this lack: notably, expertise isn't widespread enough for many businesses to find (and understand what are) the best-in-class or optimal options. The capacity to make the best evaluations isn't widespread enough due to assymetries of information and experience to actually use any they may have--information != informed.

And even those that could potentially serve this function, portably and get widespread attention...they're not normally built to be resistant to being subverted for other goals by new leadership--at which point everyone having adopted them gets screwed.

Meanwhile, "optimal" isn't always best-in-class in all ways, just "most suitable for adoption." 

And commonly, what passes as "most suitable", isn't: it's what people there already feel some comfort about, or have some familiarity with, degrading the firm's performance overall.

This is why you get firms that wind-up buying more MicroS[tuff] and building application front-ends that are little more than forms use Sharepoint and "Teams!" requiring engineering terms weeks or months that could be done...on an ancient Unix system shell in a couple of hours by a guy or two with some caffeine and encouragement.

Then, a really weird thing to notice, but true: 

Firms that do best are firms that will hire people who are creative and "Makers"--who constitutionally cannot stop fixing and improving any problem or thing they find is below what they expect or know could be. 

HOWEVER, many (maybe not most, but MANY--most are "small businesses" after all) firms cannot afford this: they could, however, benefit immensely over anything beyond the "near" or "short" term, and begin raking-in savings and competitive advantages. 

So how to solve this affordability issue? (Often, an issue of where to put that cost in accounting terms--especially if they're on government contracts.) 

The answer is likely a combination of the following: 

* equity (incentivizes awesome work anyway), 

* co-hiring (that is, distribute the cost across many firms). 

In theory, some incubators do something like this--build awesome things and then each becomes a resource for the others. People would likely thing of Y Combinator here.

In reality, such arrangements (seem to) rarely actually serve this purpose: they rather tend to mean each firm is basically required to use the services of other projects and firms incubated by the VC's. 

Even when they could be vastly better served by other options and when the services they procure may actually be more hype than substance. 

In theory, this should be solved: we have advisory firms and firms of nothing but technical engineers, for example, but that's because firms don't want to actually pay for such expertise--so bring it in only on occasion: they aren't even thinking about "let's find the autistic version, put them on stipend, pay them for solutions--possibly recurringly, and be subject to their constant interventions!" Nay, that'd get in teh way of power tripping and "dignity"... not to mention building up "legacies" on the backs of workers screwed (often out of policy- and contract- required payments to those actually responsible for innovations or for "contributoins" to the firm!)... what would all these polite society types do if they couldn't be totally credited (because of command-and-control structuring in the firms and industries)? Get their social status from being charitable philanthropists or something other nonsense rather than putting their names on stadiums? NO F****ING WAY!

+ + + 

In some way, this is why certain notorious investors say things like,

"autism gives people immense advantages in this cutthroat environment
        --they're obsessively focused on the best thing rather than doing people politics...."

"I can repeatedly make billions just by assembling teams of autistics...
what kind of idictment is that on our society and work culture when autism...
doesn't just give you an advantage, but is necessary in the culture to truly be very effective?"

+ + +

In part this is because such people look askance at "how things work" and "the normal way of doing things" and dare ask the taboo: why? 

A lot of people just don't understand how often they appeal, though couched in terms that makes it seem far more sophisticated, to authority: 

nearly everyone given a modern education at one of "the better schools" is actually doing these kinds of sophisticated rationalizations all day long for a living. 

That isn't a knock on them by the way--I'm surrounded by anything but and every time I find myself in their company I can actually talk to someone intelligent! 

But the reality is that intelligence has a natural propensity to drive someone to sniff the air and conform, and rationalize the cool-aid drinking.

That is how "normal intelligence" ACTUALLY "works"--it is what it is for: hierarchy-conforming, not for outsized performance and smashing through assumptions. 

+ + + 

The result is things that are obvious to any OCD-enough autistic (or people who mimic them, like mis-wired ultra-high-IQ types) are gibberish to everyone else. 

e.g. what if someone says,

"fads like SSOT mean everything must be captured in a single global state, 
destroying in possibilty of efficiency (through parallelism), and driving
high cost throughout a system, with long linear wait times and high costs: 

this is what databases as the basis for operations has given us all, 
and why things like, though not necessarily what we call "NoSQL", 
have such potential and benefits found when deployed: 

state is pushed throughout the system again if you decentralize like that,
and design so you don't have to coralle and reconcile everything:
you get the speed of localism, and the capacity to sync and correlate and 
audit everything (centrally) later, 

so every part of a system is hyper-fast by comparison, unimpeded by waits,
and so enabled to rapidly move--ingest and transform and act upon data--
and if you need to iterate and innovate rapidly you can do so,
locally, without impacting operations or state for the rest of a system." 

If I say that, I'm (slightly) more akin to an "academical", trained, "the higher learning", "sophisticated" type--let's say an "analyst."

Or a "stakeholder consensus builder." Once, of course, it's broken-down into many bite sizes on power-point, explained in terms of "pain points." 

It's also overstated, vs say,

"let's ingest incoming records as text files, name them to keep them
distinct for purposes of signalling to rules about who can access
what for security purposes and privacy, 
and use standard average unix tools to enable rapid global search
across de-centralized information centers,
and local development of tools as-needed for hyper-efficiency and
advancement of the business units without poor impacts to any other
part via changes--i.e. changes without having them ripple effect 
through everything else and step on toes." 

But "the game" these days dictates overstatements like the above to sound more posh and polished. Though more dense and inaccessible.

Stating things in another way, however, gets you...noses turned-up offended about putting things in bare, raw terms.

Which is the issue: the bare, raw terms = effectiveness, = power. 

What I just described, for example, is how you enable "sophisticated high-frequence trading of cutting-edge Wall Street firms." 

Which can be summarized even more:

"dump data onto the Unix filesystem in raw text files
and pour over them in search for patterns via use of 
[GNU] grep." 

(Because GNU grep does the least, so works the fastest, and does the most, of any [not-]commercial off-the-shelf available tool.)

The obvious (massive) advantages (free money) of people who build systems this way probably need not be stated. 

But for some reason, few do it: probably because they just don't know...and they're incentivized (from within) NOT to know it...

+ + + 

In large part, hyper-performance and advantage comes from the ruthless elimination of pretensions or capacity for it. 

And opening-up of command-and-control in every functional area to everyone who can contribute via building and iterating on things. 

But few firms--given their corporate structures, cultures, and expectations, have the cultural capacity to pull this off. 

+ + + 

So one thing I've been pondering for some time is this,

FIRMS CAN GAIN AN IMMENSE MARKETING ADVANTAGE
        BY ADOPTING "DISRUPTIVE" SERVICES

OF MAKERS TO DO LITTLE MORE THAN DIG-IN
            AND EVISCERATE POOR TO UNDERPERFORMING

OPERATIONAL PROCESS AND TOOLS AND TECH,
        BECAUSE IT ALSO ELIMINATES THE CAPACITY
        FOR...LET'S SAY "SELF-DEALING" DECISION-MAKING
        TO OCCUR AND NOT BE FOUND OUT 

AND REMOVED (AND POTENTIALLY, PUNISHED)
        UNDER THE NORMAL DYNAMICS OF FIRMS: 

BECAUSE THE FIRMS BECOME SUBJECT
        TO REVIEW FROM OUTSIDE, THE NORMAL DYNAMICS OF 

POLITICKING AND FORMING ALLIANCES FROM WITHIN
        BECOME SUBJECTED TO INTENTIONAL

SCRUTINY THAT CAN OUST SUCH EFFORTS
        TO INVESTORS (LAW$SUIT$!!!) AND SO ENFORCE

GOOD BEHAVIOR--EVEN INTENTIONAL PRE-CHECKING,
        BEFORE SOME THING GETS DECIDED UPON, LIKE

        "HEY, WHAT WE'RE ABOUT TO DO, CAN YOU TELL US
        IF YOU KNOW ANYTHING BETTER?"

THAT MEANS THEY CAN MARKET THEMSELVES
        (UNDER THE RIGHT AGREEMENTS AS)

        e.g. "SUBJECT TO INTENSE SCRUTINY
        BY AUTISTICS TO INSURE BEST-DEPLOYMENT & LEVERAGE
        OF CAPITAL AND ACHIEVEMENT
        OF OPTIMAL OPERATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS AND EFFICIENCY
        FOR THE SAKE OF OUR INVESTORS. WHEN WE DON'T KNOW WHAT WE'RE DOING,

OR WHEN WE MAY NOT BE AWARE THAT WE DON'T KNOW BEST,
        OTHERS FROM OUTSIDE ARE THERE TO RELY ON OR INTERVENE
        AND COMPENSATE, TO INSURE MAXIMUM LEVERAGE AND 
        DEPLOYMENT OF CAPITAL FOR OUR INVESTORS."

And just by outsourcing (let's face it:) power over decisions to outsiders, you avoid the crippling dysfunctions of normal corporate dynamics.

You put everyone on notice of "Normal as harmful" and "self-dealing will be found and punished." 

Which has the side-effect of...driving such people OUT sooner than later, especially given that criminal prosecution may be waiting.

+ + + 

This gets us to another important point: 

it's not actually desirable to be in the lead or in-charge!
       

Everyone is constantly talking of the need for "representation" in positions of power...

Such as in management. Yet, you rarely see them talk of RESPONSIBILITY in those positions!

if you change the incentives so that they understand
people in power will be held to account, soon not later,
in this life and not deferred,
I will bet you'll get more talk about
                "insuring everyone fair-treatment environments,
                  with common standards (and interpretation thereof) for evaluation,
                based on performance, 
                under the leadership of the best-qualified, enlightened, and benevolent but firm,
                so 'fair'".

That is, just like you don't see talk of "representation in garbage collection",
"leadership" and "power" become truly about the good, and not Machiavellian targets.

I suppose that for that, we always will have Congress!

+ + +

Rather than people clamoring to get (or help their preferred bunch of people in whatever way bunched) get power: nobody will clamor if they all know that, by default, that position puts their head on a chopping-block... That it's RESPONSIBILITY and not AUTHORITY-only that they will get for it!

And that the standards to evaluate whether they get an axe or praise will be...ruthlessly consistent and unnuanced about any other criteria: 

As a mix (I myself am a mashup of many minorities, and then some) I know how this would get many people hollering--but I can also suggest more than a small handful of supposedly under-represented persons to fill such shoes (who would do amazingly well, I'll add). Ironically, who would never accept any such position in the name of representation--they're too dutiful to play such games with others' investments and lives (the workers).