[FRIAM] Drones to detect wildfires

[Pieter Steenekamp]

First, I really like the book about objectives.
Let me give an example of this principle in action. One of South Africa's
successful business people Koos Bekker, used this management style when he
was running a very old legacy media company Naspers. He would appoint
competent people that managed the not even day-to-day but
quarter-to-quarter affairs of the company. He would then travel the world
and seek ideas and opportunities. At one stage he "disappeared " for about
a year and people speculated that he retired. Regularly he would come back
and present a new idea and the board always accepted and implemented his
ideas. Naspers is one of the very few legacy media companies that not only
made it through the introduction of the internet era but grew
spectacularly. During his tenure, the market capitalization of Naspers grew
from about $1.2 billion to $45 billion.

Second I would like to backtrack on my answer with all the objectives to
Dave. In hindsight I see I missed Dave's point that one has to be careful
in just promoting "progress", it's clearly not always in humanities
interest. I think it was Peter Thiel who said he thought we were going to
get flying cars, but what did we get? 132 characters.

So let me withdraw my answer to Dave and replace it by simply saying: point
taken.

On Thu, 27 May 2021 at 17:46, uǝlƃ ↙↙↙ <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:

> OK. I agree that failure on every one of those objectives is assured. But
> the issue is less about setting the objective and measuring the outcomes
> than it is about *harvesting* one's failures. Everyone (with any sense)
> knows we'll fail on the overwhelming majority of those very ambitious
> objectives. But the point of such objectives is not to succeed perfectly,
> as if we're some GA satisfying a singular exogenous objective function.
> Their purpose is an ethical one.
>
> After Pieter's post, it rekindled my desire for a "dashboard" presenting
> measures for each [sub]objective. But, going back to your original,
> correct, objection, non-planned-for measures/effects would not be included,
> biasing our understanding of the progression. Each measure becomes nothing
> more than a bell on a slot machine, injecting a little dopamine.
>
> That's what the Pinkers and Shermers of the world seem like to me. Slot
> machine players looking for that dopamine ... like Musk launching a stupid
> car up into space. They're sooooo similar to the junkies I used to clean up
> after in the park behind our old house.
>
> On 5/27/21 8:10 AM, Prof David West wrote:
> > I must agree and disagree.
> >
> > Yes, my statement was an oversimplification, but not a caricature.
> >
> > The caveat I should have included concerns the "distance" from where we
> are at the moment and the point at which the objective would be achieved.
> >
> > I stand by my assertion that for objectives like the UN goals shared by
> Pieter and the less specific objectives in Steve's post, failure is
> assuredly more likely than success — based on the arguments presented in
> the book.
>
> --
> ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ
>
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