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The "cracked coder" fetish: Epistemic arrogance in Silicon Valley
Epistemic arrogance in Silicon Valley
This is so obviously wrong it seems strange to even have to describe why: Writing a Python script to identify Greek characters, impressive though it certainly is, doesn’t translate in any direct way into “administering budget cuts across a range of government agencies.” But in Silicon Valley, steeped in I.Q. The agency’s failure to succeed even on its own terms (it didn’t come anywhere close to making cuts of the size initially promised by Musk), and the fact that its legacy is, at best, the needless deaths of hundreds of thousands of people around the globe, is about as clear an indication as possible that “put 10 cracked programmers in charge” (let alone just one) is not a good solution to basically any problem faced by any large organization, and especially not particularly complex and sensitive ones like the U.S. government. Many of the industry’s leading lights are proud ignoramuses, completely unaware of the gaps and blind spots in their knowledge, and ambitious young hackers and programmers are no doubt modeling their own attitudes toward the world on the overconfident performance of genius by people like Elon Musk.
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