Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

Comment by afarrell | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

1) I think that organizations whose normal mode of operations includes physically dominating others and violating their bodily autonomy are a different enough case that my intuition is that you'd probably not want to apply the same reasoning. If we were having a conversation about the cultures of police or prison guards, I think this would be a productive analogy to start working from.

2) "They're doing it because they believe that it works" implies a certain deliberateness and design. Having spoken with a few USMC recruiters back when I was a teenager, I'm very inclined to believe that they've put a lot of thought into this and that there is a fair amount written about how they use these harsh methods to solve the problems like "How do we give people from a wide range of social backgrounds the mental toughness to be able to do trigonometry in their heads while mortars are going off near them?"

This is quite different from refusing to deal with one employee who has a habit of randomly screaming at people about accounts receivable issues.

1) This seems like a very arbitrary distinction. Is there any hard evidence that yelling is only effective in training people to "physically dominate others"? In the absence of such evidence, we should default towards consistency

2) Your point here is that it's ok to engage in yelling if the decision was made "deliberately" and "by design"? I don't think we as a society should be micromanaging the internal working of a private organisation to that extent. We should be regulating organizations by their behaviors and outcomes, not their thought processes.

Lest anyone misunderstands me, I certainly do not advocate for yelling and belittling behavior. I don't think it makes for a productive workplace, and I would never want to work in one. But I do think there's an inconsistency wrt the wide latitude we give the armed forces. To the extent that such inconsistency is acceptable, I'm curious as to why.

Edit: Another example that just came to my mind, was many athletic coaches in sports like soccer. Specifically, the "greatest football manager ever", Alex Ferguson.

https://www.givemesport.com/1251440-sir-alex-ferguson-used-t...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2016/01/29/how-cristian...

> But I do think there's an inconsistency wrt the wide latitude we give the armed forces. To the extent that such inconsistency is acceptable, I'm curious as to why.

The armed forces are specifically looking to replace any creative or independent thinking with responsiveness to the chain of command and willingness to commit acts of violence. Those are exceptional requirements which are generally in direct conflict with the productive functioning of any other organization.

I do think it’s worth inquiring into why we’ve created a society which necessitates such broad-scale weaponization of human beings, however.

> responsiveness to the chain of command and willingness to commit acts of violence

There is even a term for it: Followership. Something I had never even heard of until I looked into joining ROTC, and realized they weren't looking for future leaders, but robots they could program.

The basic training that lasts a few weeks that involves yelling, breaking down a person only to rebuild them stronger by the end could be looked at as filtering and weeding out those who would not work well under those conditions. This is part of the interview process. Once basic training is over most move into positions without yelling.

In this case yelling was used to belittle everyone and secure more power. If you break someone down but never build them back up you have crushed people.

If we still want to turn people into killing machines than yelling is a tool to help that process.

> The basic training that lasts a few weeks

“a few months” would be more accurate

There is opportunity cost as well.

What if you don't it then a new startup comes, starts doing it and soon they run your business and become an enormous success. Soon, you end up selling your business and your employees are left jobless.

One problem with employees is that they think that the business is going to keep afloat no matter what.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com