* Posts by MezzoToscano

2 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Jun 2009

How the Dunning-Kruger effect will stop techies buying houses

MezzoToscano
Alert

Remembers me of Raymond Peter...

...which has been the matter of some recent computational research:

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Here we show, by means of agent based simulations, that if the latter two features actually hold in a given model of an organization with a hierarchical structure, then not only is the Peter principle unavoidable, but also it yields in turn a significant reduction of the global efficiency of the organization. Within a game theory-like approach, we explore different promotion strategies and we find, counterintuitively, that in order to avoid such an effect the best ways for improving the efficiency of a given organization are either to promote each time an agent at random or to promote randomly the best and the worst members in terms of competence.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0907.0455

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I really like the most effective strategies as suggested (LOL)

Seriously, I wonder if such an approach would dampen the consequences of the Dunning-Kruger effect as well...

Don't call me Ishmael

MezzoToscano
Happy

The oddest names you ever found?

Disclaimer: I work in a large organization with an established policy for naming anything connected to the network: (three letter location identifier)-(one letter identifier of device type, es. "S" for server, "P" for printer)(four characters unique identifier); the unique identifier may be anything the local admin is pleased with - I set the first character as the last digit of the purchase year so I can sort equipment by age at a glance (useful for PCs), so a desktop computer purchased in 2008 for location XYZ could be XYZ-D8012.

That said, I guess we all have seen fancy names used. Back when the internet was young, I remember of a website running on three servers named Hikaru, Umi, and Fuu (Google it yourself - I like some anime in small doses, so did the webmaster I guess).

Also, I am pretty sure the Vatican website is still running on servers named Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael - I can't remember which one is the firewall tho :-)

(To be honest, my home computers were inflicted names like Xanadu or Area51...)