Under Incompetence

Richard Fernandez  "Norman Dixon, a graduate of Sandhurst and practicing psychologist wrote a book titled On the Psychology of Military Incompetence to explain his theories about why and when such catastrophic incompetence occurred.

"Dixon believes that incompetence is characterized by the capture of an organization from within by mediocrities. One review summarized Dixon’s findings as follows. Incompetence gains a grip when:

• A fundamental conservatism and clinging to outworn tradition, as well as an inability to profit from past experience.
• A tendency to reject, suppress or ignore information which is unpalatable or conflicts with pre-conceptions.
• A tendency to under-estimate the enemy and over-estimate the capabilities of one ’ s own side.
• An undue readiness to find scapegoats and suppress news about military setbacks.
• A predilection for frontal assaults and the belief in brute force rather than the use of surprises or ruses.
• Indecisiveness and a general abdication from the role of a leader.
• A failure to exploit a situation due to the lack of aggressiveness.

"For those more comfortable with programming paradigms, these points can be restated in an equivalent way:

1. There is no feedback loop in the application;
2. Variables are overwritten in a higgledy-piggledy way.
3. The functions return nothing;
4. The application is essentially “fake”.  It has a front end with a lot of spinning lights, but it does nothing.

"You say it can’t happen? Well look at the Obamacare system." ...