People from a nation think and write alike because they share a common canon of literature and stories.
It's just a pity AI was trained on mindless, garbage business-speak, and now that's our globalised common literature.
And now we're feeding that regurgitated mindless, garbage business-speak back into AI models, thereby reinforcing the garbage and further rotting our minds.
This is just a culmination of the last two years of tension. The most recent friction is around Lebanon where France sees itself as the protector of its former colony.
Interesting take from Le Monde: "Israel turns its back on France as Paris struggles to maintain dialogue"
Israel recently refused to buy more French military equipment, and France's relations with Israel is at a low; I'm wondering it was the reason the French vessel was allowed through.
France hasn't bought Israeli weapons systems and vice versa for years, so it's just a quick populist win with 0 practical implications either way.
That said, French and Israeli vendors like Thales, IAI, Dassault, Rafael, Elbit, etc still collaborate closely becuase they are both OEMs, vendors, and JV partners in Indian defense deals that integrate both into Indian weapons systems - especially as both are integrated (along with Russian and indigenous weapons systems) with what is become Indians version of the Iron and Steel dome [0][1]. Vietnam is mandating the same thing as part of their 2045 Drone manufacturing strategy [2].
And both MIC ecosystems still collaborate together on defense deals back in Armenia, Cyprus, and Greece.
Most countries that historically had a Soviet/Russian kit are now mandating French+Israeli interoperability becuase of India's success at using it to replace older Soviet or Russian systems where possible.
I think there has been some low volume defense trade in both directions.
What some people seem to forget is that France and Israel also compete over some of the same defense deals. There was these incidents where France banned Israeli companies from some defense shows:
Yep, but the biggest customer and JV partner for both the French and Israeli MIC (India) ensures that they cooperate, as India has forced both to create JVs owned and operated by Indian SOEs and transfer IP and manufacturing capacity as a result.
And French and Israeli companies are fine with that - as can be seen by Thales [0], Safran [1] and Rafael (IL) [2] working on Indian JVs for India's Rafale [3] and Tejas [1] requirements.
It's cheap for French politicans to make pronouncements (and given how competitive the 2027 election is going to be, Macron has no choice but to resort to such populism in order to try and poach some amount of LFI voters to Renaissance/En Marche), but France Inc ignores it and carries on because business is more important.
It's the same reason why Dassault bluntly rejected German input on SCAF [4] and why France's Safran and Russia's UAC are working with India's HAL to indigenize the SJ-100 [5]. And now that the UAE has pulled out of Dassault's F5 program [6], they are even more dependent on India.
As I've mentioned before on HN, French and American business culture are very similar.
Even Vietnam is starting to turn the screws on France, especially now that En Marche's Stephanié Do has now become a lobbyist [7] for FPT's defense arm [8] which is partially owned by Vietnam's KGB (the MPS/BCA).
It's the same kind of arm-twisting China used in the 1980s-2000s and 1990s-2010s respectively to force Israel [9] and Russia [10][11] to transfer IP for China's J-XX program, except both India and Vietnam are applying such arm-twisting on France in addition to Israel and Russia.
And Macron and all the other centrists politicans cannot do anything against Dassault, Thales, etc lest they switch to supporting Bardella and RN like Bolloré [12] and Stérin [13] are doing. Macron himself is only in power because Arnault [14] and his son-in-law (and CEO of Scaleway) Xavier Niels [15].
> Most countries that historically had a Soviet/Russian kit are now mandating French+Israeli interoperability becuase of India's success at using it to replace older Soviet or Russian systems where possible.
Elbit also has previous experience retrofitting Soviet MiG-21s to operate with NATO munitions.
Yep, because India demanded Israeli munitions (which are NATO compatible) be interoperable with the MiG-21 and other Russian/Soviet jets India had in the 1990s.
India was the 2nd largest MiG-21 operator in it's heyday and the only one that also operated NATO compatible munitions.
> India was the 2nd largest MiG-21 operator in it's heyday and the only one that also operated NATO compatible munitions.
Elbit also did retrofitting for Romania, although they operated a relatively small MiG-21 fleet (25..36) which are now decomissioned and replaced by F-16s. The MiG 31 LanceR could use use both NATO and Russian/Soviet armament such as the R-60M, R-73, Magic 2, or Python III missiles.
Israel also recently killed three UN soldiers and bombarded positions a few meters away from french soldiers. The french ministry of defence wasn't exactly thrilled with this.
Because, like Venezuala, they were selling their oil to China, which would allow China to attack Taiwan and take the US's supply of advanced semi-conductors for its weapons and military dominance
Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
> When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't associate the reward with the behavior. Likewise, a manager is not going to associate a slight towards an employee with an increase in absenteeism or lower productivity that happens days and weeks later.
Note that GP is comparing the _managers_ motivation to a dog’s motivation, not the worker. It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).
>It’s about a delayed feedback loop to the manager, who won’t connect the punishment (lower productivity) with the bad behavior (slighting the employee).
It's delayed because the employee fears further retribution still. You need some distance between yourself and the bloodthirsty dog before you can even hope to reduce your productivity, or you'll be mauled quite enthusiastically. By delaying it for days or weeks, by being out of sight when it happens, there is plausible deniability that can let them survive the attacks.
Managers do this to themselves, they punish people who would give them the quick feedback loop.
So it's the manager who is in need of further training more so than the nominally-producing worker, if the overall productivity is to increase most directly.
The point is that /anyone/ is being compared to a dog, that the whole relationship is being compared as such. It's demeaning and is pretty much a slight, ironically enough (albeit directed towards the manager in this occasion)
The entire point of comparison is to be able to point out similarities between two different things.
If you ignore the specific similarities being pointed out (learning and training work similar in different mammals), and you instead focus on the most offensive differences you can think of (dogs are lesser intelligent creatures than man), then of course you can find a way to be offended.
But doing so is optional, FYI. And counterproductive to an interesting conversation as well.
Leadership, authority, command, etc. have many forms that don't necessarily match up with what is effective or how people would like to be treated as a subordinate. Assuming that managers know better than to be assholes to their employees (or vice-versa) is a huge and very wrong assumption. Social skills also benefit from training and practice like anything else. Many people have never seen or experienced professional and competent management, so they have no example to follow or model to emulate.
Having a documented effect and effect size puts this in terms that can change manager behavior, even a somewhat callous one, because they can see how it affects their own professional goals.
Btw, the comparison was between the dog and manager, and about the association of cause and effect. Maybe you should try to read more carefully and charitably in the future.
Well, to many it seemed that an obvious cause-and-effect fact that should have come from empathy and introspection--that workers are just like you and I don't like being slighted--and didn't need to be written about.
Yet when of the top comments used dog training to explain manager-worker relations--something that empathy and introspection could tell you was a bit off (would you feel slighted if I make our interactions analogous to an owner and dog?)--it may show, yes, such does need to be spelt out these days.
I recall the University of Manchester was teaching university students empathy.
Again, the comparison was between a dog and a manager. There's zero insinuation that a manager is like an owner and an employee like a dog. It does feel like you're looking for a pretext to feel slighted here.
That aside, I completely agree with you that managers should engage in empathy and introspection. I still think it's helpful, even for those that do, to have some empirical confirmation of how strongly employees can be affected by what might seem a simple oversight to an otherwise empathetic and introspective manager. But unfortunately, callous people tend to be chosen for management, and this research is also potentially helpful in aligning their own self-interest with their employees.
Given that many organizations literally refer to their employees as “Resource Units” literally abstracting away their humanity I’m going to say… yes. We are at that point (and have been for quite some time).
There are few things that make me irrationally seethe like being called a resource. I understand why they do it, I even accept that I'm nothing more than a resource to them, but it really isn't a big ask for them to refer to us as humans when speaking directly to us.
Anger is one of the core human emotions. I am allowed to be angry and upset when they constantly try to strip the humanity from myself and the people I work with.
People are animals like any other. That’s not a slight. Managers respond to incentives much like dogs do too, and so do execs, and board members, and every human.
The top-level comment was being ironic. To explain the joke, the employees are withholding the reward of hard work from the employer because the employer behaved badly (by slighting them in some way).
I received a referral bonus and where the company payroll made an error and accidentally gave me a higher bonus per the level of employee my referral reward was (they set it to the bonus level for a VP and she was a Sr. Director). So unbeknownst to me they gave me $5000 extra in my bonus that should have been only $3000, not $8k. Accounting figured this out next tax season, so then they informed me the would be clawing their error overpayment back had, which apparently is legal. Thus the $5k was taken out of my next paycheck. Their error was not my fault!
I was really annoyed and basically stopped going above and beyond for that company the rest of the year. :-/
It just seemed very petty and reactionary of them for something that was their error originally. This messed up my budget and suddenly having $5k less 9 months later that I hadn't anticipated was a bit of an unforeseen financial hardship. Also she had been my 5th referral to date that they'd hired!!
I love that example. It’s a basic exercise in “for how little money can you break any amount of trust”. Not sure how they could avoid that (besides being competent in the first place..)
I felt like they should have just written off the error and let me keep it, as by the time they realized it, it was almost a year later, and I was a high-performer who had gotten promoted twice. I left the following year for a better opportunity, but this was sort of one thing that turned me 180* from being an all-in, kool-aid drinking culture-carrier to feeling kind of bitter and shafted by them.
It's surprising how dumb management has gotten in the Almighty Chase for A Quarterly¹ Profit.
Remember, "it is very difficult to get a man to understand a thing when his job depends on his not understanding it." [editor:and that goes doubly for MBAs]
—Upton Sinclair
I think you responded to the wrong post. I did not suggest or made any of these comparisons or comments. I simply recommended a book about training dogs or other animals, and the clicker method.
If you’ve read some Carnegie, you'll find that he just discusses a lot of well-worn idoms: such as that sincere praise is better and the importance of treating people kindly... His work built the foundations of management. I guess from the moment middle managers existed, humans have generally been poor at managing others.
I thought it was interesting. Going through something like this myself right now, I learned that I don't lose motivation to do the work. I gain a motivation to cut the person out of the picture.
> Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation?
American culture is unfortunately permeated with examples, and habits, and expectations around punishing the behaviors you'd want to see. I see subtle things like that all the time. So while I doubt anyone who stopped to actually think about the concrete implications of their behavior, more specifically their unconscious habits; wouldn't be able to describe how insulting people, or really, how discouraging people is likely to have a negative outcome. The catch being, most people don't stop to consider anything. Thoes who do, are exceptionally rare.
As an example, someone posted a comment providing context, and encouraging people to be curious and grow their skill set with techniques that will help them with dogs, (and yes, these do translate to humans as well.)
Which invited a negative comment from you attacking people who aren't perfect every single moment of every single day, who might benefit from a reminder that how they treat others matters. Also indirectly attacking the person you replied to.
(See what I mean about the culture of punishing the behavior, you want to see? Or did you intend to discourage curiosity?)
> Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog. Just because humans are also, in addition to those able to do a lot more, and learn in an astronomically larger set of ways, doesn't exclude the techniques that work best with dogs. You forget this at your own peril. I.e. if the way you behave wouldn't encourage the behavior you want from a dog well, it sure as hell wont encourage the behavior from a human. All humans, including you, are not that special, get over yourself. rhetorically speaking
> You can train a human using the exact same skills you use to train a dog.
Depending on the context, this can traumatize a human though. This idea has been the basis for both gay conversion therapy and applied behavior analysis. The latter I have had the misfortune to directly experience myself.
You don't think those same things traumatize the dog too? There's a reason why all reputable dog trainers advocate exclusively positive training methods. It's because training with exclusively positive feedback is not only most likely to get the behavior you want. It critically avoids destabilizing the dog. Negative reinforcement learning does works, but it also leads to anxiety, and "reactionary outbursts". i.e. the dog learns to become afraid, and is more likely to bite you. Only abused dogs bite their pack in fear. Just like only abused humans attack their community.
> It’s estimated that approximately 1% of the general population is estimated to have high levels of psychopathy.
> These people don’t need an excuse, and have no reason, to be dangerous.
Psycohpathy is defined as behaviors that conflict with pro-moral and pro-social norms. Are you trying to say that antisocial behavior is exclusively genetic, and isn't influenced by the environment? And if it is influenced by the environment, how does that conflict with what I said.
Or, more directly do you think that someone abandoned and abused by their caregivers as a child wouldn't test high on a psychopathy evaluation?
Also IIRC that 1.2% is just any clinically significant symptoms. Non-violent, pro-social, low empathy. Would still test high on that test.
Probably, which is unfortunate. I have personally seen a VP be shocked that morale tanked after a large layoff. I think he said “you would think they would be happy they still have jobs”. Lots of sociopaths in the C-Suite.
This comment comes across as written by someone who hasn't seen a toxic work environment.
Sociopaths often make up an unusually large percentage of the upper layers of management. They won't hesitate to step on people to get ahead, and use the typical conflict aversion of regular people to their advantage- causing drama and fights, wearing others down, and eventually getting their way because most people just want their pay cheque, not to go into battle constantly.
"French server", what is that? Usually we judge customer service on the company, not the nationality of the hardware, care to share exactly where you had a bad experience?
It's a different social contract. It's not just the waitress, it's service in general. One trying to judge the other is never quite going to work because it rubs us wrong in some weird internal way.
Eg go into a big store brand in most of the US and the cashier will be all flashy smile asking how is your day, and you ignore it and ask your request, and that's the game. A french person would mostly hate that, feel the question as annoying.
You go to a similar french store and the cashier and yourself will say the bonjour / merci / ... yada yada game and if someone doesn't do his part he's considered rude; I found a lot of foreigner surprised by that, the fact that you're not answering "merci" or asking "s'il vous plait" because it's nice, but because not doing it puts you in unpleasant person territory.
Ok business meeting, even in tech. American are always super optimist and happy, and seeing a solution and the end goal, French are over realist bordering on pessimist.
It's not that black and white of course there is a lot of inter mingling and differences, but overall which one you feel "better" is very personnal and based around what you're used to.
So how do the maintainers and contributers know when a Discussion details a bug ready to be worked on? Seems like, as with issues, they'll still be sorting though them and looking for the most active ones?
Edit: after reading the contributors doc, it seems that feature requests are discussions which should help. Unreproducible bugs, too; although I would wager that a lot of users believe they can reproduce bugs but in fact can't consistently, or believe their feature request is a bug.
It seems this approach is better but still requires someone to sort through the discussions before they're moved to the cleaner issues pile.
One big pile with filters, or a chaotic pile and a clean pile. That seems to be the end result of this, unless I'm missing something.
Making people something for software rather than helping them interact healthily with real people in their surroundings feels irresponsible at this point in time, given all the damage social media, short form videos, and the rest have done to the world at large.
It's just a pity AI was trained on mindless, garbage business-speak, and now that's our globalised common literature.
And now we're feeding that regurgitated mindless, garbage business-speak back into AI models, thereby reinforcing the garbage and further rotting our minds.
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