[HN Gopher] Fixing the TVA - A 'Loki' perspective
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Fixing the TVA - A 'Loki' perspective
Author : Nars088
Score : 69 points
Date : 2023-03-29 13:25 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (idealgas.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (idealgas.substack.com)
| Animats wrote:
| If you want a fictional organizational system, see L. Ron
| Hubbard's "How to live though an executive". The original edition
| describes a JIRA-like work control system in great detail. It's
| all manual. There are forms, wallboards of clamps holding
| tickets, markers for status changes, followup, and
| "communicators" running the process. This was a fantasy when
| first proposed, because the process was too labor-intensive. Now
| it's automated and common.
|
| (Such boards were not original with Hubbard. Here's such a setup
| for locomotive overhaul on a once famous UK railway.[1] Hubbard
| was applying a control scheme intended for a huge operation to
| rather banal tasks.)
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/nZ3AN-kd66g?t=138
| kmeisthax wrote:
| >JIRA-like work control system
|
| I'll add "inventing JIRA" onto the list of L. Ron Hubbard's
| crimes.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Tennessee Valley Authority???
| [deleted]
| paulusthe wrote:
| I object to the idea that marvel puts subtle themes into
| anything. Marvel movie and TV writing is so slap you in the face
| obvious that pretending they have deeper subtle meanings is just
| us seeing patterns where they don't exist.
| vlunkr wrote:
| I think they try to have deeper themes sometimes, but the
| strict formula ruins it.
|
| Winter Soldier is about questioning loyalty, Wandavision is
| about burying trauma. The problem is that these themes are
| always undone or diminished in the end, because there must
| always be a bad guy with strictly evil motives, and the good
| guys must punch him and shoot lasers at him until the audience
| gets tired.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| ... and then they pull back as soon as they might be about to
| say anything interesting, or take anything but a very-boring
| stance on any position.
|
| Looking at you, Falcon & Winter Soldier. And Wandavision, for
| that matter. And several of the movies--friggin' Spiderman: Far
| From Home, ugh. Even Black Panther ends up feeling like a
| missed opportunity that _almost_ went somewhere interesting,
| had all the pieces in place to, then... just didn 't, I suspect
| in part because it would likely have required a less-well-
| proven-in-superhero-movies story structure, so would have been
| riskier. The second one revisits that a little and tries to
| recover some of the potential the first one just left lying on
| the floor, but damn, that first one could have been _great_ ,
| period, not just "decent for a Marvel movie".
|
| It's almost better when they don't even hint that they might be
| trying to convey a message or _have interesting themes_ ,
| because then it's frustrating when they inevitably fail to
| follow through. It's so bad that when one of the films manages
| to have even fairly-safe themes and actually treats them half-
| decently and takes well-worn, safe positions on them (the
| _Guardians_ films) it puts them at the very top of the Marvel
| pile, so far as that aspect is concerned, at least.
|
| They tease messages and interesting themes more often than they
| really commit to them, unfortunately.
| bruce511 wrote:
| While not technically in the MCU, a Marvel movie that did go
| a bit deeper, and off-formula, was Logan.
|
| Yes,there were some familiar beats,but I think also did a
| good job of exploring what it means to grow old, to look back
| on a life of battles won, but war lost, to envisage a
| different future for the next generation over a simple repeat
| of the mistakes of this one,in spite of the futility of that
| desire.
|
| It was a very different look at familiar characters,and a
| very sober alternative to the "hero always wins in the end"
| narrative.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| Yep, that's true, good call, Logan's got some heft. I
| wasn't even thinking about the X-Men movies (which are, to
| be fair, and as you note, only MCU-adjacent)
| samstave wrote:
| Onthe inverse-meta of this comment ; there is a definite
| purpose to Marvel (and all other means of mass media
| consumption), but first some context. (This one will rile some
| feathers, TBS)
|
| -
|
| Secret societies (Masons, Essenes, Rosi, Mayan, Jesuits (not
| the ones youre familiar with) - have divided minds into two
| classes for centuries...
|
| "Those that think, and those that _think they think_ "
|
| --
|
| One of the most prolific manipulations is to get people to
| embed themselves into the latter, whilst thinking they are in
| the former.
|
| So when you provide a single layer of depth into the pattern,
| for people to think they are imbued with the higher (deeper)
| concepts - alows their conscious to align with your intent,
| without understanding the principles behind it, and thus,
| keeping (rather than detoriating) the momentum of intent...
| (this is how politics works. Its where the idea of 'just
| scratching the surface' comes from but from much more ancient
| times..)
|
| So for example, if you held the cast of a paint job on a Ford
| Mustang, and held it up - a viewer would exlaim "That is a ford
| Mustang!" feeling confident in their exclamation.
|
| Yet you can clearly tell that it is the image of a mustang, but
| beyond that...
|
| So they carry the idea of the mustang, without any clue what is
| true behind the reality of a mustang (its body, parts, etc...)
|
| These media pieces are rudders in the flow of thought (you may
| also not know that the symbol for thought in all these groups
| is water - as thought flows as water. For many reasons, water
| is used to represent thought (as its state can change from
| fluid, solid, gas - but with controlling elements as well --
| Wont go into that here...)
|
| --
|
| When you say "seeing patterns where they don't exist" is
| partially true -- as there are layers to this. Many patterns
| are presented by those who are not aware of the patterns they
| present. Either by subconscious suppression/suggestion, or
| other unrecognized (by them) familiarity, or by soul-desire
| (not for HN) connections...
|
| But symbolism is literally in every single thing you do, see,
| hear, read and SAY.
|
| Etymology is amazing - especially when you have historical
| context to the origin of certain incantations of speech.
| JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote:
| They're children's comic book stories being marketed to adults
| (arguably as fascist propaganda). There's a reason the
| managerial class ghouls have resorted to calling everything
| "content" - the entertainment & information economies are so
| degraded, so dumbed-down, that we can no longer call these
| "pieces of content" movies, TV shows, documentaries, etc. with
| a straight face.
|
| It's the audio-visual equivalent of the sugar water and food(?)
| products we unthinkingly pump down our gullets.
| braingenious wrote:
| It is secretly about org design in the same way that the movie Pi
| was secretly about a mathematician going insane.
|
| The Angry Birds Movie was secretly about CG birds protecting
| themselves from an attack by invading green pigs.
| dang wrote:
| The submitted title was "Marvel's Loki is secretly about org
| design". We've reverted it now. Discussion tends to get skewed
| in a shallow/baity direction with title edits like that, which
| is one reason we have this rule:
|
| " _Please submit the original source. If a post reports on
| something found on another site, submit the latter._ "
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| braingenious wrote:
| Thank you for fixing this clickbait headline. I am always
| happy to help out by posting.
| User23 wrote:
| Interestingly org design is in fact an engineering concern[1] and
| it's unfortunate that it's seldom properly treated as one.
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Hrm, engineering via applying Conway's Law: figure out the
| right architecture for your program, and then shape the
| organization to resemble that architecture. The result will
| organically and inevitably take that shape.
| Espressosaurus wrote:
| For large scale organizations, a reorg is an architecture
| change to accomplish a change in outcome. It's pretty obvious
| after you've been at a large org (>1000 people as an
| arbitrary cutoff) for a few years and you start to see how
| changes in organizational structure change your own ability
| to work across teams.
|
| I program with a computer. The C-suite programs via org
| changes.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| Maybe the C suite should use software. I am serious - i see
| software as a form of literacy and at some point the
| workers for the worlds largest companies stopped being
| human and became CPUs and GPUs. Coders became managers. I
| mean Twitter is trying to become a company of workers
| (CPUs) and their managers only.
|
| You do need a unifying story so that the managers co-
| ordinate at a high "mission" level.
|
| And most of the rest of the co-ordination is done via
| integration testing.
|
| Frankly "managers" as we know them, supervisory over a few
| people are done for.
|
| What will succeed is what google now seems to optimise for
| - being nice and safe for coders so they can co-operate.
|
| Frankly therapists on tap might make for better org design
| - iron out most of the directional problems with "the
| story", keep people from infighting by sharing the cash and
| occasional therapy sessions and you pretty much describe
| Google till last year.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Fun read, but it feels vaguely dystopian to me. The TVA is very,
| y'know, bad? And using it as your example of how to control org
| culture because "It can get problematic if the employees start to
| question the TVA" feels like the kind of thing you only do when
| critiquing or satirizing corporate consultancies.
|
| Similarly, I am by no means educated on workplace whatnot in
| general or the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model specifically, but,
| at least to me, the diagram under "Evaluating Congruence" would
| be good parody of a meaningless powerpoint slide if it wasn't
| real. I think it's the word "Strategy" added in small text to a
| random arrow that really takes it to the level where my brain
| needs to start evaluating whether I'm looking at a parody.
| hindsightbias wrote:
| The TVA is bad like IAEA is bad. They're just trying to prevent
| the crazy.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| By unilaterally deciding the "right" timeline and purging
| living beings who don't fit in lol
|
| Also let's not forget kidnapping, gaslighting, and erasing
| people's memories!
| moron4hire wrote:
| Exactly. There is an underlying narrative that goes almost
| unquestioned that Some Evil is necessary to prevent a
| Greater Evil. That's how we get things like the fucking
| Patriot Act and this new "TikTok Ban".
| JadeNB wrote:
| > There is an underlying narrative that goes almost
| unquestioned that Some Evil is necessary to prevent a
| Greater Evil. That's how we get things like the fucking
| Patriot Act ....
|
| There was an awful lot of questioning about the Patriot
| Act; it just got shouted down. I'm sure there is as much
| questioning today, it's just that the people who prefer
| you not question things have got better at shouting you
| down (or, well, more than shouting).
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| "The crazy" being prevented in that sentence is the life of
| nearly every sentient being.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| That's not true. Just the the life of any sentient being
| that is not incorporated into the sacred timelines.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Okay, fine "most of the lives of every sentient being."
| As Douglas Adams said, the major problem of time travel
| is grammar.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That rounds to "all sentient beings" for any level of
| approximation you choose to pick.
| DSMan195276 wrote:
| Is their life really "ended" if there is still an infinite
| number of them in other timelines? I'm kind-of joking, but
| once you start contemplating the multiverse things stop
| making much sense.
|
| It's not made super clear but it seems the TVA does not
| destroy every branching timeline. By extension we can
| arguably infer that infinite copies of "everybody" still
| exist, just in a smaller set of timelines (the ones the TVA
| allows to exist). So, if they've erased an infinite amount
| of life, but also an infinite amount of life still exists,
| then what actually happened?
| drbwaa wrote:
| The whole thing reads like something I might have submitted for
| a high school writing assignment on a dare.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| _Similarly, I am by no means educated on workplace whatnot in
| general or the Nadler-Tushman Congruence Model_
|
| What does this mean?
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| That weird chart, with the "Environment/Resources/History"
| inputs and the "Transformational Process" of
| "Culture/Work/People/Structure", is called the "Nadler-
| Tushman Congruence Model" and it has, like, actual papers
| written about it for places like the "Journal of
| Organisational Transformation & Social Change":
| https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=nadler-
| tushman+congruen...
|
| I lack the awareness of the field to judge whether it
| expresses something profound or is absolute bullshit.
| parthianshotgun wrote:
| It means he's just a regular person not educated in workplace
| theory
| outworlder wrote:
| > The TVA is very, y'know, bad?
|
| And so are corporations.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Corporations are only bad when they are powerful.
| TheNorthman wrote:
| There doesn't exist a corporation on the planet, that
| doesn't have power over its employees.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| That's why we control the amount of their power. On most
| of the world, corporations can't genocide their
| employees.
| whatgoodisaroad wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's a given that the TVA is bad. It depends
| profoundly on who you're asking.
| raydiatian wrote:
| Unfortunately, I don't think Marvel is capable of that level of
| depth.
| cleanchit wrote:
| Spoiler alert
| JadeNB wrote:
| The 4th sentence:
|
| > Needless to say, there will be spoilers from the show.
| deepzn wrote:
| So is Severance. Dystopian views of corporations are my favorite
| watch these days. Kind of like mixing the 90's Office/corporate
| culture (like Office Space, etc) satire with science-fiction.
| Though, the Matrix did both originally..
| e40 wrote:
| Love _Severance_. _Corporate_ on Comedy Central was really
| good, too. Lance Reddick... RIP. :.(
| https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5648202/
| actionfromafar wrote:
| xkcd://556
| graypegg wrote:
| Heh, I love the idea of xkcd as a protocol.
|
| https://xkcd.com/556/
|
| (For anyone that just wants a link.)
| ModernMech wrote:
| > Dystopian views of corporations are my favorite watch these
| days.
|
| Myself, I find looking out my window boring.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| This explains the entertainment value of the show
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