Some archetypes of people have always existed throughout society. Most of them are benign or obviously dangerous. The technical idiot isn’t dangerous, but can magnify the effects of adverse situations.
Specialized beyond generalities
There are many domains of life which require heavy specialization. The qualities that demarcate that specialization are very particular.
Heavily specialized people tend to have limited understanding of everything else around them. This can bleed into large groups to create a staggering amount of organizational incompetence:
- Lawyers who can defend a criminal client, but still consent to their apps’ terms of service without reading them.
- Java software developers who don’t know how to diagnose a broken computer mouse.
- Auto mechanics who can’t assemble their own solar panel system.
- Doctors who don’t take care of their diet.
- Highly qualified child psychologists who still battle with repressed trauma or marry abusive people.
Many people don’t care to learn the general understanding that constitutes living well. When they’re superb at their job, they can simply pay money to make things they don’t understand go away:
- Why bother understanding how engineered components work when you can pay an auto mechanic or architect?
- Why learn how computers work when you can simply buy another one?
- Why know about your body’s health when you can simply hire a medical expert or fitness coach?
Obliviousness
No individual inside that system is particularly aware of this. From their perspective, they’re more-or-less aligned with all their peers, give or take some small aspects of that specialization. There’s not much evidence to see differently:
- They receive inputs of specialized work they must do. It may include operating something, applying understanding from years of education, or simply routing something to the direct location.
- They don’t need to understand where their inputs came from, or where those inputs leave to.
- Their organization might give promotions and increased pay if they become more qualified in that specialization.
- Growing in any other aspect of their life (e.g., finding happiness, pursuing a relationship/family, finding meaning) isn’t useful. At best, it’s irrelevant for the group’s standards, and at worst is an impediment.
The culture reinforces this and creates an arcane mental mechanism over time. The “technical idiot” context can apply as much to “legal idiot”, “bureaucratic idiot”, or “managerial idiot”. Their prevalence seems to scale proportionally to how much their role is talking more than doing.
Indicators
Their most clear indicator of a technical idiot comes through how they use language:
- Strangely worded jargon that’s difficult to parse. Back-to-back five-syllable words are usually a dead giveaway.
- Poorly placed modifiers that add no value (“it’s important to note that…”, “In lieu of the preceding…”).
- A statement with “and/or” is legal idiocy. “And”, by its nature, constrains more (contains all the elements) than “or” (indicates at least one element). Thus, it should probably be “or”.
- Specific concepts mixed with vagueness (e.g., “We can maximize our margin call revenue by setting up a system.”).
- Using big words when they can use small ones instead.
- Stammering or stuttering, which indicates an unclear mental path. This doesn’t always indicate a lack of understanding, especially on very technical matters. It does, however, indicate constraints on how far someone understands.
- “Weasel words” that allow the speaker to never officially commit:
- “Based on the information that was provided, I recommend doing that action.”
- “There are no known risks with that decision.”
- “There is no way to say for sure, but this is the most advantageous choice given what we know.”
- Indicating a vague counter-claim for the patently obvious:
- “Lack of peer-reviewed science”: There is lack of peer-reviewed science indicating that stabbing yourself with a kitchen knife is bad for your health.
- “Insufficient data”: There is insufficient data over whether disobedient children are more likely to commit crimes later in life.
- “No viable expert opinion”: We have no viable expert opinion over whether the sun rises every morning.
In fact, it’s more convenient (and entertaining) to paraphrase the jargon by “hearing” it for what it really means:
- It has long been known / It is believed that = I think
- A definite trend is evident = My opinion is
- It has not been possible to ascertain = I don’t like saying this
- We’ve examined in detail = We trust the system
- Typically = What I want
- We’ll have a follow-up report = Trust me
- The data represents = My intuition says
- Additional data by subject-matter experts = My friends said
- In my experience = Once
- In case after case = Twice
- In a series of cases = Three times
- There is general consensus = Myself and a few others think
- Statistical analysis shows = Rumor has it
- It is evident that more information is necessary before we can make a decision = I don’t understand this
A persistent reality
This is an unavoidable reality. It arises as long able-bodied people can work on very in-the-weeds technical things. It persists to the degree our personalities and culture reinforce this mechanism.
Even if they’re perfectly harmless most of the time, a technical idiot can become dangerous in a few specific circumstances:
- Their work or personal life becomes unpleasant, so they take out their aggressions on people around them. This is standard human behavior, but hardship shows our weaknesses more than anything else.
- They must demonstrate competence to their superiors. Their actions will result in either rapidly processing work (badly) or denying access for others to do things.
Nothing consistently fights against this development. All we can do is decide which risk management procedure advance our self-interests:
- Localize your efforts to what you can do and working twice as much to protect your situation.
- Finding a new place to do business or live your life by getting far away from technical domains (i.e., homesteading).
- Accept it as a necessary portion of living in a large-scale society and humbly hand it off to professionals.
While it is difficult, failure to protect against technical idiots will convert society to a systematic and amoral mechanism. From there, all that’s necessary is for an influential tyrant to take control (e.g., Russia in 1922, Germany in 1938).