Michael Nielsen: evaluation

Transcript context

…That’s in San Diego, right? It is, yes. For about 10 years, it was probably the most dangerous object in the world. It carried nuclear weapons, I believe, having 5,000 people on it. Basically, people have been making objects like that for many centuries. They keep getting better at it. There’s so much knowledge built into that environment. It expresses so much very deep expertise. Then you have 4, 4 ½ thousand people, all completely dedicated to a single purpose. They all care an enormous amount about this purpose. They don’t suffer like large organizations that have all kinds of bloat and all kinds of problems. So many of those problems are gone away there, partially because when you’re on a boat, it’s not so easy to empire build, like there are real reasons to trim fat. You have amazing unity of purpose: What the captain or what the admiral — there was both on the boat — say, that goes. You’re not arguing about what the right corporate strategy is. You have incredible clarity. You have incredible belief in this purpose. It actually is a high purpose in their case. Talking to some of the sailors — they felt very strongly they were protecting civilization that they cared about a great deal. They speak with so much pride about it. It’s almost the perfect floating civilization in some regards. It’s just immensely interesting. Here’s something you once wrote, and I quote, “The great talent identifiers I know or know of all seem very idiosyncratic. They’re rather like Michelin chefs.” This is getting us back to the tension between the opaque and the legible. Why do you think that’s true, that they’re idiosyncratic?…

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