I always love it when this pops up. I'm unfamiliar with the origins of this particular version, but the Office of Strategic Services, working alongside the SOE and other Allied intelligence agencies distributed a wide array of manuals, pamphlets, and propaganda like this starting in WWII.
I'm a former Green Beret, and we reference a lot of this stuff when studying guerrilla warfare (we call it Unconventional Warfare). Here's a graphic I love to reference – the Soro pyramid. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Original-version-of-the-...
This shows how sabotage, resistance, and underground activities progress towards full-on guerrilla war.
It was deeply frustrating for me to get out of the service and go to work in large organizations who seemingly employed these very techniques as a matter of practice!
Organizations, large and small, are all pathological. It isn't an epidemic of terrible social accidents, it's inherent to organizations as a method of grouping humans.
Essentially, people (and AFAIK, all primates) have a built in behavioural system to take excess credit for wins and minimize blame for losses. The details are a nasty tangle of evolutionary psychology but the consequences, in groups, are blame deficits. These deficits typically manifest as a simultaneous doublethink mix of low morale and unrealistic optimism. That's the pathology.
Good personnel management is about leveraging this instead of fighting it. I recommend The Organization Man (1956) and Moral Mazes (1988) if you want to read on the topic and/or fall asleep fast but if somebody knows a more recent text on the topic, please suggest it.
> Essentially, people (and AFAIK, all primates) have a built in behavioural system to take excess credit for wins and minimize blame for losses.
Where did you get this from? Seems like a cynical view. I think it's just one end of a spectrum. I've definitely worked with people like this, but I also some that do the opposite - wins are for the team, failures are on them.
It doesn't address this dynamic in particular, but reinventing organizations by Frederic Laloux is one text that makes me optimistic about the possibility of improving human organizational practices.
The most relevant prescription that book makes to your point is probably the proper diffusion of responsibility through empowering everyone to make executive decisions so long as they consult everyone that will be affected first. It's an interesting book.
Interesting how the quality of diagramming is plainly worse in 2013 than in 1966. The 1966 original is more easy to read: the typeface is pleasantly wider, there is no red or blue text on a saturated yellow background. It looks better overall. One part of it is technical limitations (you can't abuse color when you print in monochrome), but it is also that the 1966 version was most likely done by a specialist, and the 2013 version wasn't.
I suspect in 1966 you would send it to typesetters / a graphics department and in 2013 someone does it themselves with a computer. If you have a diagram/graphic made by someone who specialises in making diagrams/graphics, it will likely be better than something made for the same cost in 1966.
While I can appreciate the simplicity of the older version, the lack of padding around text + monochrome made this a sea of black marks to me. Basically illegible. 2013 was much easier to read
And as a matter of substance -- the right-hand vertical black bar on the earlier version says, "Preparation of parallel hierarchies for taking over government positions", but on the newer version, the same text appears on both vertical bars.
That theme as shown in the earlier version seems important, and it's just not there in the newer one.
In current terms, you could see the militia movement in the US as relating to that theme.
Yeah, the interesting thing is that we're doing it to ourselves despite our (ostensibly) global supremacy.
Having spent a lot of time looking at what unwinds a country – and I'm no sociologist or geopolitical expert – it generally seems to me that the institutions upon which we depend are unwinding. Pick any – government, business, the economy, the press, the concept of truth.
Maybe those weren't perfect to begin with, but I always tell folks that it's a great opportunity to rebuild those institutions better, instead of sitting around waiting for the apocalypse.
I'm very happy, for instance, to see all the new thinking around the institution education. We all knew it was going to become undone with the democratization of information via the internet, but thanks to COVID, a lot of people are reflecting on the value of sending their kids to (globally underperforming) public schools, or going into debt for college.
Ray Dalio’s book was helpful in understanding this period of time, as well as The Fourth Turning.
Definitely just part of the cycle of civilization. Might be helpful to pull up that that framework in order to understand what’s happening.
I’d love to hear any other titles like this. I’m almost done with Disunited Nations by Zehan. Some interesting ideas in there, but the book isn’t as interesting as his ongoing YouTube posts have been this far — just got it today so I’m only have way done.
Without any military experience but some interest in history, this feels a little tainted with domestic propaganda; the entire pyramid, even the new version, regards existing institutions as inherently righteous and legitimate, and those exerting guerrilla tactics as inherently morally corrupted (e.g. achieving their goals using lies, influenced by foreign agents).
The older version is especially hilarious, considering the CIA applied the same external influence to terrorists and guerrilla forces in South America and the Middle East they revile as "communist" in there.
I didn't get that sense at all. I'm with you in not trusting the CIA, but I feel like this is a fairly realstic view of how things actually happen, which they probably intentionally used as part of the process of destabilizing foreign governments they dislike.
edit: I see - the "original" one is a lot more explicitly targeting communist gurellias
> Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
OMG… I have customer who does this to his organization on every meeting we join. I’m guaranteed to have a good 30 (or more) minutes of discussions about some other meeting unrelated to the one they are currently in. It’s like clockwork.
He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”.
I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague so he can hide the fact that he is just opening a can of worms, tell his anecdotes again all on his own for no reason.
There’s a certain type of work environment where managers are only half paying attention — they evaluate performance and reward people based on how they perform in meetings, but they don’t pay enough attention to look at the real performance of people over time.
This rewards people who are good at being performative in meetings: They try to flex their importance (“it has been brought to my attention that…”) and they try to raise issues with everything because it makes them look like they’re on top of it all.
The weird thing is that they don’t really understand what they’re doing most of the time. It’s just what they’ve been rewarded for in the past, so they’ve continued to do more of what has brought them rewards.
1. He's a control freak and has to have a hand in every decision.
2. He's opposed to the project and wants it to fail.
3. The previously agreed decision benefits a rival within his organization and he's trying to reverse this.
4. He loves hearing the sound of his own voice.
5. He's incapable of keeping up with the current discussion and only works out what people were saying after the meeting so brings his belated contributions to the next meeting.
I eliminated and/or monetized clients like this to death by just switching all my billing to hourly. It's incredible how quickly a dude like that will put a sock in it about the last meeting when you mention the price of revisiting a decision you already built code on top of.
Especially when it's clear you aren't trying to harvest extra hours and just don't need the hassle of accommodating their vanity.
> He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”. I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague
In USA English that's just a way to introduce a topic, like if a journalist is interviewing someone and asks something like "what would you say to those who disagree with your puppy kicking policies" it's not like they have any specific disagreers in mind it's just verbiage that is part of their question.
It might've been Dave Barry who said suggested that one say "it's been brought to my attention" as a way of signaling that one must be an important person, to have matters brought to their attention. :)
> Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows.
What’s the contemporary equivalent? I’d still like to bring a couple dozen moths to the theatre just for the hell of it.
Depends on your political alignment. Superhero movies are basically fascist propaganda (the people who are most powerful will have your best interests in mind and save you, you dear children who enjoy comic books in your adulthood).
I don’t think this would work. I can’t think of a single time in my movie going life where a moth has obscured the projection. There must be an existing counter measure. Fascinating idea.
Probably that projector light output has increased so much that moths in the beam near the projector overheat. Drive in movies, which always needed a big light output, didn't have much of a problem with moths in the beam.
How are you always able to post these lists so quickly, with posts going back to 200*? These posts don't even link to the same source, and not every title contains "Field Manual", one is just named "How to make sure nothing gets done at work", has 3 comments and is from 2015. Wild :D
> (4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
It's a bit funny that the entire Western economy with just-in-time-everything is indistinguishable from an act of sabotage.
"Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows."
I doubt anyone tested how difficult it would be to acquire three dozen large months and fit them into a paper bag, then smuggle that into the movies. I'd like to try though.
I've seen people smuggle in full meals for an entire family.
Moths interfering with the projection lights? That's Anarchist Cookbook level dumb.
Just bring a tube of crickets in and release them. Once the screams start, the movie is over and that auditorium is going to be out of commission for the rest of the day.
Saw this first hand as a good technique - it was amazing. Was working in a open plan office of a major corporation and our department was situated right next to the CEOs office. One of my managers had an issue and got angry and said "right, im going to talk to the CEO" and walked up to him. CEO just said something like "Okay, thanks for bringing it to my attention but I have a meeting to go to right now, can we talk about this later". Not only did it completely defuse the anger of the manager but it totally worked and they never followed up. The manager was like head explodes in awe.
I never understood if this guide was published tongue-in-cheek or not. Who is the intended audience? It seems like the intended audience was "people who don't like their organization" as comedic relief.
> Abstract verbalizations about personal liberty, freedom of the press, and so on, will not be convincing in most parts of the world. In many areas they will not even be comprehensible.
These days it is true in almost all parts of the world.
There's a really interesting narrative history book by Giles Milton called "Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" that goes quite deeply into the background of how these books, weapons, and tactics came about as the UK defended itself during WWII. It's worth a read. (https://www.gilesmilton.com/historybooks/churchillsministry)
> William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world’s leading expert in silent killing
This reads like a sentence straight from a bad 70s action movie. Who had decided he was the world's leading expert? And how in the world would one know?
The "narrative history" seems to use a lot of name dropping, as witnessed by the reference to Churchill in the title. Special Operations Executive, the ministry of ecomomic warfare as well as the build up of a large air force go back to the much maligned Neville Chamberlain.
How much productivity has humanity collectively lost due to using QWERTY over DVORAK or some other interface? And we might be stuck with this for eternity.
The claims of better typing speed with Dvorak have never been demonstrated. Only Dvorak himself found a benefit.
It’s easy to change if you want and has been for decades now. Computers are flexible in that sense. But measuring productivity in words per minute isn’t much different than measuring it in lines of code.
QWERTY is not designed for speed but the exact opposite. And we are not monkeys typing randomly and continuously. We, as human beings, have valuable cognitive work, while typing is just a format conversion operation. Focusing there misses the point.
We should focus less on peak speed and more on sustained speed?
Not a dvorak user.
I infected myself with Colemak back in the days when I had time to mess around on such things, somewhat inspired by a programmer of acquaint, that suffered from RSI. I can say after 10+ years I've never suffered from RSI.
It's been a pain when trying to pair program but never really had any substantial regrets. I can't compare it to any previous era where I was a qwerty user as I learned to touchtype with Colemak.
I think anything that allows you to maintain typing speed (ergonomics) and reduces the chance of distraction from errors is worthwhile.
Does DVORAK somehow reduce the cognitive load of typing? Maybe I'm just a slow thinker, but I've never found myself in a situation where the rate limiting factor is the ability to physically move my fingers from one key to another. (On a real keyboard at least, tapping this comment out on a touchscreen phone I made several typos I had to correct.)
Interesting that people are aware of this old document. But it also makes me wonder at how much of section 11: General Interference with Organizations and Production matches what I've experienced in some organizations. And I'm assuming no intentional sabotage.
This is my favourite document and I share it with my team whenever it comes up. Really good inspo on thinking about what matters and where processes can slow down even by people that are well intentioned.
These are guides for people living in war time Europe under Nazi occupation, not the CIA going after other US government departments. At some point you need to "pick a side" in geopolitics, there are no clear good guys or bad guys.
There was a big push in the 20th century with government projects to promote the metric system and educate. People were confused because they knew the imperial system already. Op ed writers criticized it. Parents complained about schools teaching it to their children. After decades of effort, the Reagan administration killed funding for the projects
US schools still teach the metric system. Americans are familiar with the system and use it daily. We also continue to use customary units out of familiarity. We have never officially used Imperial units.
maybe the resistance to switching away from british imperial measurement in usa is the work of organizational saboteurs using the opportunities to make faulty decisions and to adopt a noncooperative attitude, as suggested in the guide itself
I stumbled upon this document on a friends kindle maybe 5 yrs ago. It was attributed the same. Think it is or was distributed for free in the Kindle bookstore and they downloaded every free book.
I took it as this person will sabotage parts of the US until Trump's charges are dropped. Pretty stupid thing to post about online, really! But I suppose not surprising!
I always love it when this pops up. I'm unfamiliar with the origins of this particular version, but the Office of Strategic Services, working alongside the SOE and other Allied intelligence agencies distributed a wide array of manuals, pamphlets, and propaganda like this starting in WWII.
I'm a former Green Beret, and we reference a lot of this stuff when studying guerrilla warfare (we call it Unconventional Warfare). Here's a graphic I love to reference – the Soro pyramid. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Original-version-of-the-...
and here's an updated one: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333222899/figure/fi...
This shows how sabotage, resistance, and underground activities progress towards full-on guerrilla war.
It was deeply frustrating for me to get out of the service and go to work in large organizations who seemingly employed these very techniques as a matter of practice!
Organizations, large and small, are all pathological. It isn't an epidemic of terrible social accidents, it's inherent to organizations as a method of grouping humans.
Essentially, people (and AFAIK, all primates) have a built in behavioural system to take excess credit for wins and minimize blame for losses. The details are a nasty tangle of evolutionary psychology but the consequences, in groups, are blame deficits. These deficits typically manifest as a simultaneous doublethink mix of low morale and unrealistic optimism. That's the pathology.
Good personnel management is about leveraging this instead of fighting it. I recommend The Organization Man (1956) and Moral Mazes (1988) if you want to read on the topic and/or fall asleep fast but if somebody knows a more recent text on the topic, please suggest it.
> Essentially, people (and AFAIK, all primates) have a built in behavioural system to take excess credit for wins and minimize blame for losses.
Where did you get this from? Seems like a cynical view. I think it's just one end of a spectrum. I've definitely worked with people like this, but I also some that do the opposite - wins are for the team, failures are on them.
8 replies →
The Gervais Principle comes to mind.
2 replies →
It doesn't address this dynamic in particular, but reinventing organizations by Frederic Laloux is one text that makes me optimistic about the possibility of improving human organizational practices.
The most relevant prescription that book makes to your point is probably the proper diffusion of responsibility through empowering everyone to make executive decisions so long as they consult everyone that will be affected first. It's an interesting book.
Interesting how the quality of diagramming is plainly worse in 2013 than in 1966. The 1966 original is more easy to read: the typeface is pleasantly wider, there is no red or blue text on a saturated yellow background. It looks better overall. One part of it is technical limitations (you can't abuse color when you print in monochrome), but it is also that the 1966 version was most likely done by a specialist, and the 2013 version wasn't.
I suspect in 1966 you would send it to typesetters / a graphics department and in 2013 someone does it themselves with a computer. If you have a diagram/graphic made by someone who specialises in making diagrams/graphics, it will likely be better than something made for the same cost in 1966.
While I can appreciate the simplicity of the older version, the lack of padding around text + monochrome made this a sea of black marks to me. Basically illegible. 2013 was much easier to read
And as a matter of substance -- the right-hand vertical black bar on the earlier version says, "Preparation of parallel hierarchies for taking over government positions", but on the newer version, the same text appears on both vertical bars.
That theme as shown in the earlier version seems important, and it's just not there in the newer one.
In current terms, you could see the militia movement in the US as relating to that theme.
It feels like this is happening to the entire country right now.
Yeah, the interesting thing is that we're doing it to ourselves despite our (ostensibly) global supremacy.
Having spent a lot of time looking at what unwinds a country – and I'm no sociologist or geopolitical expert – it generally seems to me that the institutions upon which we depend are unwinding. Pick any – government, business, the economy, the press, the concept of truth.
Maybe those weren't perfect to begin with, but I always tell folks that it's a great opportunity to rebuild those institutions better, instead of sitting around waiting for the apocalypse.
I'm very happy, for instance, to see all the new thinking around the institution education. We all knew it was going to become undone with the democratization of information via the internet, but thanks to COVID, a lot of people are reflecting on the value of sending their kids to (globally underperforming) public schools, or going into debt for college.
5 replies →
Ray Dalio’s book was helpful in understanding this period of time, as well as The Fourth Turning.
Definitely just part of the cycle of civilization. Might be helpful to pull up that that framework in order to understand what’s happening.
I’d love to hear any other titles like this. I’m almost done with Disunited Nations by Zehan. Some interesting ideas in there, but the book isn’t as interesting as his ongoing YouTube posts have been this far — just got it today so I’m only have way done.
2 replies →
We've definitely passed the middle of the underground items in the US :/
this is basically a manual for how our federal government works.
This would make a great meme template. Add a 'you are here' indicator and comment on any recent news story.
Q-anon is pretty near the top, I'd imagine.
They get a lot of foreign and domestic help, though.
I have been wondering... who's the author of the original Soro Pyramid?
SORO = Special Operations Research Office
I believe it was originally found in this publication: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Human-Factors-Consider...
which you can read here: https://books.google.com/books?printsec=frontcover&vid=LCCN6...
Without any military experience but some interest in history, this feels a little tainted with domestic propaganda; the entire pyramid, even the new version, regards existing institutions as inherently righteous and legitimate, and those exerting guerrilla tactics as inherently morally corrupted (e.g. achieving their goals using lies, influenced by foreign agents).
The older version is especially hilarious, considering the CIA applied the same external influence to terrorists and guerrilla forces in South America and the Middle East they revile as "communist" in there.
I didn't get that sense at all. I'm with you in not trusting the CIA, but I feel like this is a fairly realstic view of how things actually happen, which they probably intentionally used as part of the process of destabilizing foreign governments they dislike.
edit: I see - the "original" one is a lot more explicitly targeting communist gurellias
> Refer back to matters decided upon at the last meeting and attempt to re-open the question of the advisability of that decision.
OMG… I have customer who does this to his organization on every meeting we join. I’m guaranteed to have a good 30 (or more) minutes of discussions about some other meeting unrelated to the one they are currently in. It’s like clockwork.
He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”.
I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague so he can hide the fact that he is just opening a can of worms, tell his anecdotes again all on his own for no reason.
I kinda wonder now.
There’s a certain type of work environment where managers are only half paying attention — they evaluate performance and reward people based on how they perform in meetings, but they don’t pay enough attention to look at the real performance of people over time.
This rewards people who are good at being performative in meetings: They try to flex their importance (“it has been brought to my attention that…”) and they try to raise issues with everything because it makes them look like they’re on top of it all.
The weird thing is that they don’t really understand what they’re doing most of the time. It’s just what they’ve been rewarded for in the past, so they’ve continued to do more of what has brought them rewards.
People complain about chatGPT being a Stochastic Parrot but we got plenty of natural ones in corporate positions
Possibilities include:
1. He's a control freak and has to have a hand in every decision.
2. He's opposed to the project and wants it to fail.
3. The previously agreed decision benefits a rival within his organization and he's trying to reverse this.
4. He loves hearing the sound of his own voice.
5. He's incapable of keeping up with the current discussion and only works out what people were saying after the meeting so brings his belated contributions to the next meeting.
I eliminated and/or monetized clients like this to death by just switching all my billing to hourly. It's incredible how quickly a dude like that will put a sock in it about the last meeting when you mention the price of revisiting a decision you already built code on top of.
Especially when it's clear you aren't trying to harvest extra hours and just don't need the hassle of accommodating their vanity.
6. The decision process is half baked, and nothing is ever completely closed. As a result, nobody shuts this guy down.
2 replies →
> He always starts it out really vague too with “it was brought to my attention <re-opens topic>”. I’ve long wondered if anyone really does bring anything to this guy’s attention or if he just is being vague
In USA English that's just a way to introduce a topic, like if a journalist is interviewing someone and asks something like "what would you say to those who disagree with your puppy kicking policies" it's not like they have any specific disagreers in mind it's just verbiage that is part of their question.
It might've been Dave Barry who said suggested that one say "it's been brought to my attention" as a way of signaling that one must be an important person, to have matters brought to their attention. :)
1 reply →
> Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows.
What’s the contemporary equivalent? I’d still like to bring a couple dozen moths to the theatre just for the hell of it.
I think this would still work in a cinema. I don’t know what could constitute “enemy propaganda” though.
Depends on your political alignment. Superhero movies are basically fascist propaganda (the people who are most powerful will have your best interests in mind and save you, you dear children who enjoy comic books in your adulthood).
5 replies →
I don’t think this would work. I can’t think of a single time in my movie going life where a moth has obscured the projection. There must be an existing counter measure. Fascinating idea.
4 replies →
Probably that projector light output has increased so much that moths in the beam near the projector overheat. Drive in movies, which always needed a big light output, didn't have much of a problem with moths in the beam.
Good luck finding moths these days. They're all dead!
Past threads as compiled by u/dang: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29597454 is just an excerpt)
- not a 404 dead link like many of the previous post.
Thanks! Macroexpanded:
Simple Sabotage Field Manual by United States Office of Strategic Services - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=833443 - Sept 2009 (29 comments)
How are you always able to post these lists so quickly, with posts going back to 200*? These posts don't even link to the same source, and not every title contains "Field Manual", one is just named "How to make sure nothing gets done at work", has 3 comments and is from 2015. Wild :D
4 replies →
> (4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
It's a bit funny that the entire Western economy with just-in-time-everything is indistinguishable from an act of sabotage.
"Anyone can break up a showing of an enemy propaganda film by putting two or three dozen large moths in a paper bag. Take the bag to the movies with you, put it on the floor in an empty section of the theater as you go in and leave it open. The moths will fly out and climb into the projector beam, so that the film will be obscured by fluttering shadows."
I doubt anyone tested how difficult it would be to acquire three dozen large months and fit them into a paper bag, then smuggle that into the movies. I'd like to try though.
I've seen people smuggle in full meals for an entire family.
Moths interfering with the projection lights? That's Anarchist Cookbook level dumb.
Just bring a tube of crickets in and release them. Once the screams start, the movie is over and that auditorium is going to be out of commission for the rest of the day.
I imagine if this was done today, you'd get a lot of:
> Whenever someone asks you a question say you'll address it during standup.
> Never decide anything outside of a meeting (I think this is partially covered)
> If conversations become difficult, say you have to leave to go to another meeting and will follow up with them later.
Saw this first hand as a good technique - it was amazing. Was working in a open plan office of a major corporation and our department was situated right next to the CEOs office. One of my managers had an issue and got angry and said "right, im going to talk to the CEO" and walked up to him. CEO just said something like "Okay, thanks for bringing it to my attention but I have a meeting to go to right now, can we talk about this later". Not only did it completely defuse the anger of the manager but it totally worked and they never followed up. The manager was like head explodes in awe.
https://taylor.town/-10x > Hold 10 engineers hostage in a technical discussion.
Haha I remember calculating how much $ we spent a week in meetings, just with my small team.
It was... a lot of money...
Wonderful, looks like my workplace is following all the tips!
this is surfacing again today from the comments on the -10x engineer https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35438414
Behold: the -25x engineer.
I never understood if this guide was published tongue-in-cheek or not. Who is the intended audience? It seems like the intended audience was "people who don't like their organization" as comedic relief.
It was for occupied Europeans in 1944, who were frequently working for the German occupiers. (Or for dissident Germans)
Did those people widely speak English? Was the guide translated?
Scroll about 75% of the way down to:
(11) General Interference with Organizations and Production
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9148440/ I can recommend this one :) Should you have access to a Finnish IP you can watch it here https://areena.yle.fi/1-50472616
It hurts to read this:
> Abstract verbalizations about personal liberty, freedom of the press, and so on, will not be convincing in most parts of the world. In many areas they will not even be comprehensible.
These days it is true in almost all parts of the world.
There's a really interesting narrative history book by Giles Milton called "Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare" that goes quite deeply into the background of how these books, weapons, and tactics came about as the UK defended itself during WWII. It's worth a read. (https://www.gilesmilton.com/historybooks/churchillsministry)
> William Fairbairn, was a portly pensioner with an unusual passion: he was the world’s leading expert in silent killing
This reads like a sentence straight from a bad 70s action movie. Who had decided he was the world's leading expert? And how in the world would one know?
The "narrative history" seems to use a lot of name dropping, as witnessed by the reference to Churchill in the title. Special Operations Executive, the ministry of ecomomic warfare as well as the build up of a large air force go back to the much maligned Neville Chamberlain.
> Who had decided he was the world's leading expert? And how in the world would one know?
In publicly calling the bluff of the "world's leading expert in silent killing," consider the consequences of being wrong.
I believe there’s a film very loosely based on this currently being made.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5177120/
How much productivity has humanity collectively lost due to using QWERTY over DVORAK or some other interface? And we might be stuck with this for eternity.
Probably none.
The claims of better typing speed with Dvorak have never been demonstrated. Only Dvorak himself found a benefit.
It’s easy to change if you want and has been for decades now. Computers are flexible in that sense. But measuring productivity in words per minute isn’t much different than measuring it in lines of code.
QWERTY is not designed for speed but the exact opposite. And we are not monkeys typing randomly and continuously. We, as human beings, have valuable cognitive work, while typing is just a format conversion operation. Focusing there misses the point.
We should focus less on peak speed and more on sustained speed?
Not a dvorak user.
I infected myself with Colemak back in the days when I had time to mess around on such things, somewhat inspired by a programmer of acquaint, that suffered from RSI. I can say after 10+ years I've never suffered from RSI.
It's been a pain when trying to pair program but never really had any substantial regrets. I can't compare it to any previous era where I was a qwerty user as I learned to touchtype with Colemak.
I think anything that allows you to maintain typing speed (ergonomics) and reduces the chance of distraction from errors is worthwhile.
Does DVORAK somehow reduce the cognitive load of typing? Maybe I'm just a slow thinker, but I've never found myself in a situation where the rate limiting factor is the ability to physically move my fingers from one key to another. (On a real keyboard at least, tapping this comment out on a touchscreen phone I made several typos I had to correct.)
So much of this would be right at home in the parody book 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings: How to Get By Without Even Trying [1].
[1] https://www.amazon.com/100-Tricks-Appear-Smart-Meetings/dp/1...
Thank you for posting this! I was talking about it recently with a friend, but couldn't remember the name or where I saw it.
Interesting that people are aware of this old document. But it also makes me wonder at how much of section 11: General Interference with Organizations and Production matches what I've experienced in some organizations. And I'm assuming no intentional sabotage.
This is my favourite document and I share it with my team whenever it comes up. Really good inspo on thinking about what matters and where processes can slow down even by people that are well intentioned.
I’m commenting to bookmark this. It reminds me of Ben Stein’s “How to Ruin Your Life”.
These types of references are great for taking personal inventory. I can’t say I haven’t been doing a lot of these things unknowingly.
Pro tip: you can “favorite” posts.
It’s amazing how many horrible things governments do and yet we keep giving them power and allowing them to do shit like this.
This is from the 40s, can you imagine what they are doing to us right now?
Creepy to even think about it.
I don’t see the problem with this. What do you find objectionable?
It was the 1940s. This was useful information for basically anyone in Europe.
This is TAME compared to some of the other things that have been declassified.
such as: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=US+DoD+im...
These are guides for people living in war time Europe under Nazi occupation, not the CIA going after other US government departments. At some point you need to "pick a side" in geopolitics, there are no clear good guys or bad guys.
This describes literally every work place I’ve ever been in. Amazing, this must be the foundation of HBS MBA materials.
Scrum seems like it was lifted from this.
Unironically, this might be one of the biggest blockers to Artificial Intelligence adoption at most companies.
Now this is on github. (What would AI assistant system respond after trained on these instructions?)
Puzzled that a 1944 US guide has instructions using the metric system.
There was a big push in the 20th century with government projects to promote the metric system and educate. People were confused because they knew the imperial system already. Op ed writers criticized it. Parents complained about schools teaching it to their children. After decades of effort, the Reagan administration killed funding for the projects
US schools still teach the metric system. Americans are familiar with the system and use it daily. We also continue to use customary units out of familiarity. We have never officially used Imperial units.
maybe the resistance to switching away from british imperial measurement in usa is the work of organizational saboteurs using the opportunities to make faulty decisions and to adopt a noncooperative attitude, as suggested in the guide itself
Probably because the people the guide is aimed for are not living in the US?
It wasn't intended for US citizens, but for those in enemy states.
US ground forces have measured distance in "klicks" (kilometers) since 1918.
Wasn't this originally a Soviet guide? Are we sure about the source here?
The CIA certainly thinks the US government produced it: https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/the-art-of-simple-sabotage...
I stumbled upon this document on a friends kindle maybe 5 yrs ago. It was attributed the same. Think it is or was distributed for free in the Kindle bookstore and they downloaded every free book.
No, it was just intended for western Europeans (primarily the French resistance), as the 1944 date might suggest.
Here's a scan of the pdf: https://archive.org/details/SimpleSabotageFieldManualStrateg...
Thanks. This will come in handy when the robots take over.
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What does this mean?
I took it as this person will sabotage parts of the US until Trump's charges are dropped. Pretty stupid thing to post about online, really! But I suppose not surprising!
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You’re not capable of sabotaging anything beyond your own livelihood.
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it's that time of the month uh?