Dangerous Professional Style

"Dangerous Professional" ist ein Konzept von Patrick McKenzie alias patio11. Wenn man zum Beispiel mit Banken zu tun hat, ist es wirksamer, ihnen in einem Stil zu schreiben, bei dem die Person auf der Bankenseite sofort denkt "oha, jemand vom Fach".

"Memetically, being a Dangerous Professional means communicating in what might be a slightly adversarial context in a way which suggests that a bureaucracy take one’s concerns seriously and escalate them to someone empowered to resolve them swiftly.)" (Patrick McKenzie, Quelle)

Im Januar habe ich zum ersten Mal eine Mail in einer Annäherung an den "Dangerous Professional"-Stil geschrieben, um bei meinem Webhoster ein zu diesem Zeitpunkt seit über einem halben Jahr bestehendes Problem vielleicht endlich mal gelöst zu bekommen. Bis dahin hatte ich zwar schon viele Mails geschickt, in denen ich immer nur sinngemäß "es geht nicht! es wäre schön, wenn es bald wieder ginge!" geschrieben habe. Irgendwann kam dann jedes Mal eine automatische "Wir haben Ihr Ticket bearbeitet und gelöst"-Mail. Aber das Problem ging nicht weg.

Diesmal habe ich das Problem ChatGPT gezeigt, bin dessen Diagnosevorschlägen gefolgt und habe das kompetent und technisch klingende Ergebnis in eine Mail an den Webhoster geschrieben, als käme es von mir.

Ich stelle mir vor, dass so eine Mail von der First-Level-Supportkraft sofort in eine Technikabteilung weitergeleitet wird, ohne dass ich vorher Textbausteine zugeschickt bekomme.

Kann sein, dass das Problem immer noch nicht gelöst ist, aber jedenfalls ist es seit Januar nicht wieder aufgetreten.

Im April mache ich zum zweiten Mal von meiner neuen Dangerous Professional Voice Gebrauch und schreibe im GitHub eines Projekts, in dem ich aktiv bin, einen Änderungswunsch, den ich mir vorher von ChatGPT in technischeren Worten als meinen (und besserem Englisch) ausformulieren lassen habe. Normalerweise begebe ich mich sehr ungern zu GitHub und schreibe noch weniger gern aktiv etwas hinein, weil ich mich dort unterqualifiziert und fehl am Platz fühle. Ein Projekt-GitHub ist wie eine Baustelle, auf der schnelle Gabelstapler herumfahren und offene Baugruben klaffen, kein guter Aufenthaltsort für Leute ohne Helm, die dort nur mal eben was vorschlagen wollen.

Ob bei meinem Änderungswunsch mehr herauskommen wird als "Closed, not planned" oder "Closed, won't fix", weiß ich noch nicht. Aber es fühlte sich jedenfalls ganz gut an. Und wer weiß, wenn ich mich ein bisschen dran gewöhne, gefährlich professionell zu klingen, wächst mir ja vielleicht eines Tages ein Baustellenhelm.

From the latest episode of Patrick McKenzie's podcast Complex Systems:

One point about vaccine hesitancy that I think is broadly underappreciated: Consider the Pell Grant program in the United States. Pell Grants are essentially free money for college. Despite that, we never hear about “Pell Grant hesitancy,” yet every college knows it has to do a sales job to explain this to prospective students. For example, they’ll say: "There are various ways to fund college. A loan you have to pay back. A grant, like a Pell Grant, is free money you don’t pay back. Here’s an application you need to fill out, and then the money will arrive." Even though it’s free money, colleges still invest in explaining and promoting it because people don’t automatically understand the program. Now think about the COVID vaccine rollout. A lot of people, particularly in the professional-managerial class, assumed the vaccine was the most anticipated product release in human history. After a year of lockdowns and trauma, it seemed obvious that no one would need convincing to take it. But that assumption was wrong. Much of what was perceived as vaccine hesitancy wasn’t driven by anti-science or deep-seated opposition. It was more like, No one has sat me down and explained why this benefits me. Many people assumed, If the vaccine were truly important, someone—my doctor, a public health official—would have told me by now. This wasn’t well-calibrated to the reality of the U.S. healthcare system, which, for better or worse, didn’t believe it needed to sell the vaccine to individuals. Now, of course, there was a partisan and politicized element to vaccine hesitancy. And it wasn’t a straightforward left-versus-right issue—it had a bit of a horseshoe effect, pulling in groups from across the spectrum. But a significant portion of the hesitancy stemmed from a lack of direct, clear communication, not outright opposition.

I was in the group of people who were eagerly anticipating the rollout of the vaccines in 2021. Looking through my message history in several group chats, I can find that at the start of April 2021, I repeatedly broadcast a message to my local friends to the effect of:

The vaccine is available to everyone age 16 or higher on [date]

VACCINES ARE FREE FOR EVERYONE and YOU DO NOT NEED HEALTH INSURANCE to get injected FOR FREE.

Additionally, there are two earlier tiers of groups that are eligible to get their vaccine on [date -14 days] and [date -7 days]; here is a link to see if you're part of one of the eligible groups

I received numerous replies to the effect of, "thank you for sharing this information with me; I just booked an appointment to get vaccinated, which is something that I would not have done in the counterfactual world where I did not see your message." (I do not think the person who lives in that counterfactual world -- and did not schedule the vaccination appointment -- fits the typical profile of what people think of "vaccine hesitant.")

There is probably a world in which these people got this same information from a public health official or a doctor. (Perhaps that world has higher state capacity and more efficacious institutions.) Instead, these people live in a world where they got that message in the group chat that used to be used to organize board game meetups.

The point that "the general rollout in mid April 2021 is for everyone 16 and up" seemed to be a piece of information that people got from me that they didn't get from other messaging channels.

Another critical point that several people appreciated having explicitly spelling out for them was "everyone can get jabbed for free; yes, this includes the uninsured, or people who don't know if they're insured because they're 25 and maybe that means they're on their parents' insurance but they kinda neglected to figure out that whole thing but also embarrassed to ask about it."

This was a vital bit of signal that seemed to get dropped from some of the messaging that made it to their ears, and it rhymes a bit with a parenthetical remark Patrick made outside the podcast audio:

You can understand why people are skeptical [of Pell Grants], too! “As if the federal government would give me tens of thousands of dollars, for free, with basically no checking. That certainly hasn’t matched any other experience in my life!”

Patrick also has a parenthetical note about why the US healthcare system needs to play a marketing role in "selling" the vaccine to individuals, despite their belief that that this was not necessary:

Pharmacies were the primary site that the vaccine was physically delivered at, and pharmacies are not specialized in demand generation for drugs. The pharma industry expects physicians to do that; that is why the physicians get visits by attractive people explaining the benefits of the new things on offer.

Two practical implications:

Society benefits from having functional institutions that can do things at scale, like informing the public of information that they need to know as a matter of public safety

In the absence of institutions, one of the fallbacks for important information making its way to the people who need it is "group chat message from the person who organizes the board game meetup I attended a year ago." This might practically describe you, dear reader. You may not wish to be burdened with this responsibility, but this is one mechanism by which you can be part of the change which you wish to see in the world.

I participated in this (admittedly small-scale) messaging effort in part thanks to the example set by other participants in local group chats which I am a part of, which have historically been the way that I have learned information, like "There is currently a boil order for [neighborhood]; here is a webpage with a map to see if you are affected. (Also, in case 'boil order' is a new phrase to you: there are worries about water contamination due to [reasons] and as such the health department is recommending that you boil any water that comes out of your tap before drinking it, even if it 'looks normal.')"

I feel that parenthetical point bears repeating. One point of frustration I personally heard from multiple people in 2020 was the number of occasions when public officials issued an order like "shelter in place" without further elaboration for the benefit of people who weren't already familiar with that precise piece of jargon.

hear the Rebel's plea that you confirm our suspicions.

The series finale of I Need A Miracle is out now. Search for I Need A Miracle in podcast apps or head to foggyoutline.com/ineedamiracle for all the ways to listen.

Starring Patrick McKenzie as Arx, the Rebel

Another week, another episode of the excellent new podcast "Complex Systems."

As so often happens in podcast discussions, one of the more interesting nuggets came from a side tangent almost completely unrelated to the episode topic:

Patrick McKenzie: My funny anecdote about names is that, way back in the day when Japan was going through a similar process of needing to bureaucratize and come up with relatively persistent identities for the purposes of the state, the nobles had two names; the peasants largely had one.

So the noble names were flowery and poetic, and then for the peasant names you ended up with names which were often reflective of the area in which they lived, much like English names – Underhill, for example. Guess what? Someone was once under the hill.

These are some of the most common names in Japan – Tanaka, “in the middle of the rice field.” If you meet someone named Tanaka-san in the present day, it implies that at least one ancestor of theirs was 1) not in the social class that had a nice flowery name comparing them to e.g. a hawk, and 2) was presumably living in the middle of the rice patties.

Byrne Hobart: This is an area where Google has decayed slightly, since they do seem to weight clickthroughs pretty highly on search results: it used to be many years ago that if you Googled name origins you got something pretty reasonable. Now they're all really flattering. You can't really find an unflattering name unless the name is literally a foreign word that has a negative connotation.

Hobart now – I don't remember what it is, something like “Mighty impressive warrior” or whatever – but when I first googled it and looked up the origin of the last name it was, “it just means Bart's Hill.”

I guess Bart was somehow a really impressive guy in seventh century England or something, such that even after he was gone they still remembered which hill was his – and he was just a cool enough guy that you would name yourself after not even Bart, but his Hill.

It is interesting to trace a lot of those last names – then you have the obvious career-based ones. I suppose over time we will eventually start running out of last names, and we'll have to start coming up with ways to invent new ones.

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On the subject of "coming up with ways to invent new [last names]," one couple who has been charting this territory is the pairing of Zach and Kelly Weinersmith. You might know Zach Weinersmith as the creator of the comic SMBC (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal)

Kelly Weinersmith has been his co-creator for several recent projects, including books like Soonish: Ten Emerging Technologies That'll Improve and/or Ruin Everything, and in their joint genetic ventures, Ada and Ben.

Arx, the Rebel – played by Patrick McKenzie

In your benevolence, the Rebel wishes for you to Confirm our suspicions.

Patrick "patio11" McKenzie has a new podcast, and his first episode is a conversation with Ricki Heicklen that, while being 1 hour and 40 minutes, still manages to be one of the most information-dense podcast episodes I have listened to the past year, and possibly ever.

There is too much to summarize in one post, and the episode is too ranging in scope for a short quote to be representative, but here's a bit that tickled my brain: