I hate group projects

I really do hate group assignments. There is a part of me which just wants to crawl up into a ball and die whenever an important assignment has that cruel and callous quality. For some odd reason, group assignments are always the hardest, regardless of the workload. Writing an 8000 word essay by myself is magnitudes easier than writing a 1000 word essay with two others.

All group projects? Or leaderless ones? - TheChive.com

I like to think of it in the same way computer engineers do. Bear with me here. Computers have multiple cores. These cores can only do one equation at a time, though they do it incredibly fast. The only way to do more calculations in a smaller amount of time, is to add more cores. 1 core can do 100 equations per nanosecond, 2 cores can do 200 equations per nanosecond right? But there is a catch. With each core you add, time is lost. They have to communicate, they have to take in the data, divide it up, wait for everyone to complete it, and then put it back together. This is such a problem in computing, that even today, most computer have 4 cores maximum, any more than that and the communication time between each core starts to slow down the computer in a variety of intensive situations.

This is exactly the problem. People can do the work, but splitting it up, waiting, and putting it together, takes eons.

The extended confusion does not come from one individual dividing up the work load. Not at all, everyone divides the work, and everyone has a vested interest to do enough to benefit the group, but just shy of a solid effort. This annoying situation almost forces us to create a leader.

How did the Egyptians build the pyramids? Certainly they did not decide on it together. In fact I cannot think, off the top of my head, of any mega-project which was organised by the same people who worked on it. The builders don't design the buildings. The Kings don't work in the field.

But why? What element within us, causes team work without a leader to be so inefficient and ineffective? Is it work avoidance? Is it something more?

In my personal experience, it stems from a lack of discipline. There is always a calling in the back of our minds, allowing us to feel comfortable as someone organises our lives. Not too the point at which we cannot do anything about it, something akin to slavery, but a neat arrangement of activities. University assignments are some of the more frustrating assignments I have ever worked on. But why? The clarity is atrocious. In order for me to create a neat arrangement of activities, study sessions and whatnot, I have to trawl through terrible websites, past broken links and incorrect dates to find the information I need. And to top it all off, the method for studying is nothing more than dredge fishing, it is impossible, in many subjects, to determine everything that is examinable.

If I were given I list of study sessions, exam dates well in advance, and a booklet of all the facts I need to remember, I would be ecstatic. Which is odd. In some strange way, I am giving up my freedom. I am doing exactly as someone else has told me, and yet, I am loving it.

I think this is the reason why leaders are so effective.

From these experiences, and my habit of jumping to conclusions, I feel an effective way to manage a team, is to enslave its team members' schedules. Instead of getting angry over the nitty gritty aspects of their work, give them strict times to review their work, with a set of criteria to meet. Instead of hounding at them for not completing portions for an abstract due date, give them as many due dates as they need, clear and concise.

I hate teamwork, but I love being organised. In the teams of people who do not hiss, but instead remark on the time which needs to be spent, I feel I could find more comfort and keep on working.

Kings don't work in the field - they organise the people who work in the field. 

Australian Innovation

What does the word "siege" mean? If you were to ask someone 50 years ago, they might give you an example, the siege of Leningrad - The encirclement of the city by Axis forces, where 3 million people lost their lives as they were cut off from the rest of the world. But today, as recently as 2014, Sydney has had its own siege. If you were to bring someone back from the 1950s, and ask them to guess what happened in the Sydney siege, what would they say? Perhaps China invaded Australia, and encircled the city for months, cutting off supplies. Perhaps it was a civil war? Or maybe a rebellion? A large militant force taking over portions of the city?

Trenches outside Leningrad. - Vsevolod Tarasevich

With the siege of Leningrad, and countless other cities, fresh in their mind, they might laugh, and think you ridiculous, when you finally reveal to them, that it was one man, with a gun, in a cafe.

The word siege has been corrupted. And all it took was the front page of a major news outlet, to trivialise a violent struggle against an army of attackers. To turn a powerful word to dust.

What does the word "queer" mean? Well take that individual from the 1950s and ask them, they might give you a rude response. To them, it is obviously a derogatory term, referring to a homosexual man. But today people openly blog about, talk about, and promote the "queer community." In this case, the word "queer" has also been corrupted, but in a different way, arguably a more positive way, though still by way of trivialisation. It was reclaimed by the community, they wore it like armour, and eventually that is what it became.

Words are fickle things. They come and they go. Shifting, transforming culture as they are transformed by culture. Some more examples which come to mind might be:
Feminist, rape culture, racism, gender, trigger, curvy, patriarchy.
Or, from another perspective:
Fresh, healthy, superfood, natural, organic, free, sale.
Or going into a more obscure realm:
Communism, capitalism, liberalism, nation, state, money, job.

One could argue, and I do, that all these words have been corrupted. And I don't mean the legal definitions, oh no, I mean the *real* definitions, the definitions which exist within the majority of citizens. The definitions which participate in society. Though, these example are testament to the ebbing flow of the lingual and cultural river, a testament to our own evolution, they are relatively harmless.

But there is one word which makes me unbelievably angry. Its slow demise, especially at the hands of Australian politics is gut-wrenching

Innovation has been corrupted.

Here is disgusting fact for you:

We are paying Malcolm Turnbull $522,000 per year to decrease our standard of living, decrease our wages, increase income inequality and raise taxes on the poor. Because as Scott Morrison has said, with regard to wage growth, “You don’t get that from taxing and spending as Labor proposes; you get it from encouraging enterprises to innovate.”

Australians have lost touch with what innovation truly means. The word has been trivialised, incorporated into a political campaign, hung up and bled dry. The same way "jobs and growth" means nothing to the next generation of Australians, "innovation" will soon be a shell word.

Where did we go wrong?

Innovation is about new ideas, new methods and new products. It is common knowledge that any individual in a comfortable position wont innovate, there is no need. And equally so, we know that any individual in a terrible position, such as a wage slave, has no time or energy to innovate. And so using this logic, there is only one group of people we need to encourage. The hungry elite, people who have just enough, but not everything they want.

How could we generate more of these people, create more hungry elite? Should we tax the poor more? Well, that would put some of the hungry elite, people in the lower-middle class, into a terrible position. So no, it would be detrimental, and yet the government has done this. Should we tax the rich less? Well that would put some of the hungry elite, the upper-middle class, into a comfortable position. So no, it would be detrimental, and yet the government has done this. We are throwing money at incubators and accelerators, and yet we are not at all encouraging the development of these types of people.

If this is what innovation looks like. I don't want any of it. - The Guardian

Do we innovate by crippling our university students with even more debt, by deregulating education? No, that would be detrimental, and yet the government plans to.

Do we innovate by deregulating the economic advice and banking sector, allowing large banks to manipulate and snuff any potential startups looking for advice? Or further cripple the economy with shoddy practices. No, that would be detrimental, and yet the government has done this.

Sure there is more money floating around, but money doesn't generate ideas, people do, and Malcolm Turnbull and his party seem adamant in slowly whittling away the prosperity of future generations, making it harder and harder for individuals to innovate.

I will may never be able to afford a house. Innovation is a shell word. Do not be fooled by their advertising. They care very little about you and your future, and very much about their donors. They provide startup funding because they know you'll give it back to them. After all, neo-liberalism has a daughter named nepotism.

Words are fickle things. Some are harmless deviations, existing in micro-cultures, some are powerful components of a propaganda machine, powerful enough to deceive my course co-ordinator, and countless others.

If I hear the word innovation again, I'm going to puke.