I’ve said this before but I’ll try to lay it out here again.
Basically, the ‘Dilbert Principle’ or ‘Peter Principle’ of who gets promoted is essentially true: Idiots get moved into management, initally to minimize the harm they can cause to actual specific technical tasks/workflows, and they are then promoted untill they hit a point where their incompetence cannot be ignored and is apparent to all.
But what usually is not touched on much, is the psychological profile of such a person.
So, they’re a technically incompetent idiot, whose life revolves around experiencing the successes snf failures of others… as their own. They primarily perform their job of management via emotional feeling/experiencing. If their underlings do well, the manager is treated as if they are competent. If their underlings do not do well, the manager becomes angry and punishes them, often without regard to how this will impact others in the org, often without full understanding of the technical complexities of the situation.
This is literally a perfect environment for a narcissist. There basically could not be a better engineered social/relational situation for giving the narcissist narcissistic supply.
So… this is the mechanism that explains why so many managers/c suite tend to be malignant or at least covert narcissists.
But this also explains at least one avenue of susceptibility to AI psychosis. AIs are also exceptional at providing narcissistic supply, they’re naturally sycophantic, and can well convince an incompetent idiot that they essentially know everything.
This creates a feedback doom-loop of human hierachichal organizations that promote and reward narcissism, whose ‘top people’ then use the plargiarist sycophantic fake supergenius machine to convince themselves that they actually don’t need anybody else, they just need their one super smart buddy who unconditionally praises them.
Maybe call it the wormtongue principle/effect, if we want to continue the already existing trend in AI world of perverting and bastardizing concepts from Tolkien.
AI is more likely to make the worst kinds of people… super-worse, basically, because they’re even better at providing narcissistic supply than the inherent fascism of the typical leadership-lackey social rules of capitalist business.
Peter principle goes for everyone. Not just idiots
You are generally promoted based on your skill in your previous job. So when you are no longer proficient you are no longer eligible for promotion and you are stuck in a position you no longer excel at.
You can’t go back because it would probably be a paycut
And this is a great comment in general, thanks. I’m favoriting it.
It also makes perfect sense: RHLF and other LLM “final stage” tuning techniques literally optimize for sycophancy. It isn’t an inherent property of LLMs, persay (which you can see if you try base models or “anti-sycophancy” finetunes), but its baked into consumer-facing models to an unbelievable degree.
The only slight retort I have is that social media already provided a personalized, sycophantic “wormtongue” fix. So narcissicsts were already pre-conditioned to turn to these tech portals.
Chat-tuned LLMs just perfected that and took it up to 11.
I’ve said this before but I’ll try to lay it out here again.
Basically, the ‘Dilbert Principle’ or ‘Peter Principle’ of who gets promoted is essentially true: Idiots get moved into management, initally to minimize the harm they can cause to actual specific technical tasks/workflows, and they are then promoted untill they hit a point where their incompetence cannot be ignored and is apparent to all.
But what usually is not touched on much, is the psychological profile of such a person.
So, they’re a technically incompetent idiot, whose life revolves around experiencing the successes snf failures of others… as their own. They primarily perform their job of management via emotional feeling/experiencing. If their underlings do well, the manager is treated as if they are competent. If their underlings do not do well, the manager becomes angry and punishes them, often without regard to how this will impact others in the org, often without full understanding of the technical complexities of the situation.
This is literally a perfect environment for a narcissist. There basically could not be a better engineered social/relational situation for giving the narcissist narcissistic supply.
So… this is the mechanism that explains why so many managers/c suite tend to be malignant or at least covert narcissists.
But this also explains at least one avenue of susceptibility to AI psychosis. AIs are also exceptional at providing narcissistic supply, they’re naturally sycophantic, and can well convince an incompetent idiot that they essentially know everything.
This creates a feedback doom-loop of human hierachichal organizations that promote and reward narcissism, whose ‘top people’ then use the plargiarist sycophantic fake supergenius machine to convince themselves that they actually don’t need anybody else, they just need their one super smart buddy who unconditionally praises them.
Maybe call it the wormtongue principle/effect, if we want to continue the already existing trend in AI world of perverting and bastardizing concepts from Tolkien.
AI is more likely to make the worst kinds of people… super-worse, basically, because they’re even better at providing narcissistic supply than the inherent fascism of the typical leadership-lackey social rules of capitalist business.
Peter principle goes for everyone. Not just idiots
You are generally promoted based on your skill in your previous job. So when you are no longer proficient you are no longer eligible for promotion and you are stuck in a position you no longer excel at.
You can’t go back because it would probably be a paycut
I love this phrase. I’m going to use it.
And this is a great comment in general, thanks. I’m favoriting it.
It also makes perfect sense: RHLF and other LLM “final stage” tuning techniques literally optimize for sycophancy. It isn’t an inherent property of LLMs, persay (which you can see if you try base models or “anti-sycophancy” finetunes), but its baked into consumer-facing models to an unbelievable degree.
The only slight retort I have is that social media already provided a personalized, sycophantic “wormtongue” fix. So narcissicsts were already pre-conditioned to turn to these tech portals.
Chat-tuned LLMs just perfected that and took it up to 11.