Speaking about giftedness, my processor might not be extraordinarily powerful but it’s extremely fast. I figure things out with great speed.
For instance, we have a new, extremely complicated bureaucratic-type platform. People are going nuts trying to get it to work. There are complex, multi-day training sessions to teach people to use it. The manual alone is 1,8 megabytes.
I figured out how this little bitch works in under 10 minutes. And much of that time was taken up by a colleague who dropped by to chat.
This is why it’s easier for me to be department chair than for other people. It takes me very little time to figure out the byzantine bureaucratic processes for everything and fire off the required paperwork in the required format in minutes.
Of course, psychological makeup is crucial, as always. I find ways to game the system to do as little work as possible while looking like the most hard-working bastard on campus. This is, of course, a cultural thing. I don’t believe in rules I haven’t freely chosen. My highest loyalty is to myself and my only trusted authority is, again, myself.
Clarissa's Blog 
Sounds quite Soviet 🙂
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Of course. I’m a deeply Soviet person, in the best sense of the word. Unfortunately, I’m surrounded by people who are Soviet in the worst sense.
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If I may ask – you said “Of course, psychological makeup is crucial, as always. I find ways to game the system to do as little work as possible while looking like the most hard-working bastard on campus. This is, of course, a cultural thing. I don’t believe in rules I haven’t freely chosen. My highest loyalty is to myself and my only trusted authority is, again, myself.”
If this cultural attitude prevails, then how can Soviet thinking people ever uphold any system of government that does not inevitably devolve into pure self interest, with the worst and most selfish in charge?
Also I haven’t had a good opportunity to ask this but when the USSR fell, what happened to the police officers. Did they become gang members or were they eliminated by the public?
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The police became gang members and . . . never stopped.
I’m not recommending we organize our own USSR in the West. But it’s still happening. It’s terrible, I agree.
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Dammit. Can you by any chance think of any communist system of any type where the police were eliminated or folded back into the population somehow instead of becoming gang members?
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