• EveningPancakes@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    All you need to know is that he labeled himself as a consultant. Which reminds me of this joke.

    Once upon a time there was a shepherd tending his sheep at the edge of a country road. A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee screeches to a halt next to him.

    The driver, a young man dressed in a Brioni suit, Cerrutti shoes, Ray-Ban glasses, Jovial Swiss wrist watch and a BHS tie gets out and asks the shepherd: “If I guess how many sheep you have, will you give me one of them?” The shepherd looks at the young man, then looks at the sprawling field of sheep and says: “Okay.”

    The young man parks the SUV, connects his notebook and wireless modem, enters a NASA site, scans the ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with algorithms, then prints a 150 page report on his high tech mini printer. He then turns to the shepherd and says:"You have exactly 1,586 sheep here. "

    The shepherd answers: "That’s correct, you can have your sheep."The young man takes one of the animals and puts it in the back of his vehicle. The shepherd looks at him and asks: “Now, if I guess your profession, will you pay me back in kind?” The young man answers: “Sure.” The shepherd says: “You are a consultant.” “Exactly! How did you know,” asks the young man? Very simple, answers the shepherd. “First, you came here without being called. Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already knew. Third, you do not understand anything about my business and I’d really like to have my dog back.”

    • pastel_de_airfryer@lemmy.eco.br
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      7 months ago

      From my experience working for a management consulting firm. It’s more like everyone knows what the problems are and how to fix them, but they are too scared of screwing up to do something about it.

      So they hire a consultancy company to tell them what they already knew and take the blame if something goes wrong.

      “No one ever gets fired for hiring McKinsey”

      • SandbagTiara2816@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        7 months ago

        “No one ever get fired for hiring McKinsey”

        They fucking should. I mean, I understand why that doesn’t happen, given the world we live in, but man… McKinsey is fucking evil incarnate

    • glimse@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      My old boss used to say, “a consultant is someone who borrows your watch and then charges you when you ask for the time”

    • jballs@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      A brand new Jeep Grand Cherokee screeches to a halt next to him. The driver, a young man dressed in a Brioni suit, Cerrutti shoes, Ray-Ban glasses, Jovial Swiss wrist watch and a BHS tie

      As a long time consultant, this reminded me of Are you a prostitute or are you a consultant?

      Specifically, “The client always thinks your “cut” of your billing rate is higher than it actually is, and in turn, expects miracles from you.”

      • SoleInvictus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        7 months ago

        I do NOT miss being yelled at by some middle management Kevin about how I’m charging them $275 per hour to justify their getting whatever crazy shit isn’t in the purchase agreement. I wish I made $275/hour. That’d be amazing.

        • wewbull@feddit.uk
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          7 months ago

          You weren’t the consultant.

          You were the subcontractor for the consultant.

  • Randomocity@sh.itjust.works
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    7 months ago

    I think the best part about this is the guy is saying that AI = 0. I want to hope that’s intentional but I know it’s not.

    • eestileib@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      AI is standing in for the relativistic mass fraction. The faster the hype machine spins, the more AI matters.

  • will_a113
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    7 months ago

    This is so terrible it physically pains me.

        • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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          7 months ago

          They think they will. History tends to paint a different picture in the actual brutal meritocracy of the collapse of an empire.

          Not that it won’t be rich sociopaths on top in the end, it just tends to be a different set.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            It depends on how badly the source of the collapse wants them dead. The Japanese imperial line hasn’t changed since before the Meiji restoration. The Hapsburgs are still the monarchs of Europe and one of the most wealthy and powerful families in the world. Hell, le ancien regime had to be overthrown several times before they stayed out of power.

            Also there is no meritocracy in imperial collapse, there are skills that lose value and skills that gain value, but it’s not as though it’s some reset, it’s usually warlords and demagogues. It’s a time in which the cunning and brutal succeed over the honest and efficient. It’s the era of Julius Caesar not of Ramseses II.

              • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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                7 months ago

                Complete purges are rare. Usually usurpers will marry into it to legitimize rule. And even when they don’t it’s usually the worst (moral) middle class/lesser nobility/military leaders to take the reins. To our knowledge one servile war has succeeded and doing so has left a nation impoverished to this day.

                • DragonTypeWyvern@literature.cafe
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                  7 months ago

                  Kind of weird to call out Haiti specifically in this situation, especially considering all the ratfucking they went through at the behest of the imperial powers.

  • Ragdoll X@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    As someone who studied CS at uni for 3 years I saw first hand how there’s plenty of idiots in this field. Two of my classmates identified as Nazis and thought that the holocaust didn’t happen, besides a significant chunk leaning to the right more generally.

    There’s plenty of really smart people working in the field of AI, but there’s also plenty of people who just think they’re smart.

    • IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works
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      7 months ago

      I think this pretty much applies to all fields. Everything looks complicated and hard to outside people, but once you get into the field, you realize that most people are just average.

      • Bassman1805@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Plus with very specialized fields you get the effect of “really great at this one thing and absolutely nothing else”.

        If that One Thing ends up being worth a lot of money, these people often end up with a SUPER inflated sense of self importance…

  • becausechemistry@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    Alternate take: this is the same sort of mark self-sorting that scam artists use.

    A reasonable person isn’t gonna reply to a typo-ridden email from a Nigerian prince. But those few who do are going to be easy to get everything from.

    Imagine you’re an executive at the company your dad founded. You’re an idiot. Everyone knows you’re an idiot. But you think you’re smart. This guy is willing to consult with you about how your company will use AI (for a modest fee, of course). You don’t understand AI, but you think you do, and you just need someone to help with the details. And everyone has to nod their heads and agree to pay him because they’re afraid of getting fired.

    You don’t have to fool everyone.

  • WittyProfileName2 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    I can suggest an equation that has the potential to impact the future:

    Acetyl-CoA + 3H2O + 3NAD+ + FAD + ADP + Pi → 2CO2 + 3NADH + 3H+ + FADH2 + CoA-SH + ATP + H2O + AI

    This combines the Krebs Cycle which relates to glucose metabolism with the addition of artificial intelligence (AI). By including AI in the equation, it symbolises my ability to wank myself to completion without touching my cock, simply by massaging my engorged ego.

    • cerothem@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      I was just going to solve for AI but I am glad someone got that covered off already

  • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    "P = G + E + block chain

    Phenotype = Genotype + Environment, but now the equation respects the contribution of block chain NFTs. with enough bored apes getting slurpjuice, we can revolutionize dementia into a value-add for the marketplace."

    • me, a Technology Management Consultant.
    • very_poggers_gay [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Yes, but that does not mean AI has 0 influence. Rather, AI is a circle, a shape with no beginning or end, suggesting that AI has endless and infinite potential. Now, let’s say you want to remove AI from the equation - imagining a world without AI. What happens when you divide by zero? You can’t, because dividing by zero is undefined. Thusly, a world (future or past) without AI is now an impossibility. This is simply the laws of mathematics.

      • Property Manager, AI Consultant
  • Erika3sis [she/her, xe/xem]@hexbear.net
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    7 months ago

    This reminds me of that TEDx (I think it was TEDx) talk where the guy claimed that you could see the letters E=mc2 in the Devanagari symbol for Om, as if this revealed some sort of profound truth about the universe.

    The funny thing is that that’s literally all I remember about that talk. I don’t remember what the guy was talking about for the ten to twenty minutes before that point, just that the talk concluded with him looking super self-satisfied while saying something incredibly silly and cringeworthy.

      • ShepherdPie@midwest.social
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        7 months ago

        I just listened to the most recent Behind the Bastards on forensic ‘science’ used in court cases and Robert played a clip of one guy who had a Ted talk where he spoke about how he uses divining rods to find dead bodies buried in the ground.

        The worst part is this guy is still employed in the field, testifies as an expert witness to get people convicted of crimes, grifts families of missing persons claiming he can find them for a fee based on their body’s “unique frequency” (obtained from fingernail clippings), consults/instructs law enforcement on his techniques using taxpayer funds, and worked until recently at the famous body farm at the Univeristy of Tennessee.

    • keepcarrot [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      Reminds of various evangelical speakers seeing “crosses” in nature or cheese toasties and thinking they’re profound. Truly a Christmas miracle that a pair of lines intersect.