One thing you can learn from a baby is that it doesn't take language skills to be a fun person to talk to. Eye contact and a big smile goes a long way.
November 2008 Archives
One of the most important skills necessary for having a happy life is the ability to simultaneously recognize an opportunity, and,
- the likely nature of the subjective experience of the action, should the opportunity be taken,
- the subjective experience of the immediate consequences,
- and the subjective experience of the long term consequences.
The tendency is to see only one side of the experience, either ignoring the pleasant or the painful side. But without seeing both the pleasant and painful sides of the consequences of an action, there's a great danger that an action will be taken without consideration of all the consequences.
There is also a tendency to focus on one's own subjective experience, but the experiences (immediate, short, and long-term) of other people are just as real. Christians need compassion in order to follow Jesus Christ's commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself."
Satyajit Das writes in Traders, Guns, & Money, that with financial advisors selling complex products, "The problem was that if you could really understand the difference between good and bad advice then you really didn't need advice."
Evaluating a high level expert is the same kind of problem. If a company needs to hire a computer programmer who is good at perl, they might not have anyone there who can evaluate the competence of the programmer.
The easiest way to evaluate the expert is to look at what they've done. It doesn't hurt to look at the relationships they formed at their last few workplaces.
I (think I) found a copy of the NAB online, and in Matthew you find Jesus saying,
7.15 Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them from their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles?
That's easier for spiritual leaders than perl programmers. With the latter, the big problem becomes whether the expert is trying to pass off someone else's results as their own.
