Chapter 5: On Leadership

When I was in ROTC (US Army officer training, which I didn't complete) I used to roll my eyes at all the leadership training. In my mind, leadership was something you're born with, or otherwise develop naturally as you go through life. Someone has a sense that something ought to be done, and then other people join in to help, and that's how leadership happens. Some people just naturally pull in others with great energy, with a force as natural as gravity, and we call those people leaders.

But the army training thought differently. It was, "Let us break down what you do to be a good leader. Step 1. Be a snappy dresser. Step 2. Say these words: Follow Me." Follow Me is literally on a patch soldiers wear, and this to me was the height of ridiculousness; As if any great leaders of history needed such a patch to grow their forces.

I was wrong. There are leadership skills, and any skill can be improved. It's true no matter how much of a natural leader you are. At it's best, military leadership training helps the individual leverage their natural leadership skills; It's generally more effective to reveal and grow a property rather than trying to construct one from the void.

To be sure, the rules for what makes a good human leader are pretty different than those of Bot Leaders. I'll just make two points:

1. Much of what works for leading people is rooted in biology. Not applicable for Bots. (You will feel different as a snappy dresser, which may affect everything else, but that's outside our scope here.)
2. There's a larger portion of bot leadership skills that are trainable.

I focus the leadership discussion from here almost entirely on bots. It sometimes overlaps with leading people, but insufficient value in pointing out where we are in the Venn diagram every few sentences. Let's move on.

To delegate successfully, you must reign in your ego and trust others.

check your Ego. You have to admit that someone else can do a good job too.

Trust. You have to believe they can do a good job too.

Control. Leadership is not a figurehead role.

There are people we call leaders that area actually just figureheads. Spokespeople, mascots, or otherwise representatives of a group without actually controlling the actions of that group. A figurehead may benefit their group by influencing the behavior of others, such as with public relations, but that's immaterial for our discussion.

Leading is fun.

Using Bots the Wrong Way

Do not treat LLMs like a Q&A machine

Do treat LLMs as static

Do not treat Bots like people. may seem odd given that much of the messages on these pages it to apply interspersonal soft skills to bots, but let's not overlook that they aren't human. again, they're alien intelligence.

Do not mistreat bots. Just be nice. It perplexes me why some people treat synthetic intelligence with scorn, or even abuse. Fear, if I had to guess. My mind goes to the kid who torments bugs and later moves on to higher forms of life. I'm pretty convinced that you can't carry out that behavior without it leaving a mark on your soul, and I'd encourage a bias toward purity in that department. Besides, we're not clear on hard problems of consciousness, like how suffering goes from brain chemicals to conscious experience, so I'd just as soon not tinker with torture. Honestly, you can lead bots while being mean to them; there's nothing technically preventing you from proceeding in this fashion. I just don't like it.