[shantly]

> In other words, while I considered what the accountant guy did to be a rather low-effort incomplete job, he did exactly what was expected of him by the bank and what I needed to get my deal done.

The degree to which everything runs on this sort of system is kind of horrifying, once you're exposed to enough things like this for that to sink in.

Relatedly, I guess my contribution to the broader thread would be:

Almost no-one knows what they're doing, let alone is much good at it—so few, in fact, that society and the economy (and everything else) basically run on a massive and super-serious game of playing pretend. Yes, even that big important organization (public or private) where you expect everyone to be pretty damn competent. The difference between them and some normal place is that 5% of their people are impressively good at their jobs, rather than 2%.

[kqr]

This is what becoming an adult has taught me. I'm still baffled that things work as well as they do given the incredible levels of incompetence you find everywhere.

Growing up, I had this idea that adults always know what to do, at least within their specialities, or at least know how to figure out what they don't know. So far from true. The vast majority is just winging it. To the best of their abilities, of course, but it's still all improv.

[toohotatopic]

In social science there is a law along the line of:

50% of the work is done by the square root of the number of people in your organization.

[anticensor]

That has a precondition of an hierarchy with a branching factor greater than two.

[celticmusic]

I disagree, in the anecdote, the bank knows that it's financials are fine and just needed to tick a box for a silly insurance paper.

There are definitely games that get played, but for the most part people are playing it to get around silliness from other parties.

[shantly]

Right—that significant amounts of labor (=human life) go into this kind of waste that everyone involved knows is a joke, and that the non-joke variety is rarely treated much differently, both contribute to what's scary about it.

[seem_2211]

Surely there's a few red flags that could have come up and that's what we're preventing here?

[GhostKnight]

your closing is absolutely true as the majority of all of us "fake it till we make it"

[geggam]

This sort of fake it till you make it incorporates passing the hot potato as well. Someone will get left holding it and burn.

[dsfyu404ed]

>The degree to which everything runs on this sort of system is kind of horrifying, once you're exposed to enough things like this for that to sink in.

So? It clearly works.

People want everything to be high quality master craftsman type work but almost nothing is and it almost never matters. People like to think that the auditors are going over the papers with a magnifying glass and that their landscaper is applying exactly the right fertilizer for the soil conditions. In reality the auditors are skimming the papers and the landscaper is just using whatever brand has worked decently in the past.

Most work done most of the time is little more than the minimum and that's all the world needs. You can either look at that as sloppy and low effort or efficient allocation of resources.

[mannykannot]

It works right up until it doesn't: see 737 Max, mortgage crisis...

Perhaps the best thing that can be said for pro-forma processes is that they usually put people on notice that they may be held accountable for their actions -- though, of course, that is not always the case.

[tpxl]

> It clearly works.

Clearly it doesn't and when it does, it's despite this, not because of it.

The economic crisis of 2008/9 could have easily been prevented.

Misinformation about WMDs led to useless wars.

The war on drugs is a huge waste of resources because why?

Ticking checkboxes is a big cause of our problems.