By and large, the answer to the question "How do large institutions survive?" is "They don't!" The vast majority of large modern-day institutions — some of them extremely vital to the functioning of our complex civilization — simply fail to exist in the first place.

— Eliezer Yudkowsky, Helpless Individuals (2009)

Source: http://lesswrong.com/lw/64/helpless_individuals/

From his March 2009 LessWrong post.

Topics: engineering leadership