The fallacious idea of delegating all one’s work to other staff in higher-numbered rooms is called an infinite regress. It is one of the things that one cannot validly do with infinity. There is an old joke about the heckler who interrupts an astrophysics lecture to insist that the Earth is flat and supported on the back of elephants standing on a giant turtle. ‘What supports the turtle?’ asks the lecturer. ‘Another turtle.’ ‘What supports that turtle?’ ‘You can’t fool me,’ replies the heckler triumphantly: ‘it’s turtles from there on down.
