When a presidential candidate promises to do something that would require congressional approval but ends up unable to get it, how is that not an instance of apparent overconfidence? And neither president seems to have suffered electorally due to that particular failure. So they both seem like evidence for the claim that apparent overconfidence (within reason) isn’t punished.
I think if you would ask any presidential candiate whether they think they will be able to implement all of their platform they won’t tell you that they are confident that they implement all of their platform.
I think you’re underweighting a crucial part of the thesis, which is that it doesn’t matter what the candidate secretly knows or would admit if asked. A substantial portion of the listeners just … get swayed by the strong claim. The existence of savvy listeners who “get it” and “know better” and know where to put the hedges and know which parts are hyperbole doesn’t change that fact. And there is approximately never a reckoning.
When it comes to Obama promises on Guantanamo the video I find has him say things he did do. He did intent to close Gitmo. He did follow through on this intention by doing things to close Gitmo.
I don’t think having a plan for the future where you aren’t fully in control of the outcome is necessarily overconfidence. Ambitious plans are valuable. If you think that everybody making an ambitious plan is inherently deceitful, that would mean declaring all startups to engage in deceit.
I don’t think the problems of our time is that too many people have ambitious plans.
You’re still missing the thesis. Apologies for not having the spoons to try restating it in different words, but I figured I could at least politely let you know.
Edit: a good first place to look might be “what do I think is different for me, Christian, than for people with substantially less discernment and savviness?”
According to your policy, Kennedy wouldn’t have proclaimed that the US puts a man on the moon. Nixon wouldn’t have started the war on cancer. The strategy that Elon Musk users to get his companies to produce the innovation that it does would be outlawed.
We would just have more stagnation because nobody would be allowed to communicate bold visions of the future because some undiscerning people would too much believe in bold visions.
I think our society would benefit from more people who communicate bold visions of the future not less.
Your claims about the ramifications of my policy are straightforwardly false, because you have misunderstood / mischaracterized / strawmanned the policy I am advocating.
You are failing to pass the ITT of the post, and to take seriously its thesis, and thus your responses are aimed at tangents rather than cruxes. The objections you are raising are roughly analogous to “but if you outlaw dueling, then people will get killed in duels when they refuse to shoot back!”
I explicitly request that you actually try to pass the ITT of the post, so that we can be in a place where our disagreement is actually useful. Or, if you’d rather have this other, different conversation (which would be fine), at least acknowledge that you are changing the subject, and riffing rather than directly responding.
(The riff being something like, “instead of discussing the policy Duncan’s actually proposing, I’d like to discuss the ramifications of a likely degeneration of it, because I suspect his proposal would degenerate in practice and what we would see as a result is X.”)
When a presidential candidate promises to do something that would require congressional approval but ends up unable to get it, how is that not an instance of apparent overconfidence? And neither president seems to have suffered electorally due to that particular failure. So they both seem like evidence for the claim that apparent overconfidence (within reason) isn’t punished.
I think if you would ask any presidential candiate whether they think they will be able to implement all of their platform they won’t tell you that they are confident that they implement all of their platform.
I think you’re underweighting a crucial part of the thesis, which is that it doesn’t matter what the candidate secretly knows or would admit if asked. A substantial portion of the listeners just … get swayed by the strong claim. The existence of savvy listeners who “get it” and “know better” and know where to put the hedges and know which parts are hyperbole doesn’t change that fact. And there is approximately never a reckoning.
When it comes to Obama promises on Guantanamo the video I find has him say things he did do. He did intent to close Gitmo. He did follow through on this intention by doing things to close Gitmo.
I don’t think having a plan for the future where you aren’t fully in control of the outcome is necessarily overconfidence. Ambitious plans are valuable. If you think that everybody making an ambitious plan is inherently deceitful, that would mean declaring all startups to engage in deceit.
I don’t think the problems of our time is that too many people have ambitious plans.
You’re still missing the thesis. Apologies for not having the spoons to try restating it in different words, but I figured I could at least politely let you know.
Edit: a good first place to look might be “what do I think is different for me, Christian, than for people with substantially less discernment and savviness?”
According to your policy, Kennedy wouldn’t have proclaimed that the US puts a man on the moon. Nixon wouldn’t have started the war on cancer. The strategy that Elon Musk users to get his companies to produce the innovation that it does would be outlawed.
We would just have more stagnation because nobody would be allowed to communicate bold visions of the future because some undiscerning people would too much believe in bold visions.
I think our society would benefit from more people who communicate bold visions of the future not less.
Your claims about the ramifications of my policy are straightforwardly false, because you have misunderstood / mischaracterized / strawmanned the policy I am advocating.
You are failing to pass the ITT of the post, and to take seriously its thesis, and thus your responses are aimed at tangents rather than cruxes. The objections you are raising are roughly analogous to “but if you outlaw dueling, then people will get killed in duels when they refuse to shoot back!”
I explicitly request that you actually try to pass the ITT of the post, so that we can be in a place where our disagreement is actually useful. Or, if you’d rather have this other, different conversation (which would be fine), at least acknowledge that you are changing the subject, and riffing rather than directly responding.
(The riff being something like, “instead of discussing the policy Duncan’s actually proposing, I’d like to discuss the ramifications of a likely degeneration of it, because I suspect his proposal would degenerate in practice and what we would see as a result is X.”)