Actually ideal:
Reinforce that screw by the end of the day.
Fix the modeling error by the end of the week.
Develop a more robust modeling methodology over the next few months.
Brainstorm ideas to improve the institutional culture (without sacrificing flexibility, because you’re aware that these values require a tradeoff). Have a proposal ready for the next board meeting.
A lot of the nonprofit boards that I’ve seen use a “consent agenda” to manage the meeting. The way it works is:
The staff create the consent agenda and provide it to the board members perhaps a week in advance.
Any single board member can take any item off the consent agenda and onto the regular agenda.
The consent agenda is passed in a single motion. It always passes unanimously, because anything that any member thinks merits attention has been moved onto the regular agenda (where it is separately discussed and voted on).
It doesn’t do much for governance directly, but fewer time-wasting consent votes can make room for more discussion of issues that matter.
I suspect that he’s using “true self” to refer to facets of himself that a psychologist would call ego-syntonic. Simply put, ego-syntonic facets of oneself are in accordance with a person’s self-image and ego-dystonic facets of oneself are at odds with one’s self-conception. The actual person is ultimately the “true” self, warts and all.
It is as much a function of a person’s self-concept as it is of the person’s behavior. For example, homosexuality can be ego-dystonic (closeted; in denial) or ego-syntonic (self-accepted, if not necessarily public).
It is often mature and appropriate to pursue ego-syntonic goals to try to become the person you want to be. On the other hand, each of us has behaviors that resist improvement (as our self-concepts define “improvement”); learning to accept and accommodate the facets of yourself that resist change can also be healthy.
From the perspective of a 76er, Jimmy Butler seems like a servant of Moloch.
The 76ers are NBA players. They’ve worked to their limits all throughout high school and college to get there. Now they’re semi-wealthy and semi-famous and still pretty young. I can completely understand why they think it’s time to enjoy life.* The cheerleaders are right there, for crying out loud.
If Jimmy Butler got his way, some of them would start working harder. They’d get recognition in the short run, but pretty quickly it would become a culture where the higher standard of effort was obligatory. They would all do more of what they don’t enjoy and less of what they do enjoy. They might win more games, for what that’s worth. They would get little of value for the extra sacrifice. So they don’t.
*Keeping in mind that even a “lazy” NBA player is well within the top 1% of Americans for physical effort.
One of the most important decisions in war is when to stop. Humans evolved fear to solve this problem; there’s a point at which soldiers will de-escalate the conflict (i.e. flee the battlefield rather than stay and die). However, signalling fear makes you a target so people don’t discuss it candidly. I am concerned that military leaders may, in the calm of the office, design AI that has no provisions for de-escalating conflict; this seems very likely to lead to nuclear war.
It seems like many disagreements ultimately stem from different estimates about the options available. Examples:
If you think “human society, but on Mars” is a realistic option, Elon Musk looks like a visionary. If you think it’s a fabricated option, he looks like a fool (but at least he seems to be having fun).
If you think “industrial society, but without world-destroying levels of fossil fuel use” is a live option, you might be right. But you could be wrong. It could be a fabricated option.
Leftists (stereotypically) view “current levels of wealth, but evenly distributed” is a real option. Conservatives (stereotypically) view self-interest as a major driver of wealth creation, and think that wealth creation without wealth inequality is a fabricated option.
I suspect that most people in this community will be prone to viewing all of the above as live options (rationalists, in my experience, have a strong bias toward optimism (1)). I personally lean in the other direction, but I’ve been wrong before.
(1) Yes, this is technically irony. It stems from a training data problem. The rationalist community’s training data vastly oversamples the tech industry in California between (circa) 1970 and 2010. That time, industry, and place saw the most dramatic technological revolution in history and is in no sense representative of human experience.
Once the enemy’s tanks are rolling, the war will be decided in a matter of days or weeks—no time to go about changing the cultural attitudes of an entire population!
Contemporary war happens in two phases. The first phase involves tanks and planes and lasts days or weeks. The second phase involves putting boots on the ground and asserting the victor’s will over the victim. As you may imagine, the second phase involves a lot of human rights abuses.
America is great at the first phase, but is generally unwilling to admit that the second phase actually exists. Therefore, American wars tend to involve quick kinetic victories that degenerate into insurgencies and civil wars almost immediately. Think Iraq or Afghanistan.
Successful second-phase war looks like what China is doing in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong. Constant direct subjugation of the losing population, lots of propaganda, and creating an environment where any hint of resistance is directly confronted and destroyed. Eventually the population just gives up and stops resisting. The process seems to be essentially complete in Tibet, well in progress in Xinjiang, and just beginning in Hong Kong.
War is hell, but there are different circles in hell.
In the companies I worked for, the major investors usually had a few seats on the Board of Directors. Also, they generally invested because they were major potential customers and hoped to use the startup’s technology as a competitive advantage in their own companies. And the investment contracts had many strings attached to preserve the investor’s flexibility at the cost of the startup’s. So they could (and did) renegotiate research agreements under unfavorable terms when the startup couldn’t deliver as promised, trigger contractual provisions that gave them extra control if revenue targets weren’t met, lead boardroom motions to replace senior management, send their people around to monitor the workplace (board members have that right), etc.
Or they’d just shut off the funding. A startup that has investment will almost always add staff and other costs; that’s why they wanted funding in the first place. But that means that the burn rate rises to the point where the company can’t survive long without more cash*, and its current investors are by far the easiest people to tap for cash. When they cut off the spigot, several of my employers weren’t able to survive long enough to find more funding.
*It would be nice to get several years worth of cash at once, but most investors were unwilling to commit more than six months at a time. Maybe a year, at the outset.
I have a few concerns about the suggested solutions:
Solution 1 (be smaller): Being smaller means less maze-nature within your organization, but more interfaces with other organizations (since you’re forced to contract out a lot of things). Interfaces with other organizations tend to bring issues of coordinative communication that are similar to, and potentially worse than, the internal mazes they replace.
Solution 2 (minimize levels of hierarchy): I agree, to a limit. That limit is usually about six direct reports per supervisor. Beyond that, people and projects get lost in the shuffle; a single manager can only manage so much and six staff is a fair estimate for competent managers.
Solution 6 (resist “objective criteria”): When serious money and careers are on the line, that’s very dangerous. You will make mistakes; objective criteria (however flawed) will allow your boss to “fix the problem” by changing the criteria instead of by firing you. You will upset people with your hiring, promotion, and firing decisions; having an objective basis for your actions is extremely helpful to avoid or minimize lawsuits. Sadly, this is true even if the “objective criteria” are fatally flawed; hardly anyone will have enough information to tell.
Solution 8 (avoid other mazes): All things being equal I’d agree. In practice, the organizations that have huge budgets are usually mazes. As customers, mazes have excellent qualities in terms of budgets (often large) and demands for performance. Mazes demand compliance and reports; other customers demand results.
I think you may overestimate how much control over an enemy’s internal politics you can reasonably expect. The enemy is going to be as hardened as possible against your influence and will assuredly establish strong social norms against yielding to your influence, for values of “strong” that look like “succumbing to enemy pressure is treason, punishable by death”. Nations pull together in war.
Just for context, I’d like to point out that the SAT has been revised and renormed since 1994 (twice IIRC). Current test scores are not straightforwardly comparable to the scores discussed in the book and in the post.
I think “slacker” would be a better word than Rao’s “loser” for this group. Their chief characteristic is that they don’t work very hard because there’s little benefit for them if they do. “Loser” seems needlessly pejorative—their actions are reasonable given their situations and risk tolerance (usually risk-averse). “Slacker” seems to define them better.
I’ve been in five or six startups, depending how you count. If the startup is not meeting the investors’ expectations and needs more cash, which is usual (nearly all startups fail), then keeping investors happy is a huge problem.* The first six months or so of an investor relationship are usually okay, but things sour from there. If you’re exceeding expectations they’re pretty mellow, I hear, but their expectations are pretty extreme and I have no direct experience of this.
*Oddly, people become unhappy when they realize you’re losing their money.
I propose a test—if apologizing for or clarifying a controversial position is obviously a bad move, you’re dealing with Level 4 actors. In such cases, your critics don’t care about what you believe. Their narrative calls for a villain, and they’ve chosen you.
I think most people on LW fall into one of two groups:
People who were raised in the urban liberal milleu. Religion simply isn’t part of their worldview; their attitude toward it is not even unbelief. For them going to church is like raising alpacas; they are aware that some people do it but they don’t see much value in it, it doesn’t fit into their lifestyles, and it would take a rather long intellectual journey to convince them to do it themselves.
People who, like me, were raised around religion. As LWers are generally thoughtful people, we have generally considered religion to our satisfaction many years ago. Each of us had a particular journey but I suspect my conclusions are, if not typical, then not highly atypical either:
My understanding of neuroscience has convinced me that consciousness is fundamentally dependent on the brain. I don’t believe in an afterlife (cryogenics and mind-uploading ideas notwithstanding).
Since I do not expect to face divine judgement, I am not greatly concerned about the existence or nonexistence of God. I think of theology as much like an ant trying to understand presidential politics. Understanding is highly unlikely and the ant has better things to do.
The Durkheimian “society worshiping itself” phenomenon is real, common, and by no means limited to religion as traditionally defined. It is often wildly irrational and is pretty much the opposite of what LW aspires to.
If you’re trying to reach the first group, I would recommend trying to bring them into contact with organized religion via some sort of common interest (probably effective altruism). The second group is generally going to be much harder to reach.
So how should Armenia have retained Nagorno-Karabakh?
Use the Iraqi playbook. In the kinetic phase of the war, Armenia is probably hopeless. So make only a token show of resistance.
Before Azerbaijan takes over NK, scatter weapons caches to your co-ethnics. Train NK locals as insurgents. Make sure your border is permeable to insurgents; give them a place to rest, recover, and prepare.
Don’t let Azerbaijan consolidate its control. Use ambushes, snipers, and IEDs to discourage Azerbaijani troops from leaving their compounds. When the invaders make an enemy (and they will, lots of them), give that enemy a weapon. When the invaders make a friend, give that friend and his entire family a hideous death. Let people know that collaborators get closed-casket funerals (and then bomb the funerals).
Provoke the invaders into heavy-handed response, then put videos of the massacres on YouTube (CNN, if you can). Make their allies pay in lives and embarrassment. Portray your freedom fighters as heroes standing tall against brutal oppression.
It’s a horrible project. War usually is, and insurgency is worse than most kinds of war. But it could be done. Eventually Azerbaijan would probably leave, simply because nobody sane wants to stay in the hellhole you’ve created. Victory!
Success in the start-up world gives you money, but also gives you equity investors with many demands. That sort of success may not actually give much freedom unless you manage to sell out, literally, in the form of trading your equity and control for cash. Then the investors become someone else’s problem and you’re left with cash and freedom.
I think the real reason is that exploration is a stage in life; it naturally ends with parenthood. Our goal in youth is to explore the world until we find a way to succeed. In adulthood, our goal is to maintain a stable environment so that our children and students can safely explore.
Could we get a Romanization of #5? Some of us are modestly familiar with Chinese history while simultaneously baffled by a written language that appears to consist mainly of several thousand subtly different drawings of sheds.
Moloch’s biggest enemy is change. In a rapidly changing environment, “Moloch” presents as crippling overspecialization. Since “slack” is useful in a wide variety of circumstances, rapid change selects for slack.