Comment on Changing Systems is Different than Running Controlled Experiments - Don’t Choose How to Run Your Country That Way!

Mon, 10 Jun 2013 22:51:25 GMT

Thank you for the thoughtful response. I want to note that my solution is not to change many variables simultaneously and casually - to the contrary, I'm saying that I want to avoid oversimplification. I'm thinking more multi-variable experiments are probably good, and more thought experiments, when changing large systems. But in general, its just really hard.

As one example of how I see things going wrong: I think a lot of really good changes end up failing/getting rejected because people actually have thoughts correct about changing one variable, but because they only change that variable and have it fail in the current system, they discard the idea. This actually ends up slowing down good change a lot, since people are inaccurately thinking that they are proving good ideas false.

I'm a proponent of more careful thought and being slow to think one has the right solution to complex problems, even when one has something that appears to be an answer.

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