Mitchell_Porter comments on Q for GiveWell: What is GiveDirectly's mechanism of action? - Less Wrong

16 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 31 July 2013 08:02PM

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Comment author: Mitchell_Porter 10 August 2013 04:14:51AM 0 points [-]

What passes for the "correct contrarian cluster" on LW is, I suspect, largely incorrect; but independently of that, this seems like an implausible candidate for membership in what ought to be an exalted club of ideas: a newly fashionable doctrine of economic management, a heuristic that has floated to the top in a time of malaise.

History suggests that, even if it gets its turn in the sun, after a few decades it will in turn be replaced as the prevailing wisdom, as whatever problems lurk in its blindspot, grow to become the definitive problems of the era of market monetarism.

Apparently some Greek tragedians had the yin-yang-like idea that your arete is your hamartia, your excellence is your tragic flaw. Achilles was made strong by being dipped in the Styx, but he was held by the heel and that became his one weak spot. So it is, I suspect, with all formulas for governance - there is always something not in the formula, something left over, some bad that is done for the greater good, and in time this grows to become its ideological nemesis.