"The unrecognised simplicities of effective action #2: 'Systems engineering’ and 'systems management' - ideas from the Apollo programme  for a 'systems politics'", Cummings 2017

gwern

Here is some colourful language for you: Dominic Cummings makes my memetic immune system want to vomit.

Part of it is because he sets off my Malcolm-Gladwell-o-Meter, but mostly it’s because he’s trying so hard to appear more knowledgeable and well-educated than he actually is. He surrounds himself with the trappings of expertise he obviously doesn’t have. Case in point: this “paper” is clearly a blog post which he converted to PDF via MS Word because he thinks that makes it look more credible.

The effect for me is a bit like receiving an email from a Nigerian prince, asking for your help in getting millions of dollars out of the country. My response is approximately the same.

The pattern-matching part of my brain sees the author as a modern analogy of Chesterton -- a highly intelligent and educated person who decided to put their skills in defense of a political bottom line, by trying to repaint it as hidden rationality. He almost makes you believe that a victory of his political side would mean a victory of rationality, just because he can convincingly connect these two things in his head, and put that on paper. Problem is, his position is absolutely not representative of the political side he defends, and 99% of people on his... (read more)

4gjm9y

It doesn't seem like he's trying to make it not look like a blog post. (If he were, he'd have removed the bits that explicitly say it is one.)

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"The unrecognised simplicities of effective action #2: 'Systems engineering’ and 'systems management' - ideas from the Apollo programme for a 'systems politics'", Cummings 2017

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"The unrecognised simplicities of effective action #2: 'Systems engineering’ and 'systems management' - ideas from the Apollo programme for a 'systems politics'", Cummings 2017

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