Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Alex Potts's avatar

A lot of this piece feels like an echo of Scott Alexander's mistake/conflict dichotomy. Basically, mistake theorists believe that society is flawed because its problems are difficult to solve; conflict theorists believe that society is flawed because the wrong people are in charge.

This puts Cummings in an unusual position, of being a conflict theorist who talks like a mistake theorist. His language is one of institutions and incentives and it doesn't moralise anything; but ultimately his thesis is "clever weirdos (like me) should run everything with no democratic oversight". (He also hates with a burning passion people who don't think like him, another hallmark of the conflict theorist.)

Expand full comment
Brian Cox's avatar

This seems like a narrow prescription for organisations and change. I wonder if the absence of any of the social, human and interpersonal perspective is also another area where DC gets things wrong. Behaviour and modelling are powerful social contributors to organisational effectiveness and development. Bullying, aggression, leaking etc behaviour might have immediate impacts but they are unlikely to be positive or last long. What sometimes people see as the blob rolling back against change is merely a longer term collective reaction to behaviour that is amoral, anti-social, and blaming which has alienated rather than recruited people to the project.

Expand full comment
20 more comments...

No posts