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comment by jacobjacob · 2019-12-02T15:30:46.264Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
This post makes many bold claims in rapid succession, and mostly supports them via anecdotes or simple statistical/microeconomic models. It also does so in a way which sounds ambitious and wise.
These are flags suggesting that it could use a review. However, the low karma and comments might make a review less necessary.
To be clear, though...
1) I personally liked the post and believe many of the claims in the post, e.g.
- "in any given type of institution [...] some organizations that outperform the others by orders of magnitude"
- "Institutions we do see are functional enough to persist because of selection effects, not because humans are particularly good at making them work"
- "It is much more difficult to make a dysfunctional institution functional than to create a functional institution from scratch"
I probably agree with it somewhat strongly on the whole.
2) I think it's unreasonable to demand that every post justifies itself, and covers all corner cases, in a perfectly rigorous way. That'll reduce the amount of content by a lot. That's not what I suggest that this post does.
However, it's at least plausible to demand that every post be able to pass review -- that is, of being able to reasonably be turned into something that is sufficiently rigorous (even if the draft wasn't).
If someone writes in this style and reliable passes reviews, it seems fine for them to keep writing in this style.
Replies from: Samo Burja↑ comment by Samo Burja · 2019-12-02T20:36:11.314Z · LW(p) · GW(p)
Thank you for your thoughts!
The essay is quite compressed. The evidence and argumentation made in pieces and books it links and references are actually necessary reading. For this reason I placed it about halfway through my book draft and should ideally be read in that sequence. The whole draft and much of writing can be read and was in fact written as an extension and decompression of this essay. So I'd agree with part of your critique, if one takes this as a stand alone piece.
I think I disagree regarding the best epistemic style of writing:
When writing Functional Institutions are the exception I strove to make the evidence and arguments presented as simple as possible. Much as in proofs, the best proof is the simplest valid one.
I think contemporary academic culture has overshot in terms of signaling intelligence and due diligence. The most important reason we overshot, is that they are easily faked as anyone who has ever done homework knows. In fact most of our schooling teaches us how. The cognitive dissonance around the trust we put in such ornamentation when reading, and the ease for us to produce it when graded should give us pause.
My best immediate antidote for this is communication minimalism. Have claims and arguments lad and fall on their own strength, rather than be buried in bloated pieces that make inferences harder.