The biggest concern/red flag for me is one aspect of the authoritarian nature of the project. I would be perfectly fine with fully outsourcing decisions (giving higher intellectual status) but not with being a subordinate in full generality. What I’m trying to point at is the difference between “What should I do? He said to do “x” and I trust his expertise so this is my best option and I’m going to make myself do it if unpleasant” and someone forcing me to do the thing.
Which of the two would be my intuitive reaction depends mostly on your character/attitude and this is something that is completely missing from the discussion so far. Hopefully that is because people know you so they are sure it wouldn’t be a problem but your comments here only show competence and don’t exclude arrogance or enjoying power too much and beginning to boss people around. I found concerning the comparisons to military bootcamps and talking about tyrants as this somewhat paints the image of “someone shouting at people to do stuff” which I expect to have severe negative effects and build up resentment quickly. In other words it seems to me that constraining your image strictly to the one who decides what is to be done as opposed to someone who also enforces the execution would reduce the risk of failure of the experiment. Enforcing by regulating incentives should be fine as it won’t speak to System 1 and provoke the low-level “Who are you to tell me what to do” reaction.
Maybe this is an obvious point that having a nice and respectful leader is better than powerful tyrant but I’m not sure how far I can generalize from my own preferences so decided to share anyway. Apologies if this doesn’t make sense or wastes your time, I’m new to posting here.
This is a clear and cogent point, and thanks for posting it.
I suspect the authoritarian stuff is a necessary catalyst, to get the group cohered together and working, and after an initial period it becomes less and less useful. For instance, I think a major part of the thing is getting everyone to be in the same room at the same times, and that happens fastest and becomes ingrained easiest if someone’s just dictating the time (after reasonably accounting for everyone’s constraints and preferences).
But once everyone’s all in the same room, I don’t think it makes too much sense for an authoritarian to dictate what happens. Like, I think the useful thing is something along the lines of “well, if you all can’t decide where we’re going to eat, then we’re getting pizza”—my plan is to set a minimum bar of “this is a useful thing to be doing,” and to demand that we do at least that, but to in no way restrict people from coming up with something better/more effective/more worthwhile.
So, we start off by having morning exercise and weekly dinner, and then over time, people who are chafing because the morning exercise get to say, “Hey, you know what would be a better use of this slot of togetherness that is taken as a given? Doing X or Y or Z.” The authoritarianism is there to support the scaffold, but is not there to say what grows on it, except in the most general sense of “let’s try to improve” and “let’s lean toward important stuff rather than trivial.”
I also note that I’m somewhat overemphasizing the authoritarian bit, because I expect it’s the most difficult piece to swallow, and I want to really really really really really make sure that I don’t undersell how strict things will end up being. It seems way worse to lose a couple of people who would’ve liked it because I made it sound too restrictive than to include people who are going to be trapped and unhappy because I didn’t give them enough warning.
The biggest concern/red flag for me is one aspect of the authoritarian nature of the project. I would be perfectly fine with fully outsourcing decisions (giving higher intellectual status) but not with being a subordinate in full generality. What I’m trying to point at is the difference between “What should I do? He said to do “x” and I trust his expertise so this is my best option and I’m going to make myself do it if unpleasant” and someone forcing me to do the thing.
Which of the two would be my intuitive reaction depends mostly on your character/attitude and this is something that is completely missing from the discussion so far. Hopefully that is because people know you so they are sure it wouldn’t be a problem but your comments here only show competence and don’t exclude arrogance or enjoying power too much and beginning to boss people around. I found concerning the comparisons to military bootcamps and talking about tyrants as this somewhat paints the image of “someone shouting at people to do stuff” which I expect to have severe negative effects and build up resentment quickly. In other words it seems to me that constraining your image strictly to the one who decides what is to be done as opposed to someone who also enforces the execution would reduce the risk of failure of the experiment. Enforcing by regulating incentives should be fine as it won’t speak to System 1 and provoke the low-level “Who are you to tell me what to do” reaction.
Maybe this is an obvious point that having a nice and respectful leader is better than powerful tyrant but I’m not sure how far I can generalize from my own preferences so decided to share anyway. Apologies if this doesn’t make sense or wastes your time, I’m new to posting here.
This is a clear and cogent point, and thanks for posting it.
I suspect the authoritarian stuff is a necessary catalyst, to get the group cohered together and working, and after an initial period it becomes less and less useful. For instance, I think a major part of the thing is getting everyone to be in the same room at the same times, and that happens fastest and becomes ingrained easiest if someone’s just dictating the time (after reasonably accounting for everyone’s constraints and preferences).
But once everyone’s all in the same room, I don’t think it makes too much sense for an authoritarian to dictate what happens. Like, I think the useful thing is something along the lines of “well, if you all can’t decide where we’re going to eat, then we’re getting pizza”—my plan is to set a minimum bar of “this is a useful thing to be doing,” and to demand that we do at least that, but to in no way restrict people from coming up with something better/more effective/more worthwhile.
So, we start off by having morning exercise and weekly dinner, and then over time, people who are chafing because the morning exercise get to say, “Hey, you know what would be a better use of this slot of togetherness that is taken as a given? Doing X or Y or Z.” The authoritarianism is there to support the scaffold, but is not there to say what grows on it, except in the most general sense of “let’s try to improve” and “let’s lean toward important stuff rather than trivial.”
I also note that I’m somewhat overemphasizing the authoritarian bit, because I expect it’s the most difficult piece to swallow, and I want to really really really really really make sure that I don’t undersell how strict things will end up being. It seems way worse to lose a couple of people who would’ve liked it because I made it sound too restrictive than to include people who are going to be trapped and unhappy because I didn’t give them enough warning.