0) This is not for me, not because of a bug in the proposed structure but because I don’t know you and don’t know any of the people recommending you. There are two people that immediately came to mind who, if they proposed this with themselves in your place, I would join up with over most situations and three more I would probably follow like this over my current situation.
1) You can’t name something Dragon Army and not expect nerd pedantry, but this is pedantry with a point behind it. Dragon Army (in the book) distributed leadership down as much as possible. Each toon leader had more degrees of freedom from Ender’s plans, each toon had a second who was expected to make decisions, and soldiers were more free to question their toon leaders. I know Dragon Army (the name) has a certain positive association in rationalist circles, but what you’re describing sounds more like Salamander Army. This is meant as nerd pedantry more than disagreement with your proposed goals or metrics (Salamander was doing really well in the standings after all) but the difference between Salamander and Dragon hierarchy seems important in this context. Dragon Army won by having a dozen good commanders all thinking at once, Salamander won by having one or two good commanders and being able to expect sharp obedience from everyone under them.
2) The second highest value change (Highest is brought up in point 0) would be some form of “I Told You So” and accountability. I find I am much happier to submit to doing things I think are incorrect if my dissension has been recorded and I can point at it later. Something like an internal prediction market is probably overkill and would erode confidence in leadership in a bad way, but a norm where someone could say “I’m 70% confident this treehouse won’t support enough weight if we nail it like that” and someone quickly sticks that in a google form might be fast enough not to interrupt things. This may or may not help with general cohesion or be relevant to the people who are actually probably joining.
This is sort of related to how often “sure, I’ll do it the way you said as long as I have it in writing that I think it’s dumb” has saved me by covering my rear, it also provides an important check on an incompetent leader, but mostly I’d want it because then the nagging thought “this is a bad idea” is out of my head and I can forget about it for a while. It’s sort of like singing a song out loud sometimes stops it being stuck in your head.
3) “Internal economy trading effort for money and so on”
Can I pay someone to do my lateness-apology push ups for me?
That’s a joking example, but given the likelihood of having large income discrepancies something of that nature may come up, and it might be worth having a framework for it. In the same ballpark, intense cooperation seems like it might be odd in non-DA associated things. Examples; what happens if one member applies for a job at a company another member works for? What happens if one member commits a crime and asks other members to be their alibi? I don’t really expect either of those examples to actually come up, but they are examples where organizations structurally similar to what you’re proposing can do very well for its members in ways that maybe aren’t good for the surrounding social structures.
4) If I knew that this general sort of setup was working well for all concerned, I wouldn’t consider it lasting indefinitely with the same leader to be a bad thing. That said, since you stated an intention to only lead it for about a year, ‘temporary’ leaders leading indefinitely is pretty strongly associated with this general sort of setup no longer working well for all concerned. If this started today, and you were still leading it in two years, I’d take that as evidence something has gone wrong. This gets lessened greatly if individual people are regularly rotating out of the group and all have wonderful praises for it.
All of the above is even more true for romantic/sexual relations between the leadership and the rank-and-file.
5) I’m strongly in favour of this being tried, and I’ll be reading any updates with great interest. Good luck!
1) Yeah, I’m emphasizing the more authoritarian parts, because those are the more dangerous/aversive ones, but in fact Dragon Army is the source of the aesthetic. I agree with almost everything you said in 1), and that’s what the house is supposed to be like. Don’t forget, though, that while Ender distributed authority as broadly as possible, he was firmly, absolutely in command, in the end. When he spoke, they moved. The key thing was that a) he used that as rarely as possible and b) he didn’t undercut his toon leaders when he exercised central authority.
2) Yeah, absolutely. We’ve already installed a norm of making direct, one-to-one bets, and are almost certainly going to install prediction markets and “I told you so” structures. In particular, I think the people originally opposed to a given failed experiment should be given greater weight in the next decision, if their predictions about that experiment came true. It’s tough to balance this against “creating perverse incentives,” but I think we can manage it.
3) Yes. It’s tricky, because we have to work out rates-of-exchange between e.g. rich and poor participants, but an internal economy is something I hope to create with second-priority urgency (i.e. in the first couple of months).
4) I’m not committed to ceasing after a year, if all is going swimmingly, but essentially I want to open that question up to the group itself after six months.
My curiosity is satisfied by your answers to 2-4, but I want to dig a little deeper into 1 if you don’t mind.
The source of the aesthetic is Dragon Army but emphasizing Salamander since those are the pieces more likely to be found off-putting makes sense to me. If someone’s on the fence, they probably shouldn’t go forward. That said, you may have overemphasized your ideal here. Ender was not firmly, absolutely in command; his toon leaders took up body-guarding him over his direct objections in a way that they wouldn’t have for a more authoritarian commander. Would you consider such a mutiny to be a sign you’d failed, or a sign you’d succeeded? (I strongly don’t expect body-guarding to be relevant, but I can imagine similar well-intentioned disagreements.)
Also, since you are changing the emphasis like this I wonder what your plans are for any Nikolai Delphikis* or Beans** that wind up involved? “Screen or vet people carefully so we don’t have any” is noted as probably a good idea, but is also insufficient.
*By Nikolai, I mean someone who would be happy following a confident leader, but feels out of their depth being expected to constantly adapt without sufficient direction. A potentially good Salamander member who read the Salamander description, and was surprised by the Dragon direction it took. Maybe even someone who looks very Dragon-like in most situations, but finds themselves the least improving member of what you set up. On the one hand, if you’re pulling from the rationalist population this seems an unexpected direction to find errors in, on the other hand I have had the experience unexpectedly of finding myself the slowest and least agenty person in a group and it was demoralizing in a way that made me empathize with the fictional Nikolai.
**By Bean, I mean someone who gets involved expecting more degrees of freedom or a higher position on the hierarchy than they wind up with. Bean put himself in Dragon Army knowing he was coming right out of launch, knowing he was small, and knowing Ender would have no reason to pay particular attention to this particular rookie, and then got upset that he wasn’t given any authority or special notice. If you have at least fifteen people not counting yourself or your second, I’d be willing to make a 1:1 bet that you are going to wind up with someone wanting more degrees of freedom or more authority than you want to give them.
I actually take the text of Ender’s Game pretty seriously as a model; I think it offers a lot of good perspective on human morality and interaction. So I actually have the example of the toon leaders bodyguarding Ender as a salient … um … parable? … in my head already, and would view that as a sign I’d succeeded.
We’ve already got a Bean; his name is Eli Tyre. His position as second-in-command didn’t exist through the whole eight months of planning this until 12 hours before I posted the charter. Similarly, the more credible responsibility others can take, the more I get to do less; the only block here is credibly believing that the people taking power will do the right thing on all the levels of meta, or setting up scaffolds such that damage-from-mistakes is minimized and survivable.
As for Nikolais, the first priority is the sign of the derivative (are you progressing positively), the second priority is the derivative (is your progress steep), and a distant, distant third is your actual position (are you in fact now good at X). A major part of the point of the house is to make everyone, myself included, feel a bit like Nikolai? i.e. we want everyone to be at the edge of their growth. But similarly, we want every Nikolai to have a Bean … hence the tight-knit, do-things-together, check-in one-on-one social structure.
I … think that answered your questions? Let me know if I missed something important.
0) This is not for me, not because of a bug in the proposed structure but because I don’t know you and don’t know any of the people recommending you. There are two people that immediately came to mind who, if they proposed this with themselves in your place, I would join up with over most situations and three more I would probably follow like this over my current situation.
1) You can’t name something Dragon Army and not expect nerd pedantry, but this is pedantry with a point behind it. Dragon Army (in the book) distributed leadership down as much as possible. Each toon leader had more degrees of freedom from Ender’s plans, each toon had a second who was expected to make decisions, and soldiers were more free to question their toon leaders. I know Dragon Army (the name) has a certain positive association in rationalist circles, but what you’re describing sounds more like Salamander Army. This is meant as nerd pedantry more than disagreement with your proposed goals or metrics (Salamander was doing really well in the standings after all) but the difference between Salamander and Dragon hierarchy seems important in this context. Dragon Army won by having a dozen good commanders all thinking at once, Salamander won by having one or two good commanders and being able to expect sharp obedience from everyone under them.
2) The second highest value change (Highest is brought up in point 0) would be some form of “I Told You So” and accountability. I find I am much happier to submit to doing things I think are incorrect if my dissension has been recorded and I can point at it later. Something like an internal prediction market is probably overkill and would erode confidence in leadership in a bad way, but a norm where someone could say “I’m 70% confident this treehouse won’t support enough weight if we nail it like that” and someone quickly sticks that in a google form might be fast enough not to interrupt things. This may or may not help with general cohesion or be relevant to the people who are actually probably joining.
This is sort of related to how often “sure, I’ll do it the way you said as long as I have it in writing that I think it’s dumb” has saved me by covering my rear, it also provides an important check on an incompetent leader, but mostly I’d want it because then the nagging thought “this is a bad idea” is out of my head and I can forget about it for a while. It’s sort of like singing a song out loud sometimes stops it being stuck in your head.
3) “Internal economy trading effort for money and so on” Can I pay someone to do my lateness-apology push ups for me? That’s a joking example, but given the likelihood of having large income discrepancies something of that nature may come up, and it might be worth having a framework for it. In the same ballpark, intense cooperation seems like it might be odd in non-DA associated things. Examples; what happens if one member applies for a job at a company another member works for? What happens if one member commits a crime and asks other members to be their alibi? I don’t really expect either of those examples to actually come up, but they are examples where organizations structurally similar to what you’re proposing can do very well for its members in ways that maybe aren’t good for the surrounding social structures.
4) If I knew that this general sort of setup was working well for all concerned, I wouldn’t consider it lasting indefinitely with the same leader to be a bad thing. That said, since you stated an intention to only lead it for about a year, ‘temporary’ leaders leading indefinitely is pretty strongly associated with this general sort of setup no longer working well for all concerned. If this started today, and you were still leading it in two years, I’d take that as evidence something has gone wrong. This gets lessened greatly if individual people are regularly rotating out of the group and all have wonderful praises for it.
All of the above is even more true for romantic/sexual relations between the leadership and the rank-and-file.
5) I’m strongly in favour of this being tried, and I’ll be reading any updates with great interest. Good luck!
Thanks for the detailed comment!
1) Yeah, I’m emphasizing the more authoritarian parts, because those are the more dangerous/aversive ones, but in fact Dragon Army is the source of the aesthetic. I agree with almost everything you said in 1), and that’s what the house is supposed to be like. Don’t forget, though, that while Ender distributed authority as broadly as possible, he was firmly, absolutely in command, in the end. When he spoke, they moved. The key thing was that a) he used that as rarely as possible and b) he didn’t undercut his toon leaders when he exercised central authority.
2) Yeah, absolutely. We’ve already installed a norm of making direct, one-to-one bets, and are almost certainly going to install prediction markets and “I told you so” structures. In particular, I think the people originally opposed to a given failed experiment should be given greater weight in the next decision, if their predictions about that experiment came true. It’s tough to balance this against “creating perverse incentives,” but I think we can manage it.
3) Yes. It’s tricky, because we have to work out rates-of-exchange between e.g. rich and poor participants, but an internal economy is something I hope to create with second-priority urgency (i.e. in the first couple of months).
4) I’m not committed to ceasing after a year, if all is going swimmingly, but essentially I want to open that question up to the group itself after six months.
5) Thanks!
My curiosity is satisfied by your answers to 2-4, but I want to dig a little deeper into 1 if you don’t mind.
The source of the aesthetic is Dragon Army but emphasizing Salamander since those are the pieces more likely to be found off-putting makes sense to me. If someone’s on the fence, they probably shouldn’t go forward. That said, you may have overemphasized your ideal here. Ender was not firmly, absolutely in command; his toon leaders took up body-guarding him over his direct objections in a way that they wouldn’t have for a more authoritarian commander. Would you consider such a mutiny to be a sign you’d failed, or a sign you’d succeeded? (I strongly don’t expect body-guarding to be relevant, but I can imagine similar well-intentioned disagreements.)
Also, since you are changing the emphasis like this I wonder what your plans are for any Nikolai Delphikis* or Beans** that wind up involved? “Screen or vet people carefully so we don’t have any” is noted as probably a good idea, but is also insufficient.
*By Nikolai, I mean someone who would be happy following a confident leader, but feels out of their depth being expected to constantly adapt without sufficient direction. A potentially good Salamander member who read the Salamander description, and was surprised by the Dragon direction it took. Maybe even someone who looks very Dragon-like in most situations, but finds themselves the least improving member of what you set up. On the one hand, if you’re pulling from the rationalist population this seems an unexpected direction to find errors in, on the other hand I have had the experience unexpectedly of finding myself the slowest and least agenty person in a group and it was demoralizing in a way that made me empathize with the fictional Nikolai.
**By Bean, I mean someone who gets involved expecting more degrees of freedom or a higher position on the hierarchy than they wind up with. Bean put himself in Dragon Army knowing he was coming right out of launch, knowing he was small, and knowing Ender would have no reason to pay particular attention to this particular rookie, and then got upset that he wasn’t given any authority or special notice. If you have at least fifteen people not counting yourself or your second, I’d be willing to make a 1:1 bet that you are going to wind up with someone wanting more degrees of freedom or more authority than you want to give them.
I actually take the text of Ender’s Game pretty seriously as a model; I think it offers a lot of good perspective on human morality and interaction. So I actually have the example of the toon leaders bodyguarding Ender as a salient … um … parable? … in my head already, and would view that as a sign I’d succeeded.
We’ve already got a Bean; his name is Eli Tyre. His position as second-in-command didn’t exist through the whole eight months of planning this until 12 hours before I posted the charter. Similarly, the more credible responsibility others can take, the more I get to do less; the only block here is credibly believing that the people taking power will do the right thing on all the levels of meta, or setting up scaffolds such that damage-from-mistakes is minimized and survivable.
As for Nikolais, the first priority is the sign of the derivative (are you progressing positively), the second priority is the derivative (is your progress steep), and a distant, distant third is your actual position (are you in fact now good at X). A major part of the point of the house is to make everyone, myself included, feel a bit like Nikolai? i.e. we want everyone to be at the edge of their growth. But similarly, we want every Nikolai to have a Bean … hence the tight-knit, do-things-together, check-in one-on-one social structure.
I … think that answered your questions? Let me know if I missed something important.