Well, i wrote this article with that premise without justifying it as it’s generally accepted on lesswrong. as i said, it’s based on problems from game theory that we know also happen many times in real life, and on yudkowsky’s book inadequate equilibria.
the structure of the site doesn’t require you to commit to results, but to actions. if we’re taking your example, then the bureaucrat commits to do certain actions (probably ones that are believed to be helpful in getting a permit), not on actually getting it.
but it’s not actually a good example for what this site would be about. it’s not about small groups or complex projects, but about simple actions taken by a lot of people. humans can coordinate effectively in groups of up to roughly 150 people, above that it doesn’t work as great. If you want to see better examples, look at this post.
But here a tailored example for you -
Say you have a organization with the goal of making the scientific process better, for most of your work (research, discussions, negotiating, surveys, etc) you don’t use this site. but when you want to implement the solutions you found, you find that it’s quite hard, there are many gears in the mechanism (researchers, grant-makers, journals...), and one won’t change with out the other changing too, at the same time. so you open a coordinated action on this website, something simple and not output-based, and people commit. if enough people committed, they all take the action at the same time. much less effort and strain, instead, you can smoother transitions.
Of course i can’t promise that it works that way, and i can’t quantify beforehand how beneficial it’ll be, but to me it seems promising.
There’s nothing in inadequate equilibria that claims that the cooperation that’s needed doesn’t require complex coordination.
If you take the example of nutrition for babies, it require coordination between different institutions and isn’t just a matter of a lot of people deciding to do the same thing.
humans can coordinate effectively in groups of up to roughly 150 people, above that it doesn’t work as great.
That’s not true. While there are companies that don’t effectively coordinate, a company like Amazon is able to coordinate a lot more then 150 people in an efficient way.
Outside of companies, there are also unions that can effectively coordinate for the benefit of their members with more then 150 members.
Of course i can’t promise that it works that way, and i can’t quantify beforehand how beneficial it’ll be, but to me it seems promising.
It seems to me fairly straightforward to do this with the old technology of Google Forms and email without a new crowdcoordination website. It will require a bit more work for the person who organizes the coordinated action, but if you believe in the concept it would be the minimum viable product that’s worthwhile to do before building the website.
A number of websites (such as Facebook) are valuable because of the people there. As it is (usually) useful to a community/group/etc. to communicate using the same channel, channel switching is an activity that makes more sense to do all at once. (If everyone except you left Facebook, would you still use Facebook?)
I don’t think that’s an effective way to think about Facebook.
Whether or not I use Facebook has little to do with whether I use Google+. There’s no need to leave Facebook to use a new social network.
We switched our local LessWrong community to using Slack by gathering with 5 of the people who do the most in our community for a weekend where we decided to move the community to Slack and afterwards various people who attended took actions they believed would be helpful for establishing the Slack channel.
When I announce events then I crosspost them over multiple channels.
I agree that the type of action needed to address the parenteral nutrition example would be very unlikely to arise from a hypothetical online crowd action platform.
I think much of the purpose here is to brainstorm what the most effective version of such a platform could look like, and thereby also get a picture about what class of problems such a platform might be able to address or help with.
Is your position that that class of problems is small, and/or those problems are better addressed by existing solutions anyway? Maybe that’s right. We are largely brainstorming here to gauge whether a marginal improvement is possible (and probably hoping that a big improvement is).
Is your position that that class of problems is small, and/or those problems are better addressed by existing solutions anyway?
The philosophy of the lean startup suggests that one of the best way to learn is to start with a minimum viable product. In this case the minimum viable product isn’t building a platform but to run a campaign and run it with existing tools in a less automated way.
I think much of the purpose here is to brainstorm what the most effective version of such a platform could look like, and thereby also get a picture about what class of problems such a platform might be able to address or help with.
Depending on the problem you want to solve with the platform, the website might look quite different.
There are problems where you would want to be able to organize civil disobedience and need to be resistant against attempts of the government to shut your website down.
If you want to organize 150 people to come late to school to push back the starting time of the school, it might be important to keep the identity of the people secret until the project is finished. In the case of founding a new academic journal on the other hand you likely want the identity of the people who already committed to the new journal to be public.
I haven’t said IE claimed that, but that “getting people to take an action simultaneously is a central problem that has to be solved”, and he does hint at a kickstarter-like site for coordination, so it’s not far fetched from the book.
pay attention that i did give examples of more complicated ‘contracts’ than “everybody takes action X”. the more the site evolves the more options it will have. but that still doesn’t reach project management level. it’s simple, but not too simple to not be useful.
of course there are ways for humans to cooperate at larger numbers than 150, or else we wouldn’t have modern society. or any society for that matter. I meant that it’s hard for humans to do it with some kinds of social structures. but it’s not so important, we can leave it aside (the important bit isn’t the number, but the notion that the more people, the more coordination gets difficult).
I think the minimum viable project is much more than google forms (no need to even bother if it doesn’t get better than Facebook and Twitter). and actually there is a similar site, but for me it also doesn’t reach minimum viable product. most of what i described in the post is what i think should part of the minimum viable product.
I haven’t said IE claimed that, but that “getting people to take an action simultaneously is a central problem that has to be solved”, and he does hint at a kickstarter-like site for coordination, so it’s not far fetched from the book.
I don’t think the difficult thing about coordination is to get people to take an action simultaneously. I think it’s a far bigger problem to get people to stick with a certain project for a longer timeframe.
Getting people with different views to a consensus about how a problem is to be solved is another general coordination problem.
yes, I agree that both of these are also large problems of coordination that aren’t solved by collective action. we will need to find ways to do all of these better.
I think the minimum viable project is much more than google forms (no need to even bother if it doesn’t get better than Facebook and Twitter).
This sounds to me like you ignore the actual problem. The problem is organizing people. The problem isn’t the tool to organize.
Do you believe that it’s currently impossible to run such a campaign with Google Forms and email and at the same if you put everything on the website, it would suddenly work?
Why do you think people can’t effectively commit by filling out Google Forms?
Could you fund a video game with google forms? (assuming it has a PayPal widget, if needed)
There are three main problems i see with google forms.
First, i think it’ll be harder to get people on board, much harder to get many people on board, and much harder still to do it consistently.
Second, there’s probably a high value to a system that ensures (or at least makes it more probable) that someone who obligated to take an action actually took it. if you don’t have such a system, then whatever you did, you’re arguably almost in the starting same position. everyone might still be suspicious that no one else will take action, and so nobody will take it.
the third connects to the second, but may be different enough—A platform could gain trust. not only would i not fund a video game through google forms, i may not even want to fund it through certain kickstarter-like sites, cause i don’t trust them as i trust kickstarter.
That’s not getting into functionality that to me seems important.
Could you fund a video game with google forms? (assuming it has a PayPal widget, if needed)
I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that. But for a MVP you might start with a project that’s even smaller.
The sign-up for our LessWrong Community Weekend works well through Google form and we are confident to get 150 people to attend.
Second, there’s probably a high value to a system that ensures (or at least makes it more probable) that someone who obligated to take an action actually took it.
I think it’s likely that it’s easier to solve the system of ensuring that as many people as possible who committed to do something actually do something for one particular campaign then to solve it in a fully general way.
the third connects to the second, but may be different enough—A platform could gain trust.
That’s a bad reaction to proposing to do a MVP. Whatever you do, a platform won’t have trust at the beginning.
At the starty, you likely have to get trust by getting influential people or organizations to endorse your campaign.
1. I’d love to see that. surely, it’s not probable that a funding campaign which uses google forms instead of KickStarter would be better off, right? i think we have concluded this line of thought—i’m skeptical, and you don’t see a reason why not.
Though, again, 150 people attending a LW meeting is far from the type of coordination this site will be for. i’m not blind to the fact we have better coordination tools than going door-to-door and talking to people—i say that the coordination tools we have today aren’t sufficient for more complicated coordination—where there are a lot of people involved, several types of actors, many incentives, etc...
2. maybe you’re right. still, it’s worth a try and a little effort :)
3. that wasn’t my reaction for doing an MVP, but reasoning for a platform being good, and saying that google forms isn’t a platform (more specifically, it isn’t a platform for coordinating action, but a more general platform, so it can’t be trusted as one)
surely, it’s not probable that a funding campaign which uses google forms instead of KickStarter would be better off, right? My point isn’t that Google Forms is more effective then having
That’s moving the goal post. Finished well-engineered products are usually more effective then generalized tools with you can use for an MVP.
That doesn’t mean that the way to proceed isn’t building a MVP before desgining the bigger platform.
Running the MVC gives you a much better idea of what the actual challenges happen to be.
Well, i wrote this article with that premise without justifying it as it’s generally accepted on lesswrong. as i said, it’s based on problems from game theory that we know also happen many times in real life, and on yudkowsky’s book inadequate equilibria.
the structure of the site doesn’t require you to commit to results, but to actions. if we’re taking your example, then the bureaucrat commits to do certain actions (probably ones that are believed to be helpful in getting a permit), not on actually getting it.
but it’s not actually a good example for what this site would be about. it’s not about small groups or complex projects, but about simple actions taken by a lot of people. humans can coordinate effectively in groups of up to roughly 150 people, above that it doesn’t work as great. If you want to see better examples, look at this post.
But here a tailored example for you -
Say you have a organization with the goal of making the scientific process better, for most of your work (research, discussions, negotiating, surveys, etc) you don’t use this site. but when you want to implement the solutions you found, you find that it’s quite hard, there are many gears in the mechanism (researchers, grant-makers, journals...), and one won’t change with out the other changing too, at the same time. so you open a coordinated action on this website, something simple and not output-based, and people commit. if enough people committed, they all take the action at the same time. much less effort and strain, instead, you can smoother transitions.
Of course i can’t promise that it works that way, and i can’t quantify beforehand how beneficial it’ll be, but to me it seems promising.
There’s nothing in inadequate equilibria that claims that the cooperation that’s needed doesn’t require complex coordination.
If you take the example of nutrition for babies, it require coordination between different institutions and isn’t just a matter of a lot of people deciding to do the same thing.
That’s not true. While there are companies that don’t effectively coordinate, a company like Amazon is able to coordinate a lot more then 150 people in an efficient way.
Outside of companies, there are also unions that can effectively coordinate for the benefit of their members with more then 150 members.
It seems to me fairly straightforward to do this with the old technology of Google Forms and email without a new crowdcoordination website. It will require a bit more work for the person who organizes the coordinated action, but if you believe in the concept it would be the minimum viable product that’s worthwhile to do before building the website.
A number of websites (such as Facebook) are valuable because of the people there. As it is (usually) useful to a community/group/etc. to communicate using the same channel, channel switching is an activity that makes more sense to do all at once. (If everyone except you left Facebook, would you still use Facebook?)
I don’t think that’s an effective way to think about Facebook.
Whether or not I use Facebook has little to do with whether I use Google+. There’s no need to leave Facebook to use a new social network.
We switched our local LessWrong community to using Slack by gathering with 5 of the people who do the most in our community for a weekend where we decided to move the community to Slack and afterwards various people who attended took actions they believed would be helpful for establishing the Slack channel.
When I announce events then I crosspost them over multiple channels.
I agree that the type of action needed to address the parenteral nutrition example would be very unlikely to arise from a hypothetical online crowd action platform.
I think much of the purpose here is to brainstorm what the most effective version of such a platform could look like, and thereby also get a picture about what class of problems such a platform might be able to address or help with.
Is your position that that class of problems is small, and/or those problems are better addressed by existing solutions anyway? Maybe that’s right. We are largely brainstorming here to gauge whether a marginal improvement is possible (and probably hoping that a big improvement is).
The philosophy of the lean startup suggests that one of the best way to learn is to start with a minimum viable product. In this case the minimum viable product isn’t building a platform but to run a campaign and run it with existing tools in a less automated way.
Depending on the problem you want to solve with the platform, the website might look quite different.
There are problems where you would want to be able to organize civil disobedience and need to be resistant against attempts of the government to shut your website down.
If you want to organize 150 people to come late to school to push back the starting time of the school, it might be important to keep the identity of the people secret until the project is finished. In the case of founding a new academic journal on the other hand you likely want the identity of the people who already committed to the new journal to be public.
I haven’t said IE claimed that, but that “getting people to take an action simultaneously is a central problem that has to be solved”, and he does hint at a kickstarter-like site for coordination, so it’s not far fetched from the book.
pay attention that i did give examples of more complicated ‘contracts’ than “everybody takes action X”. the more the site evolves the more options it will have. but that still doesn’t reach project management level. it’s simple, but not too simple to not be useful.
of course there are ways for humans to cooperate at larger numbers than 150, or else we wouldn’t have modern society. or any society for that matter. I meant that it’s hard for humans to do it with some kinds of social structures. but it’s not so important, we can leave it aside (the important bit isn’t the number, but the notion that the more people, the more coordination gets difficult).
I think the minimum viable project is much more than google forms (no need to even bother if it doesn’t get better than Facebook and Twitter). and actually there is a similar site, but for me it also doesn’t reach minimum viable product. most of what i described in the post is what i think should part of the minimum viable product.
I don’t think the difficult thing about coordination is to get people to take an action simultaneously. I think it’s a far bigger problem to get people to stick with a certain project for a longer timeframe.
Getting people with different views to a consensus about how a problem is to be solved is another general coordination problem.
yes, I agree that both of these are also large problems of coordination that aren’t solved by collective action. we will need to find ways to do all of these better.
This sounds to me like you ignore the actual problem. The problem is organizing people. The problem isn’t the tool to organize.
Do you believe that it’s currently impossible to run such a campaign with Google Forms and email and at the same if you put everything on the website, it would suddenly work?
Why do you think people can’t effectively commit by filling out Google Forms?
Could you fund a video game with google forms? (assuming it has a PayPal widget, if needed)
There are three main problems i see with google forms.
First, i think it’ll be harder to get people on board, much harder to get many people on board, and much harder still to do it consistently.
Second, there’s probably a high value to a system that ensures (or at least makes it more probable) that someone who obligated to take an action actually took it. if you don’t have such a system, then whatever you did, you’re arguably almost in the starting same position. everyone might still be suspicious that no one else will take action, and so nobody will take it.
the third connects to the second, but may be different enough—A platform could gain trust. not only would i not fund a video game through google forms, i may not even want to fund it through certain kickstarter-like sites, cause i don’t trust them as i trust kickstarter.
That’s not getting into functionality that to me seems important.
I see no reason why you shouldn’t be able to do that. But for a MVP you might start with a project that’s even smaller.
The sign-up for our LessWrong Community Weekend works well through Google form and we are confident to get 150 people to attend.
I think it’s likely that it’s easier to solve the system of ensuring that as many people as possible who committed to do something actually do something for one particular campaign then to solve it in a fully general way.
That’s a bad reaction to proposing to do a MVP. Whatever you do, a platform won’t have trust at the beginning.
At the starty, you likely have to get trust by getting influential people or organizations to endorse your campaign.
1. I’d love to see that. surely, it’s not probable that a funding campaign which uses google forms instead of KickStarter would be better off, right? i think we have concluded this line of thought—i’m skeptical, and you don’t see a reason why not.
Though, again, 150 people attending a LW meeting is far from the type of coordination this site will be for. i’m not blind to the fact we have better coordination tools than going door-to-door and talking to people—i say that the coordination tools we have today aren’t sufficient for more complicated coordination—where there are a lot of people involved, several types of actors, many incentives, etc...
2. maybe you’re right. still, it’s worth a try and a little effort :)
3. that wasn’t my reaction for doing an MVP, but reasoning for a platform being good, and saying that google forms isn’t a platform (more specifically, it isn’t a platform for coordinating action, but a more general platform, so it can’t be trusted as one)
That’s moving the goal post. Finished well-engineered products are usually more effective then generalized tools with you can use for an MVP.
That doesn’t mean that the way to proceed isn’t building a MVP before desgining the bigger platform.
Running the MVC gives you a much better idea of what the actual challenges happen to be.
Sure, i agree with you. just not on the right scale/functionality for the MVP.