nods FWIW I think it’s plausible I exaggerated the levels of competence in government and could be persuaded to edit wording; my main intention with the post was to discuss what type signature the top of government in fact has.
The White House spends the vast majority of its resources putting out false press releases. My impression is that that’s what Kalil did, too. Probably he shifted things in a positive direction, but the shape of the marginal effort doesn’t have much to do with the shape of the total effort. That is, how much time he spent shaping the CDC actions vs NIH funding vs conferences of outsiders doesn’t tells us much about how much of his useful actions fell in those categories. He had practically no direct power, so in a sense the CDC and NIH were outsiders to be coordinated, too.
Cummings burnt a lot of bridges by saying important negative things. I’m suspicious of Kalil sounding so positive. The first hour of the podcast gave me an extremely negative view of him, but then he mentioned a lot of trade-offs and strategies that seemed valuable regardless of the average level of government function. Still, I worry that he sold his soul to function in this environment and lost the ability to tell good projects from bad.
nods FWIW I think it’s plausible I exaggerated the levels of competence in government and could be persuaded to edit wording; my main intention with the post was to discuss what type signature the top of government in fact has.
The White House spends the vast majority of its resources putting out false press releases. My impression is that that’s what Kalil did, too. Probably he shifted things in a positive direction, but the shape of the marginal effort doesn’t have much to do with the shape of the total effort. That is, how much time he spent shaping the CDC actions vs NIH funding vs conferences of outsiders doesn’t tells us much about how much of his useful actions fell in those categories. He had practically no direct power, so in a sense the CDC and NIH were outsiders to be coordinated, too.
Cummings burnt a lot of bridges by saying important negative things. I’m suspicious of Kalil sounding so positive. The first hour of the podcast gave me an extremely negative view of him, but then he mentioned a lot of trade-offs and strategies that seemed valuable regardless of the average level of government function. Still, I worry that he sold his soul to function in this environment and lost the ability to tell good projects from bad.