One hypothesis for why it has gotten harder to form institutional cultures (I am assuming here that it has):
I’ll call this the “Geeks, MOPS, and sociopaths” model. Under this model (put forward e.g. in the essay of Ben Hoffman’s that I linked above), it has somehow become easier and more common for people to successfully ape the appearances of an institutional culture, while not truly being true to it (and so, while betraying it in longer-term or harder-to-trace ways).
In the example of the NYT, this could occur in several ways:
People getting jobs within the NYT who believe less sincerely in the old journalistic ethic (though they perhaps believe in looking like they believe in whatever is popular);
Alternative press outlets (Washington Post, or whoever) arising that believe less sincerely in journalistic ethics (or anything like this) than the NYT, but who parasitize the “kind of like journalistic ethics” brand by aping its appearance to readers;
Leadership of the NYT being more interested in bending the NYT’s brand (and its internal culture/ethics) to however current people today happen to be evaluating which newspaper to trust, in ways that boost those leaders’ personal [$/prestige/political power] but that harm the longer-term legacy of the institution (because future people, who are under the sway of different fads, won’t see it this way).
Related argument: the 4-hour documentary / propaganda film “Century of the Self” argues that the dispersion of game theory (“it’s virtuous to think about my self-interest and e.g. defect in prisoners’ dilemmas”) and of marketing/focus groups/“public relations” (“my brand can figure out how other people are making sense of the world on a pre-conscious level, by using techniques similar to Gendlin’s Focusing on them, and can thereby figure out how to be perceived as having a certain ethic/culture/institution by hacking their detectors”) led to more of this sort of aping, and replaced institutional cultures that might’ve helped past people do real work with LARPing and “lifestyles.”
This is also quite related to Goodhardt’s law. But under this hypothesis, dynamics have somehow changed dynamics so that [individuals/organizations who are trying to appear to have virtues] are able to successfully fool the detectors of [individuals/organizations that are are trying to detect whether they have virtues]. It does not explain why that would have changed.
One possibility if that if a group has safety in resources then they can start competing or peacocking on ethics. Like when the New York Times is doing well, then they can have their journalists do rewarding, risky work which might get them Pullitzer Prizes, and be conservative when considering journalistic ethic violations. This is good for individual journalists and also the paper’s reputation. Now, with the livelihood of their paper less secure they’ve made many small sacrifices against journalistic ethics to increase or keep revenue stable, which hurts both the individuals and the paper.
I would put this as a specific sub-example of what I might consider the “Eric Weinstein / Peter Thiel / Robert Gordon / Tyler Cowen Stagnation Hypothesis” where they might suggest something like this happening on a larger scale.
Maybe not the right place, but my understanding is that Robert Gordon’s hypothesis is very different from the others.
The common view between these folks is that our expectation is for growth, and with this comes plans/strategies/policies which are breaking down as our growth has been slower than expected (at this point for decades).
(I think I know more about this one) Gordon’s view is that stagnation is because our growth has come from discovering, scaling, and rolling-out a sequence of “once only” inventions. We can only disseminate germ theory once, we can only add women to the workforce once, we can only widely deploy indoor plumbing once, etc. This means the expectation is that as we get all the easy improvements, growth will slow down. Gordon’s view is importantly independent of culture, and makes similar predictions of US, UK, JP, SK, CN, FR, DE, (which they’ll arrive at in different dates given the convergence model, but eventually all trend the same). Gordon’s prediction is that we’re just now in a world where we’re stuck at ~1% TFP growth.
(I know some about this) Cowen’s hypothesis in the Great Stagnation is similar to Gordon’s, but seems to argue that the stagnation he’s describing is 1) more specific to American culture 2) reversible, in that he predicts given some policy changes that we can get back to the higher growth of earlier decades. I don’t know how much Cowen’s thinking has changed since publishing that book.
(I know less about this) E.Weinstein’s hypothesis is there’s something in the cultural zeitgeist that is causing the stagnation. I am interested in learning more about this take, and would appreciate references.
I think the point about people Goodhart-ing the things seen as greatness makes sense. These incentives would have been around for a long time and don’t predict recent changes, though.
One thing that is different now is more of the words/sentences/pictures/ideas of interactions I have are with some form of manipulable media (websites, podcasts, radio, television, etc) rather than flesh-and-blood humans. Here I’m trying to capture something like the amount of beliefs, knowledge, and ideas moved, rather than amount of time or attention.
So this predicts things like ‘its easier to form institutional cultures when there is more human-human interaction’, which would point to a decline in recent decades, but also probably have significant events at past points in history.
Radio, television, internet, etc would probably be interesting points to study.
The recent pandemic is then interesting, because this would predict that in places that shut down for the pandemic, it became acutely more difficult to build/maintain cultures of great institutions, because we acutely curtailed human-human interaction.
One hypothesis for why it has gotten harder to form institutional cultures (I am assuming here that it has):
I’ll call this the “Geeks, MOPS, and sociopaths” model. Under this model (put forward e.g. in the essay of Ben Hoffman’s that I linked above), it has somehow become easier and more common for people to successfully ape the appearances of an institutional culture, while not truly being true to it (and so, while betraying it in longer-term or harder-to-trace ways).
In the example of the NYT, this could occur in several ways:
People getting jobs within the NYT who believe less sincerely in the old journalistic ethic (though they perhaps believe in looking like they believe in whatever is popular);
Alternative press outlets (Washington Post, or whoever) arising that believe less sincerely in journalistic ethics (or anything like this) than the NYT, but who parasitize the “kind of like journalistic ethics” brand by aping its appearance to readers;
Leadership of the NYT being more interested in bending the NYT’s brand (and its internal culture/ethics) to however current people today happen to be evaluating which newspaper to trust, in ways that boost those leaders’ personal [$/prestige/political power] but that harm the longer-term legacy of the institution (because future people, who are under the sway of different fads, won’t see it this way).
Related argument: the 4-hour documentary / propaganda film “Century of the Self” argues that the dispersion of game theory (“it’s virtuous to think about my self-interest and e.g. defect in prisoners’ dilemmas”) and of marketing/focus groups/“public relations” (“my brand can figure out how other people are making sense of the world on a pre-conscious level, by using techniques similar to Gendlin’s Focusing on them, and can thereby figure out how to be perceived as having a certain ethic/culture/institution by hacking their detectors”) led to more of this sort of aping, and replaced institutional cultures that might’ve helped past people do real work with LARPing and “lifestyles.”
This is also quite related to Goodhardt’s law. But under this hypothesis, dynamics have somehow changed dynamics so that [individuals/organizations who are trying to appear to have virtues] are able to successfully fool the detectors of [individuals/organizations that are are trying to detect whether they have virtues]. It does not explain why that would have changed.
One possibility if that if a group has safety in resources then they can start competing or peacocking on ethics. Like when the New York Times is doing well, then they can have their journalists do rewarding, risky work which might get them Pullitzer Prizes, and be conservative when considering journalistic ethic violations. This is good for individual journalists and also the paper’s reputation. Now, with the livelihood of their paper less secure they’ve made many small sacrifices against journalistic ethics to increase or keep revenue stable, which hurts both the individuals and the paper.
I would put this as a specific sub-example of what I might consider the “Eric Weinstein / Peter Thiel / Robert Gordon / Tyler Cowen Stagnation Hypothesis” where they might suggest something like this happening on a larger scale.
Maybe not the right place, but my understanding is that Robert Gordon’s hypothesis is very different from the others.
The common view between these folks is that our expectation is for growth, and with this comes plans/strategies/policies which are breaking down as our growth has been slower than expected (at this point for decades).
(I think I know more about this one) Gordon’s view is that stagnation is because our growth has come from discovering, scaling, and rolling-out a sequence of “once only” inventions. We can only disseminate germ theory once, we can only add women to the workforce once, we can only widely deploy indoor plumbing once, etc. This means the expectation is that as we get all the easy improvements, growth will slow down. Gordon’s view is importantly independent of culture, and makes similar predictions of US, UK, JP, SK, CN, FR, DE, (which they’ll arrive at in different dates given the convergence model, but eventually all trend the same). Gordon’s prediction is that we’re just now in a world where we’re stuck at ~1% TFP growth.
(I know some about this) Cowen’s hypothesis in the Great Stagnation is similar to Gordon’s, but seems to argue that the stagnation he’s describing is 1) more specific to American culture 2) reversible, in that he predicts given some policy changes that we can get back to the higher growth of earlier decades. I don’t know how much Cowen’s thinking has changed since publishing that book.
(I know less about this) E.Weinstein’s hypothesis is there’s something in the cultural zeitgeist that is causing the stagnation. I am interested in learning more about this take, and would appreciate references.
I think the point about people Goodhart-ing the things seen as greatness makes sense. These incentives would have been around for a long time and don’t predict recent changes, though.
One thing that is different now is more of the words/sentences/pictures/ideas of interactions I have are with some form of manipulable media (websites, podcasts, radio, television, etc) rather than flesh-and-blood humans. Here I’m trying to capture something like the amount of beliefs, knowledge, and ideas moved, rather than amount of time or attention.
So this predicts things like ‘its easier to form institutional cultures when there is more human-human interaction’, which would point to a decline in recent decades, but also probably have significant events at past points in history.
Radio, television, internet, etc would probably be interesting points to study.
The recent pandemic is then interesting, because this would predict that in places that shut down for the pandemic, it became acutely more difficult to build/maintain cultures of great institutions, because we acutely curtailed human-human interaction.
Seems like you’re missing an end to the paragraph that starts “Related argument”
Thanks! Fixed.