Here is some colourful language for you: Dominic Cummings makes my memetic immune system want to vomit.
Part of it is because he sets off my Malcolm-Gladwell-o-Meter, but mostly it’s because he’s trying so hard to appear more knowledgeable and well-educated than he actually is. He surrounds himself with the trappings of expertise he obviously doesn’t have. Case in point: this “paper” is clearly a blog post which he converted to PDF via MS Word because he thinks that makes it look more credible.
The effect for me is a bit like receiving an email from a Nigerian prince, asking for your help in getting millions of dollars out of the country. My response is approximately the same.
The pattern-matching part of my brain sees the author as a modern analogy of Chesterton—a highly intelligent and educated person who decided to put their skills in defense of a political bottom line, by trying to repaint it as hidden rationality. He almost makes you believe that a victory of his political side would mean a victory of rationality, just because he can convincingly connect these two things in his head, and put that on paper. Problem is, his position is absolutely not representative of the political side he defends, and 99% of people on his political side have completely different priorities.
This said, his description of NASA in its best days is really cool. I just don’t share his implied belief that Brexit is somehow related to that. My prediction is that 5 or 10 years later, Britain will not be any more NASA-like than it is now. And neither will be USA under Trump, France under Le Pen, Hungary under Orbán, etc. This is all just wishful thinking for contrarians.
And neither will be USA under Trump, France under Le Pen, Hungary under Orbán, etc. This is all just wishful thinking for contrarians.
I can easily imagine that under Trump various prestige projects will be organized this way.
Till now it’s just that it’s “we will put a wall between the US and Mexico” instead of “we will put a man on the moon”. Both cost two digits of billions.
“Run some projects the same sort of way as Apollo was run” is not, to my mind, a very worthy goal. What (perhaps) made it valuable to run the Apollo project that way was that the result was to get humans safely to the surface of the moon, developing technology along the way. The process (even if an excellent process) was valuable only for the sake of the actual outcome.
Deploying similar techniques to achieve the building of a big wall between the USA and Mexico is comparably valuable only if having a big wall between the USA and Mexico is as valuable a goal as getting people to the moon and back. Opinions on that could vary, of course.
“Run some projects the same sort of way as Apollo was run” is not, to my mind, a very worthy goal.
When talking about policy issues like this it’s useful to be able to talk about how to organize projects and not only talk about whether one likes certain goals.
Part of the problem of why the system is the inefficient bureaucracy that it is, is because you have big debates about what should be done but little interest in how to organize projects.
Actually, maybe that’s not quite right. If Trump is determined to build a wall between the US and Mexico regardless of cost, and if Apollo-style organization can make it much cheaper, then good for Apollo-style organization. But that doesn’t suffice to make “used Apollo-style organization to build a huge wall” a better outcome than just “didn’t bother building a huge wall”.
Kinda my point. I too can “easily imagine” things—privileging a hypothesis and describing it vividly achieves exactly that.
Before reading this article, was “Trump as a competent NASA director” a hypothesis in your mind? Did this article provide evidence in favor of it? For me, the answers are “No” and “No”. But after reading the article, it became much easier to imagine things like that.
Trump is president of the USA and discussing a world in which Trump would be NASA director is a completely different discussion than the one we are having. Confusing the two seems to be a mistake that’s worthy of being mentally recognized as such (eg. when you recognize a mistake you see where your model needs updating).
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way. I listened quite a lot to Peter Thiel and one of Thiel’s statement is that the US government did great when they did the Apollo program but today’s way of doing government projects is much worse and the government doesn’t get things like the Apollo program done because it’s too bureaucratic.
This means that there are concrete steps that could be taking to have NASA structured like it was under Apollo.
This article basically says that there’s a specific way of management under which the Apollo project was done and how that differs from the status quo.
I also think that it it’s Trumps way of doing things to give power and responsibility to a specific person instead of distributing it widely the way it is distributed in the bureaucratic status quo.
Another of Thiel’s examples: Nixon declared war on cancer.
Could you imagine Bush, Obama or Clinton declaring war on cancer and setting a goal like this and declaring war on Alzheimers?
I couldn’t. On the other hand I could imagine Trump declaring war on Alzheimers. I could imagine him declaring it and putting a team with the kind of structure that the Apollo team had on the task.
Whether that’s the best way to go forward is another question. I personally hated the Human Brain project and would have rather preferred the money to be giving out in lot’s of small grants doing lots of different things.
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way.
Hypothetically speaking, yes it’s possible. But what is the probability of “Trump administration will put someone at the head of NASA who will direct it in ways described in the article, and during the following 4 or 8 years will achieve results comparable with the results NASA achieved back then?” More than 10%?
To me that looks like a quite narrow prediction. Till now I haven’t seen anything that suggest that space will be a priority for the Trump administration.
Given that both Bush and Obama had a token commitment of putting a man on Mars I don’t see that there’s much to gain for choosing this public goal.
I do think there more than 10% chance for a >10 billion science/technology project that organized more like how the Apollo project was organized then how projects are currently organized.
Here is some colourful language for you: Dominic Cummings makes my memetic immune system want to vomit.
Part of it is because he sets off my Malcolm-Gladwell-o-Meter, but mostly it’s because he’s trying so hard to appear more knowledgeable and well-educated than he actually is. He surrounds himself with the trappings of expertise he obviously doesn’t have. Case in point: this “paper” is clearly a blog post which he converted to PDF via MS Word because he thinks that makes it look more credible.
The effect for me is a bit like receiving an email from a Nigerian prince, asking for your help in getting millions of dollars out of the country. My response is approximately the same.
It doesn’t seem like he’s trying to make it not look like a blog post. (If he were, he’d have removed the bits that explicitly say it is one.)
The pattern-matching part of my brain sees the author as a modern analogy of Chesterton—a highly intelligent and educated person who decided to put their skills in defense of a political bottom line, by trying to repaint it as hidden rationality. He almost makes you believe that a victory of his political side would mean a victory of rationality, just because he can convincingly connect these two things in his head, and put that on paper. Problem is, his position is absolutely not representative of the political side he defends, and 99% of people on his political side have completely different priorities.
This said, his description of NASA in its best days is really cool. I just don’t share his implied belief that Brexit is somehow related to that. My prediction is that 5 or 10 years later, Britain will not be any more NASA-like than it is now. And neither will be USA under Trump, France under Le Pen, Hungary under Orbán, etc. This is all just wishful thinking for contrarians.
I can easily imagine that under Trump various prestige projects will be organized this way.
Till now it’s just that it’s “we will put a wall between the US and Mexico” instead of “we will put a man on the moon”. Both cost two digits of billions.
“Run some projects the same sort of way as Apollo was run” is not, to my mind, a very worthy goal. What (perhaps) made it valuable to run the Apollo project that way was that the result was to get humans safely to the surface of the moon, developing technology along the way. The process (even if an excellent process) was valuable only for the sake of the actual outcome.
Deploying similar techniques to achieve the building of a big wall between the USA and Mexico is comparably valuable only if having a big wall between the USA and Mexico is as valuable a goal as getting people to the moon and back. Opinions on that could vary, of course.
When talking about policy issues like this it’s useful to be able to talk about how to organize projects and not only talk about whether one likes certain goals.
Part of the problem of why the system is the inefficient bureaucracy that it is, is because you have big debates about what should be done but little interest in how to organize projects.
Actually, maybe that’s not quite right. If Trump is determined to build a wall between the US and Mexico regardless of cost, and if Apollo-style organization can make it much cheaper, then good for Apollo-style organization. But that doesn’t suffice to make “used Apollo-style organization to build a huge wall” a better outcome than just “didn’t bother building a huge wall”.
Kinda my point. I too can “easily imagine” things—privileging a hypothesis and describing it vividly achieves exactly that.
Before reading this article, was “Trump as a competent NASA director” a hypothesis in your mind? Did this article provide evidence in favor of it? For me, the answers are “No” and “No”. But after reading the article, it became much easier to imagine things like that.
Trump is president of the USA and discussing a world in which Trump would be NASA director is a completely different discussion than the one we are having. Confusing the two seems to be a mistake that’s worthy of being mentally recognized as such (eg. when you recognize a mistake you see where your model needs updating).
The question is whether the Trump administration could put someone at the head of NASA who acts this way. I listened quite a lot to Peter Thiel and one of Thiel’s statement is that the US government did great when they did the Apollo program but today’s way of doing government projects is much worse and the government doesn’t get things like the Apollo program done because it’s too bureaucratic.
This means that there are concrete steps that could be taking to have NASA structured like it was under Apollo.
This article basically says that there’s a specific way of management under which the Apollo project was done and how that differs from the status quo.
I also think that it it’s Trumps way of doing things to give power and responsibility to a specific person instead of distributing it widely the way it is distributed in the bureaucratic status quo.
Another of Thiel’s examples: Nixon declared war on cancer. Could you imagine Bush, Obama or Clinton declaring war on cancer and setting a goal like this and declaring war on Alzheimers?
I couldn’t. On the other hand I could imagine Trump declaring war on Alzheimers. I could imagine him declaring it and putting a team with the kind of structure that the Apollo team had on the task.
Whether that’s the best way to go forward is another question. I personally hated the Human Brain project and would have rather preferred the money to be giving out in lot’s of small grants doing lots of different things.
Hypothetically speaking, yes it’s possible. But what is the probability of “Trump administration will put someone at the head of NASA who will direct it in ways described in the article, and during the following 4 or 8 years will achieve results comparable with the results NASA achieved back then?” More than 10%?
To me that looks like a quite narrow prediction. Till now I haven’t seen anything that suggest that space will be a priority for the Trump administration.
Given that both Bush and Obama had a token commitment of putting a man on Mars I don’t see that there’s much to gain for choosing this public goal.
I do think there more than 10% chance for a >10 billion science/technology project that organized more like how the Apollo project was organized then how projects are currently organized.