I am confused why you think this is good enough, and would like to understand why. I look at the situation and see several extremely important cruxes that are not yet satisfied. I’ve specified some of those cruxes above, albeit not super rigorously and I can’t promise they’re exhaustive.
I think I get the failure mode you’re worried about here- that comments like mine will raise the friction of doing anything so high that nothing is even attempted, and it’s more important to try more things and learn from them than to nail down any particular one. There are versions of that I would very strongly agree with. But I don’t think trying things with the level of rigor and intentionality shown in this post and the last one will generate good data. At best it’s measuring the ability of charisma and emotion to compel action, which is a symmetric weapon, but I don’t think it even does that if you don’t check the causality chain (as stated above, I don’t consider the mayor telling a newspaper he acted in response to constituent demand to be strong evidence, when it’s not even clear it was his decision. I’m surprised you do and it might be worth exploring why).
I’m inclined to offer a bounty for evidence about what caused the change in rules (including nailing down whose decision it actually was). Before I do that, I want to check if this is cruxy for you/if there is information on this specific link that would change your overall beliefs. It might also be worth making a bet on this, although having one of the bet participants administer the information bounty feels suspect.
I’m not worried about you administering the bounty, that seems fine and good and I’d trust you to honestly evaluate the bet at the size range I’d expect it to be. If it was big enough to be ‘real money’ we’d need to use better procedures but I’m assuming that’s not the case here.
I’d also note that if I was provided a ‘bounty fund’ I would at least experiment with using it more generally. Might be a good idea.
If you propose a bet, then I might or might not accept depending on odds, size and terms, I don’t feel it is necessary but have no objection.
There are two distinct questions here where you’re questioning things, as I understand you.
You are questioning whether X → Y, where X = Tweetstorm/Ryan and Y = change in LB stacking rule. We have the timing, and we have the explicit word of the person who made the change. Both seem like strong evidence to me. We also have that the storm was unique in the ways I’ve described, and in ways that reflect a desire to cut the enemy that seems unmistakable and rare to me. Yes, it is possible that it wasn’t causal, but this seems heroic and unlikely. It either has to be a coincidence followed by a decision to lie, or the Tweetstorm was timed to give cover to a decision already made. I don’t know what evidence you’d gather here or what bet you’d want to make, but this seems very much like an isolated demand for rigor to me if it’s more than being curious to explore more to verify/expand the model, which seems fine.
You are questioning Y → Z, where Y = stacking rule and Z = conditions at the port. Here I’m not sure how far apart we are. I’m saying that as long as (1 above) Ryan was causal in making the change, (2) the stacking rule improved conditions in the port somewhat with no downsides that matter, that’s enough for me to think of this as a template. It’s a bottleneck situation, so improving one bottleneck might or might not have a huge impact on the condition of the port, and it was rapidly getting worse (from all reports I know about) before the change. The scale of cost of effort versus impact of port conditions is many zeroes. And to me what matters is the template working to execute a good idea—if it didn’t ‘save the economy’ then that’s fine, never really thought this alone did it. Especially when it was only at LB and not LA! Which loses us more than half the effect. Also, my mechanism for why this matters largely involves ‘momentum builds towards both more physical actions to improve the ports, and more efforts to discover, communicate, amplify and use information, models and solutions for physical problems and places where we can improve’ and for that purpose the threshold of actual effect here is definitely cleared by a moderate improvement.
Others have raised cruxes regarding whether trying to create or use information sharing and attention direction vectors is a good idea for strategic reasons, I don’t know if you share this concern or not but it’s a distinct discussion and would require additional posts to fully address. Don’t think this could be settled by more data gathering, it’s a different kind of thing.
Something else?
Do I want to know magnitude of effect? Of course, and I am happy that you’re considering sending out a bounty to find out. I’d also love better access to better metrics on what’s going on at the ports in general even if we can’t create change.
Anyway, I offer to escalate to video call when timing allows, if that’s something you’re interested in.
I am confused why you think this is good enough, and would like to understand why. I look at the situation and see several extremely important cruxes that are not yet satisfied. I’ve specified some of those cruxes above, albeit not super rigorously and I can’t promise they’re exhaustive.
I think I get the failure mode you’re worried about here- that comments like mine will raise the friction of doing anything so high that nothing is even attempted, and it’s more important to try more things and learn from them than to nail down any particular one. There are versions of that I would very strongly agree with. But I don’t think trying things with the level of rigor and intentionality shown in this post and the last one will generate good data. At best it’s measuring the ability of charisma and emotion to compel action, which is a symmetric weapon, but I don’t think it even does that if you don’t check the causality chain (as stated above, I don’t consider the mayor telling a newspaper he acted in response to constituent demand to be strong evidence, when it’s not even clear it was his decision. I’m surprised you do and it might be worth exploring why).
I’m inclined to offer a bounty for evidence about what caused the change in rules (including nailing down whose decision it actually was). Before I do that, I want to check if this is cruxy for you/if there is information on this specific link that would change your overall beliefs. It might also be worth making a bet on this, although having one of the bet participants administer the information bounty feels suspect.
I’m not worried about you administering the bounty, that seems fine and good and I’d trust you to honestly evaluate the bet at the size range I’d expect it to be. If it was big enough to be ‘real money’ we’d need to use better procedures but I’m assuming that’s not the case here.
I’d also note that if I was provided a ‘bounty fund’ I would at least experiment with using it more generally. Might be a good idea.
If you propose a bet, then I might or might not accept depending on odds, size and terms, I don’t feel it is necessary but have no objection.
There are two distinct questions here where you’re questioning things, as I understand you.
You are questioning whether X → Y, where X = Tweetstorm/Ryan and Y = change in LB stacking rule. We have the timing, and we have the explicit word of the person who made the change. Both seem like strong evidence to me. We also have that the storm was unique in the ways I’ve described, and in ways that reflect a desire to cut the enemy that seems unmistakable and rare to me. Yes, it is possible that it wasn’t causal, but this seems heroic and unlikely. It either has to be a coincidence followed by a decision to lie, or the Tweetstorm was timed to give cover to a decision already made. I don’t know what evidence you’d gather here or what bet you’d want to make, but this seems very much like an isolated demand for rigor to me if it’s more than being curious to explore more to verify/expand the model, which seems fine.
You are questioning Y → Z, where Y = stacking rule and Z = conditions at the port. Here I’m not sure how far apart we are. I’m saying that as long as (1 above) Ryan was causal in making the change, (2) the stacking rule improved conditions in the port somewhat with no downsides that matter, that’s enough for me to think of this as a template. It’s a bottleneck situation, so improving one bottleneck might or might not have a huge impact on the condition of the port, and it was rapidly getting worse (from all reports I know about) before the change. The scale of cost of effort versus impact of port conditions is many zeroes. And to me what matters is the template working to execute a good idea—if it didn’t ‘save the economy’ then that’s fine, never really thought this alone did it. Especially when it was only at LB and not LA! Which loses us more than half the effect. Also, my mechanism for why this matters largely involves ‘momentum builds towards both more physical actions to improve the ports, and more efforts to discover, communicate, amplify and use information, models and solutions for physical problems and places where we can improve’ and for that purpose the threshold of actual effect here is definitely cleared by a moderate improvement.
Others have raised cruxes regarding whether trying to create or use information sharing and attention direction vectors is a good idea for strategic reasons, I don’t know if you share this concern or not but it’s a distinct discussion and would require additional posts to fully address. Don’t think this could be settled by more data gathering, it’s a different kind of thing.
Something else?
Do I want to know magnitude of effect? Of course, and I am happy that you’re considering sending out a bounty to find out. I’d also love better access to better metrics on what’s going on at the ports in general even if we can’t create change.
Anyway, I offer to escalate to video call when timing allows, if that’s something you’re interested in.
Note: have emailed Zvi + Eli Tyre to arrange double cruxing out of band.