The following immediately jumped out at me when reading this, but was novel to other people I discussed it with so seems worth writing down:
A major use I see for monk levels is letting two people who disagree about a project clarify their disagreement. Different projects have different feedback loops, resource demands, likelihood of success, impact if successful etc, and those things aren’t independent: a project with a very low likelihood of success could make up for it by being cheaper, or having more impact if successful. A project with large risks if done wrong requires better feedback loops than a project where the worst that happens is nothing.
I see monk levels as shorthand for “this is the kind of project that has feedback levels on delay X, has expected value of magnitude Y, and requires resources of magnitude Z”. There will projects that don’t slot neatly into this, but I think these things are correlated enough that the shorthand is useful.
Once you have this concept, you can stop talking about “does this project have a fast enough feedback loop?” and move to “is this feedback loop in accordance with its demands and risks?” You can clarify if you disagree with someone on whether all projects should have faster feedback loops and project A’s are inherently unacceptable, or if they’re totally on board with some projects having very delayed feedback loops but think A in particular is making demands that can only be justified with a fast feedback loop.
None of these trade-offs are impossible to discuss without the monk-level concept, but now that I have it I expect them to be easier to discuss and reason about.
I like this, but feel like monk levels are a bit too abstracted away from the specific questions you point at here. I feel like the monk-levels are good poetry but I’d like to a see a post that operationalizes the poetry more.
The medical system provides a really clear example of this.
The following is a rough summary of credentials that allow you to be a nurse practitioner. It’s been a long time and I might have the names of the credentials wrong, but I’m really sure that these were the levels as described to me by a school recruiter:
PhDs in NP do research that is practical compared to e.g. biologists but not immediately translatable to patient care. Master of Science in Nursing do clinical practice Doctorates in NP translate between the PhDs’ research and clinical practice, including doing their own research on implementation details.
There’s interplay between these groups, and also people play at different levels to inform their main levels. A given DNP might talk to MSNs to learn what problems they have, or they might work one day a week in a clinic. They have to read enough PhD research and foundational science to understand what’s worth translating into practice.
My impression is NP PhDs don’t do clinical work nearly as much (although one of the nice things about nursing is flexibility, so probably some do, if only for the money). They’re selected for ability to do research and that’s how they spend their time- but they do need to be able to talk to DNPs, or their work will never be used.
You see the same continuum in doctors, with a slightly less convenient naming scheme. MDs could be anywhere between 100% clinical practice and 100% advising other people who do medical research while not actually running any studies themselves. The research done by MDs is attempting to practicalize the more foundational work coming out of biology, who are typically professors with what used to be very long time horizons.
And of course both NPs and MDs are dependent on line-level nurses and certified nursing aids doing the minute-to-minute care and responding when the machines beep.
The following immediately jumped out at me when reading this, but was novel to other people I discussed it with so seems worth writing down:
A major use I see for monk levels is letting two people who disagree about a project clarify their disagreement. Different projects have different feedback loops, resource demands, likelihood of success, impact if successful etc, and those things aren’t independent: a project with a very low likelihood of success could make up for it by being cheaper, or having more impact if successful. A project with large risks if done wrong requires better feedback loops than a project where the worst that happens is nothing.
I see monk levels as shorthand for “this is the kind of project that has feedback levels on delay X, has expected value of magnitude Y, and requires resources of magnitude Z”. There will projects that don’t slot neatly into this, but I think these things are correlated enough that the shorthand is useful.
Once you have this concept, you can stop talking about “does this project have a fast enough feedback loop?” and move to “is this feedback loop in accordance with its demands and risks?” You can clarify if you disagree with someone on whether all projects should have faster feedback loops and project A’s are inherently unacceptable, or if they’re totally on board with some projects having very delayed feedback loops but think A in particular is making demands that can only be justified with a fast feedback loop.
None of these trade-offs are impossible to discuss without the monk-level concept, but now that I have it I expect them to be easier to discuss and reason about.
I like this, but feel like monk levels are a bit too abstracted away from the specific questions you point at here. I feel like the monk-levels are good poetry but I’d like to a see a post that operationalizes the poetry more.
The medical system provides a really clear example of this.
The following is a rough summary of credentials that allow you to be a nurse practitioner. It’s been a long time and I might have the names of the credentials wrong, but I’m really sure that these were the levels as described to me by a school recruiter:
PhDs in NP do research that is practical compared to e.g. biologists but not immediately translatable to patient care.
Master of Science in Nursing do clinical practice
Doctorates in NP translate between the PhDs’ research and clinical practice, including doing their own research on implementation details.
There’s interplay between these groups, and also people play at different levels to inform their main levels. A given DNP might talk to MSNs to learn what problems they have, or they might work one day a week in a clinic. They have to read enough PhD research and foundational science to understand what’s worth translating into practice.
My impression is NP PhDs don’t do clinical work nearly as much (although one of the nice things about nursing is flexibility, so probably some do, if only for the money). They’re selected for ability to do research and that’s how they spend their time- but they do need to be able to talk to DNPs, or their work will never be used.
You see the same continuum in doctors, with a slightly less convenient naming scheme. MDs could be anywhere between 100% clinical practice and 100% advising other people who do medical research while not actually running any studies themselves. The research done by MDs is attempting to practicalize the more foundational work coming out of biology, who are typically professors with what used to be very long time horizons.
And of course both NPs and MDs are dependent on line-level nurses and certified nursing aids doing the minute-to-minute care and responding when the machines beep.
I agree and hope that happens.