The issue is that expertise in reconfiguring the game is precisely what wokesters are expert at! That is why they are gaining power, and those you favor are losing it. The right approach is to figure out not just what the game should be (trivial), but how to get to that game without suffering defectors (people more interested in pulling the ladder up than enacting fair meritocracy, even if it hurts them).
Hayek answered this question in "The Use of Knowledge in Society" but I am not yet sure we understand what he wrote.
Knowledge services two important functions:
Type 1) It creates a standard of thinking, that may be wrong, but serves as a scaffold to develop other knowledge. The derivative may be accurate even if the predicate was wrong.
Type 2) It equips someone to understand new information. i.e. a physicist can observe more things about physics and explain new phenomena.
In the context of "Knowledge in society" there are people who can interpret data and generate new novel innovations (Type 2). But price, which is imperfect, also helps "The coordination problem" using a Type 1 approach. So price is imperfect but sufficient to improve knowledge.
Clayton Christensen described a form of disruptive innovation. Specifically when customer requirements change, in a manner that disadvantages incumbents. An example would be a shift from faster processors to more battery efficiency. There came a time when computers were fast enough, and then we wanted portable. I personally think incumbent knowledge is more type 1 behavior. And disruptive is more type 2.
The rate of change to disruptive innovation, or type 2 knowledge, is captured in part by Kurzweil's The Law of Accelerating Returns. The rate of change represents A) there is unmet latent demand B) knowledge and demand are shifting at an accelerating pace.
So how does this relate to your article? The accumulation of social cred around type 1 or type 2 cohorts is probably fine. Its ok for a Type 1 bandwagon, with low substance, if it helps set standards (i.e. does it matter what the gauge of railroad is, or what phone platform people use, if the benefit generates positive externalities like interoperability).
I personally find type 2 more vexing. If we could build quality social cred around type 2 behavior (knowledge of new domains) that would advance society in a manner that solves the coordination problem perhaps better than price. Understanding this sort of social cred probably relates to knowledge graphs and/or information flows in conjunction with feedback from end-users in the manner Hayek articulated in his paper.
"Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach. There is no reason why pride in advertising your abilities should lure you into publicity, so that you should desire to recite or harangue before the general public."
Or, if you want to keep it concise:
"One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man."
Both written by Seneca the Younger, a man who achieved status that your average "Elite" today will never rival. Even with the abundance of Internet Atta-Boy Points that social media doles out these days.
Such an important point and bravo for keeping it concise! I’d want to see this fleshed out (perhaps in the Atlantic)- how exactly do we reconfigure the game and make it more meritocratic?
Quoting the evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein from one of his podcasts:
We know from Darwin that there are only four characteristics necessary to get adaptive evolution. If you have reproduction, variation, differential success, and an environment in which resources are limited, you're going to get adaptive evolution. If you set up a system (economic, political, etc), evolution will take place within it. For example, in a political system, we don't like corruption, so we're going to set a penalty for attempting the corrupt the system. Now what we've done is set up a system in which evolution is going to explore the question of what kinds of corruptions are invisible, and what kinds of penalties are tolerable from the point of view of discovering how to alter policy in the direction of some private interest. If you let that run, evolution will come up with a genius corruption. It will come up with something that is capable of altering the function of the system without being spotted, and with being only slightly penalized. So what you have to do is build a system in which there is no selection which allows this process to explore options for corrupting the system. You may have to turn the penalties up much higher than you would think, so that any attempt to corrupt the system is ruinous to the entity that attempts it, so it never evolves to the next stage, because it keeps going extinct. But you have to understand first that designing that system is an evolutionary puzzle.
We can't, really. First, people need to stop listening to ideas they already agree with and start listening to ideas they don't. And I mean really listening to learn, not listening to object. Second, people need to stop listening to "influencers", which is just another word for "popular". I don't know how it got to be a thing that a mob is an intelligent, thoughtful, conglomeration that will generally show the right way of things, but anyone who knows anything at all about mob psychology knows that a mob is a stupid beast that only cares where its next meal comes from. Don't read Kling because others do. Read Kling if he helps you become a better thinker.
The problem is that both of these steps are impossible because neither of these steps are wanted, generally speaking. People generally don't want to be challenged. They want to be told that they're morally right, that their winning the good fight, and everything will be okay as long as The Enemy gets destroyed.
The issue is that expertise in reconfiguring the game is precisely what wokesters are expert at! That is why they are gaining power, and those you favor are losing it. The right approach is to figure out not just what the game should be (trivial), but how to get to that game without suffering defectors (people more interested in pulling the ladder up than enacting fair meritocracy, even if it hurts them).
I agree; wokeness seems like a guerrilla strategy to gain status that was developed by people who are less likely to advance in a meritocratic system.
Yeah, "people more interested in pulling the ladder up than enacting fair meritocracy", people like the widely touted Pinker.
See my critiques (of his words to Hanania), in Arnold's thread at https://arnoldkling.substack.com/p/keeping-up-with-the-fits-no-11 , and in the original Hanania thread at https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/rationality-requires-incentives-an .
Hayek answered this question in "The Use of Knowledge in Society" but I am not yet sure we understand what he wrote.
Knowledge services two important functions:
Type 1) It creates a standard of thinking, that may be wrong, but serves as a scaffold to develop other knowledge. The derivative may be accurate even if the predicate was wrong.
Type 2) It equips someone to understand new information. i.e. a physicist can observe more things about physics and explain new phenomena.
In the context of "Knowledge in society" there are people who can interpret data and generate new novel innovations (Type 2). But price, which is imperfect, also helps "The coordination problem" using a Type 1 approach. So price is imperfect but sufficient to improve knowledge.
Clayton Christensen described a form of disruptive innovation. Specifically when customer requirements change, in a manner that disadvantages incumbents. An example would be a shift from faster processors to more battery efficiency. There came a time when computers were fast enough, and then we wanted portable. I personally think incumbent knowledge is more type 1 behavior. And disruptive is more type 2.
The rate of change to disruptive innovation, or type 2 knowledge, is captured in part by Kurzweil's The Law of Accelerating Returns. The rate of change represents A) there is unmet latent demand B) knowledge and demand are shifting at an accelerating pace.
So how does this relate to your article? The accumulation of social cred around type 1 or type 2 cohorts is probably fine. Its ok for a Type 1 bandwagon, with low substance, if it helps set standards (i.e. does it matter what the gauge of railroad is, or what phone platform people use, if the benefit generates positive externalities like interoperability).
I personally find type 2 more vexing. If we could build quality social cred around type 2 behavior (knowledge of new domains) that would advance society in a manner that solves the coordination problem perhaps better than price. Understanding this sort of social cred probably relates to knowledge graphs and/or information flows in conjunction with feedback from end-users in the manner Hayek articulated in his paper.
Is the "replication crisis" a sign of failure in knowledge or sign of success? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/
maybe both. the research methods got too popular for a while, but eventually the flaws were highlighted
Signaling that cost benefit analysis played no part in a decision about resource allocation should be reason to distrust the message.
"Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach. There is no reason why pride in advertising your abilities should lure you into publicity, so that you should desire to recite or harangue before the general public."
Or, if you want to keep it concise:
"One man means as much to me as a multitude, and a multitude only as much as one man."
Both written by Seneca the Younger, a man who achieved status that your average "Elite" today will never rival. Even with the abundance of Internet Atta-Boy Points that social media doles out these days.
Such an important point and bravo for keeping it concise! I’d want to see this fleshed out (perhaps in the Atlantic)- how exactly do we reconfigure the game and make it more meritocratic?
Quoting the evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein from one of his podcasts:
We know from Darwin that there are only four characteristics necessary to get adaptive evolution. If you have reproduction, variation, differential success, and an environment in which resources are limited, you're going to get adaptive evolution. If you set up a system (economic, political, etc), evolution will take place within it. For example, in a political system, we don't like corruption, so we're going to set a penalty for attempting the corrupt the system. Now what we've done is set up a system in which evolution is going to explore the question of what kinds of corruptions are invisible, and what kinds of penalties are tolerable from the point of view of discovering how to alter policy in the direction of some private interest. If you let that run, evolution will come up with a genius corruption. It will come up with something that is capable of altering the function of the system without being spotted, and with being only slightly penalized. So what you have to do is build a system in which there is no selection which allows this process to explore options for corrupting the system. You may have to turn the penalties up much higher than you would think, so that any attempt to corrupt the system is ruinous to the entity that attempts it, so it never evolves to the next stage, because it keeps going extinct. But you have to understand first that designing that system is an evolutionary puzzle.
We can't, really. First, people need to stop listening to ideas they already agree with and start listening to ideas they don't. And I mean really listening to learn, not listening to object. Second, people need to stop listening to "influencers", which is just another word for "popular". I don't know how it got to be a thing that a mob is an intelligent, thoughtful, conglomeration that will generally show the right way of things, but anyone who knows anything at all about mob psychology knows that a mob is a stupid beast that only cares where its next meal comes from. Don't read Kling because others do. Read Kling if he helps you become a better thinker.
The problem is that both of these steps are impossible because neither of these steps are wanted, generally speaking. People generally don't want to be challenged. They want to be told that they're morally right, that their winning the good fight, and everything will be okay as long as The Enemy gets destroyed.