Vehicles like cars, planes, and boats generally need a) an engine to push them forward, b) steering to direct their motions, and c) a driver to manage both.
"Each boat in our armada is led by a captain (really a close-knit community of elites) who steers it."
I once briefly dated the daughter of a billionaire. She told me that people in her circles saw different cities as being the real agents, and saw these cities not as great metropolises, but as villages. If someone proposed something that might infringe on another city's interests, one would ask something like, "What does Boston think of that?" And by Boston, one would mean not the citizens of Boston, but the virtual village constituting the "Real" Boston--the one or two hundred people who run Boston, a number small enough and tightly-connected enough that there could be a definite answer to "What does Boston think of that?", which one could find out by calling Boston on the phone.
So the dashboard represents "prestigious culture, such as elite art, stories, and journalism." And the captain represents the cultural elites, who steer the culture's norms and status markers.
So what exactly is the difference between the captain and the dashboard? They're both groups of elites - indeed by your description they seem to be the same group of elites. Who is steering the culture (the captain), other than the producers of prestigious culture (the dashboard), such as elite artists, writers, and journalists?
A lot to unpack about dashboards summarising meaningful data in a trustworthy and timely way.
I like the steering analogies. Driving errors include understeer and oversteer potentially by aiming to follow a target speed on the dashboard but failing to judge undasboarded changes in road curvature, friction supply or tyre grip.
Sailing also involves differentiating true heading from apparent heading when dealing with undashboarded currents and winds. An indirect tacked course may be easier(and possibly faster) than the direct course crabbing the whole way. This even applies ito racing robots:
Dashboards often show easily acquired data that may not tell you much about actual performance. Wisdom is in knowing the limitations, biases and application of any tool appropriate to the goal. You can be precisely measuring your effort while climbing exactly the wrong mountain.
This is technically true, but does it really matter if a few of us separately make 'good' choices? I thought this post was going to end up acknowledging that as a civilization we sink or swim on the strength of the quality of elite dashboards, and that the whole question is whether they're amenable to timely improvement.
I think we are rapidly approaching a point where the boats occupants are realizing that the dasboards/capatains/elites are either idiots or hopelessly myopic or both. A mutiny is brewing becouse some of us are not inclined to passively sail towards the rocks. Whether that rebellion succeeds or not is an open question. The mutineers are following past cultural dashboards that were successful. We'll see.
According to Social Darwinism, Natural Selection used to weed out the inferior members of our species, allowing only the superior to survive and to reproduce themselves. But now we are so rich and soft-hearted that we support the inferior, and allow them to reproduce themselves, which has a potentially disastrous dysgenic effect.
According to economic theory, competition among firms weeds out the less efficient, allowing only the more efficient to continue in business. But some sectors of the economy are natural monopolies, where normal competition does not work, resulting in a potentially disastrous shortfall in efficiency.
According to Robin Hanson, Natural Selection used to work also on nations/societies/cultures, among whom there was competition for survival. But now we have coalesced into a single overarching quasi-monopolistic culture, among the parts of which there is no effective competition. Disaster is sure to follow (timetable indefinite).
This all seems very plausible. Perhaps, though, it is oversimplified, leaving out elements or aspects of the situations that significantly affect the outcomes.
One short question I've been trialing internally is: "if our culture stops having babies what kind of culture that does have babies do you think would replace it in the long term?"
I think the trick may be to get someone who might be partial to our culture to imagine what new kind of culture might have babies, rather than a specific existing culture which seems implausible due to expectations that they are marginal
I also think "if our culture stops having babies" is a really good cold opener that describes the issue in an obvious way without triggers or unexpected terms like collapse
Isn't the risk of cultures drifting into bad places exacerbated by elites being prone to valuing most that which advances their own interests, even if is at the expense of the greater interest.
Elite opinion makers and people who influence them, including their own readers and commenters, will find it interesting, non-threatening and persuasive based on my reaction to it
Surprised you didn’t use the analogy of drilling a hole in the boat to make your point—those who don’t rethink their course are essentially doing just that, putting everyone at risk.
Or is the implication that those not having children are digging the hole.
"Each boat in our armada is led by a captain (really a close-knit community of elites) who steers it."
I once briefly dated the daughter of a billionaire. She told me that people in her circles saw different cities as being the real agents, and saw these cities not as great metropolises, but as villages. If someone proposed something that might infringe on another city's interests, one would ask something like, "What does Boston think of that?" And by Boston, one would mean not the citizens of Boston, but the virtual village constituting the "Real" Boston--the one or two hundred people who run Boston, a number small enough and tightly-connected enough that there could be a definite answer to "What does Boston think of that?", which one could find out by calling Boston on the phone.
(Rural America was, of course, just dumb beasts.)
So the dashboard represents "prestigious culture, such as elite art, stories, and journalism." And the captain represents the cultural elites, who steer the culture's norms and status markers.
So what exactly is the difference between the captain and the dashboard? They're both groups of elites - indeed by your description they seem to be the same group of elites. Who is steering the culture (the captain), other than the producers of prestigious culture (the dashboard), such as elite artists, writers, and journalists?
As I said in the post, the dashboard isn't people. It is the messages read in prestigious culture.
But, obviously, these messages come from people.
FELICES BEWARE VALUE DASHBOARDS
A lot to unpack about dashboards summarising meaningful data in a trustworthy and timely way.
I like the steering analogies. Driving errors include understeer and oversteer potentially by aiming to follow a target speed on the dashboard but failing to judge undasboarded changes in road curvature, friction supply or tyre grip.
Sailing also involves differentiating true heading from apparent heading when dealing with undashboarded currents and winds. An indirect tacked course may be easier(and possibly faster) than the direct course crabbing the whole way. This even applies ito racing robots:
https://youtu.be/ZMQbHMgK2rw?si=Lzzdp6inEnMk-SjL
Dashboards often show easily acquired data that may not tell you much about actual performance. Wisdom is in knowing the limitations, biases and application of any tool appropriate to the goal. You can be precisely measuring your effort while climbing exactly the wrong mountain.
>We each really do face a choice of values.
This is technically true, but does it really matter if a few of us separately make 'good' choices? I thought this post was going to end up acknowledging that as a civilization we sink or swim on the strength of the quality of elite dashboards, and that the whole question is whether they're amenable to timely improvement.
When on a big ship approaching an iceberg, you can try to move the whole ship, of get on lifeboats.
I think we are rapidly approaching a point where the boats occupants are realizing that the dasboards/capatains/elites are either idiots or hopelessly myopic or both. A mutiny is brewing becouse some of us are not inclined to passively sail towards the rocks. Whether that rebellion succeeds or not is an open question. The mutineers are following past cultural dashboards that were successful. We'll see.
Dick Minnis removingthecataract.substack.com
According to Social Darwinism, Natural Selection used to weed out the inferior members of our species, allowing only the superior to survive and to reproduce themselves. But now we are so rich and soft-hearted that we support the inferior, and allow them to reproduce themselves, which has a potentially disastrous dysgenic effect.
According to economic theory, competition among firms weeds out the less efficient, allowing only the more efficient to continue in business. But some sectors of the economy are natural monopolies, where normal competition does not work, resulting in a potentially disastrous shortfall in efficiency.
According to Robin Hanson, Natural Selection used to work also on nations/societies/cultures, among whom there was competition for survival. But now we have coalesced into a single overarching quasi-monopolistic culture, among the parts of which there is no effective competition. Disaster is sure to follow (timetable indefinite).
This all seems very plausible. Perhaps, though, it is oversimplified, leaving out elements or aspects of the situations that significantly affect the outcomes.
"But for the last few centuries, humanity has had close enough contact to mostly be one big armada moving together."
I hope you're mistaken. It's bad to have all your soldiers in one armada. Just ask the Spanish.
One short question I've been trialing internally is: "if our culture stops having babies what kind of culture that does have babies do you think would replace it in the long term?"
I think the trick may be to get someone who might be partial to our culture to imagine what new kind of culture might have babies, rather than a specific existing culture which seems implausible due to expectations that they are marginal
I also think "if our culture stops having babies" is a really good cold opener that describes the issue in an obvious way without triggers or unexpected terms like collapse
Amish, Haredim, and the like are the obvious groups on track to replace.
Isn't the risk of cultures drifting into bad places exacerbated by elites being prone to valuing most that which advances their own interests, even if is at the expense of the greater interest.
> status markets
Did you mean to write "status markers"?
yes
You've described good or at least better 'worlding'.
https://geopolicraticus.substack.com/p/j-b-bury-on-progress-as-providential/comment/73309648?utm_source=activity_item#comment-73310661?utm_source=activity_item
That was a fun tale. Do you hope to convince an elite group at the dashboard?
Elite opinion makers and people who influence them, including their own readers and commenters, will find it interesting, non-threatening and persuasive based on my reaction to it
Surprised you didn’t use the analogy of drilling a hole in the boat to make your point—those who don’t rethink their course are essentially doing just that, putting everyone at risk.
Or is the implication that those not having children are digging the hole.