Overton window – the spectrum of ideas on public policy and social issues considered acceptable by the general public at a given time. The main thing that sets the size of the world economy today is the amount of innovation that has happened before today. In general we don’t induce enough innovation, as innovators tend to benefit society more than themselves. Thus better innovation institutions, which offer stronger incentives to innovate well, are probably the main way to make a better wealthier more prosperous tomorrow.
I posted this on my Facebook wall recently, and it made me think of this article:
(among) the most common arguments I hear against the pronoun "ze"- "he/she" helps distinguish people more / is less ambiguous- "they" already exists, and even if it mixes the plural / singular, the added ambiguity is not big dealAm I the only centrist?(source)
Extremists tend to be contrarians, who are the sort of people who would be exploring extra-Overtown Window space in the first place. There is also a chicken and egg question with respect to many of them - much of their "extremist" signaling, for instance, developed as a result of their explorations and the combination of positive feedback from fellow contrarian explorers + hostility from "centered" normies. Another consideration, of course, positions that were not previously particularly extremist become so due to general social drift. The normies prodded into exploring the liminal spaces are likely to scuttle back to safety at this point.
I'm seeing a nice feedback loop here. Looking for other policies outside the Overton window allows us to choose new better policies to improvement our innovation institutions which in turn allows us to innovate new better ways to explore this vast policy space.
How would you define "extremist"? I think the best definition would be someone pushing for policy outside the Overton window along a dimension where there is active mainstream policy debate (or there has been recently even if most might consider the issue closed). And "centrist" would be the opposite. Do you agree?
If this is the definition you are working from, then this is essentially a different argument for "pulling the rope sideways", as you suggested some time ago.
There are two kind of success in this approach. The first is that your proposed change is perceived as "not a big deal" and you can obtain results without pushback. You can do good things on the margin like this, but rarely introduce big transformations. The second is that you open a debate on a new policy dimension, with possibility of large change down the road. The price of this victory is that you become (at least for a while) an extremist, as you are now outside the Overton window in a mainstream debate...
An alternative way to go is to attach yourself to a group of rope-pullers and convince them to angle their pull by a small degree. Big things have been done this way in the past. Of course you may have to conform on other policy dimensions in order to signal group membership, and you run the risk of opposing groups angling their pull against you out of reflex. It's always a tradeoff...
How much more effort should centrists be putting into exploring social options outside the Overton Window, given that most of these are dead ends: options that are either bad or, while good, lacking in prospects for adoption (at least in the short--perhaps even medium—term)? Also, beware that the measures you take to stimulate more innovation do not lead to a higher proportion of *bad* innovation than what we are used to. Finally, people may be unable psychologically to tolerate any increase in the pace of innovation, over what we are already getting.
Unfortunately the snow plow that drives you to one side or the other is quite strong right now and it's hard to not come off as being the wrong type. This is still relevant: https://www.overcomingbias.... I also think that strange ideas can be cast into the language of one side or the other. I don't think seeming 'normal enough' is actually the most important. Memetic fitness has other large components.
Art, memes, culture, politicking, activism, and the rest is the process for this, as it always has been, and this is a game a thousand different social factions are playing
One might posit a 'valley of bad policy' immediately around the Overton window. These are policies that are outside the window but near enough that they are legible to those within the window as extremist. If you explore this area you are likely to fall prey to being shouted at by various people. People wanting to innovate should instead traverse far outside the window to areas that don't occur to most within the window as at all relevant to today's disputes. It is unfortunate that to traverse far, one often has to gain practice by traversing this nearby valley first, discouraging most potential explorers.
Is there an equivalent metaphor for 'pull the rope sideways' that less implies the one dimensional tug of war?
It's worth remembering that what your local centrists advocate might be extreme and what your local extremists advocate might be rather unremarkable. Take your favorite culture war topic in the US, the Overton window for which-- as defined by the high status media-- is very extreme when averaged over time and space.
The main groups who attend to them seem to be political extremists, whose ideal policies are far outside the current Overton window.I don't share that impression. It seems to me that there is plenty of reasonable, centrist exploration of ideas outside of the overton window. It's just that these ideas don't get as much attention and aren't as salient.
In fact, the real space of policies is hugely multi-dimensional, with a “Overton hypercube” that takes up only tiny fraction of this vast space. It is thus perfectly rational to want to explore that vast space even for those who are “centrists” with respect to the usually small number of ideological dimensions.That's a really cool way of looking at it.
I think the idea is that centrism is something like having consensual policy-relevant values. So he's advocating for people to discover and push for weird policies that have fairly consensual policy-relevant values.
UBI seems like that kind of thing. It's not really to the right or the left of the Overton window. But it's a weird policy idea.
Would you say that startups and startup-culture are one way for centrists to explore outside the Overton window? Paul Graham frequently mentions that startups often start (and should start) with a very special target group - presumably one not exactly in the middle of the box.
I posted this on my Facebook wall recently, and it made me think of this article:
(among) the most common arguments I hear against the pronoun "ze"- "he/she" helps distinguish people more / is less ambiguous- "they" already exists, and even if it mixes the plural / singular, the added ambiguity is not big dealAm I the only centrist?(source)
Extremists tend to be contrarians, who are the sort of people who would be exploring extra-Overtown Window space in the first place. There is also a chicken and egg question with respect to many of them - much of their "extremist" signaling, for instance, developed as a result of their explorations and the combination of positive feedback from fellow contrarian explorers + hostility from "centered" normies. Another consideration, of course, positions that were not previously particularly extremist become so due to general social drift. The normies prodded into exploring the liminal spaces are likely to scuttle back to safety at this point.
Great post.
I'm seeing a nice feedback loop here. Looking for other policies outside the Overton window allows us to choose new better policies to improvement our innovation institutions which in turn allows us to innovate new better ways to explore this vast policy space.
I meant "extremists" are those at extremes along one of usual ideological dimensions.
Very interesting as usual.
How would you define "extremist"? I think the best definition would be someone pushing for policy outside the Overton window along a dimension where there is active mainstream policy debate (or there has been recently even if most might consider the issue closed). And "centrist" would be the opposite. Do you agree?
If this is the definition you are working from, then this is essentially a different argument for "pulling the rope sideways", as you suggested some time ago.
There are two kind of success in this approach. The first is that your proposed change is perceived as "not a big deal" and you can obtain results without pushback. You can do good things on the margin like this, but rarely introduce big transformations. The second is that you open a debate on a new policy dimension, with possibility of large change down the road. The price of this victory is that you become (at least for a while) an extremist, as you are now outside the Overton window in a mainstream debate...
An alternative way to go is to attach yourself to a group of rope-pullers and convince them to angle their pull by a small degree. Big things have been done this way in the past. Of course you may have to conform on other policy dimensions in order to signal group membership, and you run the risk of opposing groups angling their pull against you out of reflex. It's always a tradeoff...
How much more effort should centrists be putting into exploring social options outside the Overton Window, given that most of these are dead ends: options that are either bad or, while good, lacking in prospects for adoption (at least in the short--perhaps even medium—term)? Also, beware that the measures you take to stimulate more innovation do not lead to a higher proportion of *bad* innovation than what we are used to. Finally, people may be unable psychologically to tolerate any increase in the pace of innovation, over what we are already getting.
Unfortunately the snow plow that drives you to one side or the other is quite strong right now and it's hard to not come off as being the wrong type. This is still relevant: https://www.overcomingbias.... I also think that strange ideas can be cast into the language of one side or the other. I don't think seeming 'normal enough' is actually the most important. Memetic fitness has other large components.
Art, memes, culture, politicking, activism, and the rest is the process for this, as it always has been, and this is a game a thousand different social factions are playing
One might posit a 'valley of bad policy' immediately around the Overton window. These are policies that are outside the window but near enough that they are legible to those within the window as extremist. If you explore this area you are likely to fall prey to being shouted at by various people. People wanting to innovate should instead traverse far outside the window to areas that don't occur to most within the window as at all relevant to today's disputes. It is unfortunate that to traverse far, one often has to gain practice by traversing this nearby valley first, discouraging most potential explorers.
Is there an equivalent metaphor for 'pull the rope sideways' that less implies the one dimensional tug of war?
Fixed; thanks.
It's worth remembering that what your local centrists advocate might be extreme and what your local extremists advocate might be rather unremarkable. Take your favorite culture war topic in the US, the Overton window for which-- as defined by the high status media-- is very extreme when averaged over time and space.
The main groups who attend to them seem to be political extremists, whose ideal policies are far outside the current Overton window.I don't share that impression. It seems to me that there is plenty of reasonable, centrist exploration of ideas outside of the overton window. It's just that these ideas don't get as much attention and aren't as salient.
In fact, the real space of policies is hugely multi-dimensional, with a “Overton hypercube” that takes up only tiny fraction of this vast space. It is thus perfectly rational to want to explore that vast space even for those who are “centrists” with respect to the usually small number of ideological dimensions.That's a really cool way of looking at it.
if only they can find and hope themI assume you intended a word other than "hope", but I can't guess what it was.
Startups innovate in business. I'm talking about governance policy.
I think the idea is that centrism is something like having consensual policy-relevant values. So he's advocating for people to discover and push for weird policies that have fairly consensual policy-relevant values.
UBI seems like that kind of thing. It's not really to the right or the left of the Overton window. But it's a weird policy idea.
Would you say that startups and startup-culture are one way for centrists to explore outside the Overton window? Paul Graham frequently mentions that startups often start (and should start) with a very special target group - presumably one not exactly in the middle of the box.