I didn’t find this review very helpful. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain why and hopefully people will read Cummings’s essay for themselves.
As you note, this is not (straightforwardly) an essay about education. It’s a wide-ranging discussion of his views on a handful of core themes, and a series of disconnected thoughts on many topics. You might think these are vices in an essay, but I think it’s only fair to evaluate the essay in terms of what it’s actually trying to do.
As far as I can tell, it’s not trying to be a comprehensive political manifesto, but most of your criticisms seem to simply be objecting that he’s not talking about things you’d like him to talk about (or just not talking about them as much as you’d like):
- “One of the great failings of the piece is his failure to engage with climate change (while space exploration gets three full pages).”
- “Yet carbon emissions get very little airtime in his discussion of energy systems, and the impacts of climate change (heatwaves, floods, food shortages, and others) are not discussed at any point in the 235-page essay.”
- “There’s no discussion of the societal impact of advancing technologies… There’s nothing on how algorithms are interacting with our social structures, locking in biases, and systematically discriminating against women. Cumming’s essay has no real discussion of people, or reflection on lived experiences.”
- “Notably vacant from Cummings’ essay is any discussion of political representation, democracy, or even voting systems, which are in desperate need of reform.”
You also complain that “Often the text moves on to another topic without linking to the previous one, and without having developed the ideas much further.” But this is inevitable given that the essay ranges across an enormous variety of different topics of discussion. It might be frustrating to you as a reader if you didn’t want to read a loose collection of Dominic Cummings’s personal thoughts about multiple topics, but that’s what you signed up for in reading the essay. There’s nothing wrong with writing a personal essay which alludes to a wide range of topics without going into depth on most of them.
Notably, practically the only specific concrete criticism of anything in Cummings’s essay that I found in your review was concerning one of these many digressions on technical issues of interest to him that he goes into: “he draws false equivalences between the count of neurons in a brain and the processing power of computers, when this field still has many deep uncertainties” which, for one, is a fairly mild objection but also seems only tangential to the main themes (to the extent there are any) of the essay.
I think it would have been more useful if you engaged substantively with some of the arguments Cummings makes and explained specifically where you think he goes wrong. For example, you grant that “[Cummings] agrees that markets can fail, need to be regulated, and that the government plays an important role in fostering innovation.” But then you write “even advocates of market approaches, like Harvard academics Iversen and Soskice (2019) argue that successful capitalism has to always be embedded in the institutional features of democratic states” as though this you are pointing out a flaw in Cummings’s position. As it stands, if I hadn’t read Cummings’s essay, I would have virtually no idea from reading your review what his distinctive views are and I barely know what you actually disagree with him about.
Thanks for your feedback! I agree that people should read the essay and make up their minds for themselves.
To address the points you raised:
As a set of notes, it claims to address the most important economic and political priorities, and I think this is the criteria on which it should be judged. My view is that it fails to do so.
My main beef with Cummings is that he overreaches in areas he’s not familiar with, and he has uncharitable disdain for the work of others, and I think this is consistent throughout the piece.
In my view there is a tension between his admiration of big government projects, but his failure to talk about democracy and link government activity to public needs. If I rewrite the piece I will make this more explicit.
1. I don’t think this is the right standard (or a fair standard) for a few reasons.
1a. I don’t recall Cummings claiming that this was a _comprehensive_ description of the “most important economic and political priorities.” But it’s been a while since I read the essay, perhaps you can correct me.
1b. Even if this essay was presented as a description of the top economic and political priorities, it’s always trivially easy to think of _some_ potentially highly important issue that wasn’t discussed. I think it’s a bad idea to dismiss an article on that basis. One could easily think of multiple potentially huge global issues that aren’t discussed at any length in _Doing Good Better_ for example. As such this seems like an unrealistic standard.
1c. This strikes me as an asymmetric demand for rigor. If someone wrote an article or blog post discussing their personal thoughts on how climate change, poverty, various forms of discrimination are all inter-linked as top priorities, I think it would be churlish and inappropriate to respond that this didn’t discuss (at sufficient length for your liking) technological risks or democratic reform or whatever.
2. Maybe he does, perhaps especially in one of the various digressions he goes into where he just starts talking about Quantum Computing or Set Theory or whatever. But I didn’t see anything particular in the review to suggest that he does. Per my original comment, it seems to me that you mostly just observe that he hasn’t discussed certain topics.
3. I think you presenting an argument for this would be worthwhile. Notably, he _does_ discuss democratic and democratic institutions at numerous points throughout the essay, so I think this would require engaging in more detail with the substance of his arguments.
1a,1b. My interpretation is that the essay aims to provide a sketch of what should be covered in an education, e.g. p7: ‘In order to provide some structure to such an enterprise, a schema of seven big areas and some material is sketched’. I think it is a poor sketch.
1c. I think that if DGB claimed to be a sketch of the most important areas there are, and it missed out a huge area, e.g. global poverty, then it could be rightly challenged as a poor guide.
2. In the review I mention that his digressions into neurons and processing power draws false conclusions. He is also particularly scornful of the social sciences, and arts and humanities.
3. It is true that he briefly discusses voting in a section on decision-making and in an endnote, but in both places it is incidental to his point rather than a main topic. A discussion of voting and democracy is absent from the section I was expecting it, ′ 7. Political economy, philosophy, and avoiding catastrophes.’, and I cannot see it covered elsewhere in the piece.
My interpretation is that the essay aims to provide a sketch of what should be covered in an education, e.g. p7: ‘In order to provide some structure to such an enterprise, a schema of seven big areas and some material is sketched’. I think it is a poor sketch.
I note that you’ve switched from suggesting that the essay is supposed to give a comprehensive account of “most important economic and political priorities” to suggesting this is supposed to give “a sketch of what should be covered in an education”, but I think this is a better characterization of the point of the essay so that’s fine.
However, I think it’s only plausible to think that the essay is aiming to sketch some necessary prerequisites of an education, not as claiming that the contents are sufficient for or fully exhaustive of a good education. Complaining that he hasn’t discussed certain topics (in enough depth) seems an unreasonable complaint: of course, no single essay is going to describe every topic that should be in an education.
As an aside, I think it’s somewhat perverse given that the majority of educations almost completely fail to address topics like probability, forecasting, overcoming bias, decision-making about risk (the topics which Cummings highlights and EAs are rightly concerned about) and yet the response is to single out this essay to complain that it doesn’t egage with topics like climate change (which it actually does).
In the review I mention that his digressions into neurons and processing power draws false conclusions.
Yes, in my original comments I highlighted your claim that “he draws false equivalences between the count of neurons in a brain and the processing power of computers, when this field still has many deep uncertainties” because that was the only point where I could find you actually disagreeing with something specific in the essay. Having reviewed every mention of “neuron” in the text, I’m not sure that this does actually lead to any “false conclusion.” But that aside, as I noted in my original comment, this putative “false equivalence” in a field with “deep uncertainties” concerning a side point that he goes into doesn’t seem like much of an objection to the essay as a whole.
It is true that he briefly discusses voting in a section on decision-making and in an endnote, but a discussion of voting and democracy is absent from the section I was expecting it, ′ 7. Political economy, philosophy, and avoiding catastrophes.’, and I cannot see it covered elsewhere in the piece.
I think this falls under my general response that you can’t reasonably criticize the (already hugely long, multi-topic spanning) essay for not discussing certain specific topics (that it discusses) more. Much of the piece is arguably about improving democratic institutions (through discussions of better thinking about risk, probability, forecasting and complex systems), so just saying that it could have discussed voting more in a specific section seems an unreasonable demand.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I’ve thought about the points you raise and I think they are all good challenges. I agree that Cummings raises interesting and relevant points in a range of areas.
I think you and I have different views on several points. The most important one seems to be that I think the piece at times aspires to represent the whole, even as a sketch (‘An Odyssean education’). And my view is that two of the most important areas (if I were writing such an essay) would be voting and political systems, and climate change, neither of which I feel get sufficient attention in the piece. It seems that on each of these topics you take a different viewpoint, which I respect. Again, thanks for your feedback. Unless there’s much else you think we can do to resolve this difference, I’d probably leave it there.
I have read the entirety of “An ‘Odyssean’ Education” as well as another ~300 pages of blogposts from him, fascinated by how someone with someone who seemingly has formed his beliefs from much of the same literature I have, comes to such vastly different conclusions than me.
I mostly agree with your book review, your summary hit the nail on its head.
An ‘Odyssean’ Education, reads like a rough first draft at its best and like a stream of thoughts at its worst. But that’s alright. Its purpose is to be a rough sketch of Dominic Cummings’ worldview. It gives us insight to why he holds his beliefs and push for certain policies but not others.
I wish I could read a similar document for other prominent political figures, and get a similar understanding of their worldview as well.
I had read this following a link in the UK Guardian newspaper “Mad, Bad, or Brilliant”, how could I resist?
I agree with most of the above, what I found also was that climate change was the issue that doomed the essay. Throughout the essay he discusses moving forward economically, what this means and how best to move forwards societally. However whilst he gives climate change lip service I found that all his other propositions are undermined by that he gives lip-service only. He has stated the problem but then not made any effort to figure it into any other solution. This is my mind leaves him as a climate denier in standing.
On the most crucial topics, and in capturing the nuance and complexity of the real world, this piece fails again and again: epistemic overconfidence plus uncharitable disdain for the work of others, spread thinly over as many topics as possible.
Interestingly, this reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I didn’t find this review very helpful. Hopefully I’ll be able to explain why and hopefully people will read Cummings’s essay for themselves.
As you note, this is not (straightforwardly) an essay about education. It’s a wide-ranging discussion of his views on a handful of core themes, and a series of disconnected thoughts on many topics. You might think these are vices in an essay, but I think it’s only fair to evaluate the essay in terms of what it’s actually trying to do.
As far as I can tell, it’s not trying to be a comprehensive political manifesto, but most of your criticisms seem to simply be objecting that he’s not talking about things you’d like him to talk about (or just not talking about them as much as you’d like):
- “One of the great failings of the piece is his failure to engage with climate change (while space exploration gets three full pages).”
- “Yet carbon emissions get very little airtime in his discussion of energy systems, and the impacts of climate change (heatwaves, floods, food shortages, and others) are not discussed at any point in the 235-page essay.”
- “There’s no discussion of the societal impact of advancing technologies… There’s nothing on how algorithms are interacting with our social structures, locking in biases, and systematically discriminating against women. Cumming’s essay has no real discussion of people, or reflection on lived experiences.”
- “Notably vacant from Cummings’ essay is any discussion of political representation, democracy, or even voting systems, which are in desperate need of reform.”
You also complain that “Often the text moves on to another topic without linking to the previous one, and without having developed the ideas much further.” But this is inevitable given that the essay ranges across an enormous variety of different topics of discussion. It might be frustrating to you as a reader if you didn’t want to read a loose collection of Dominic Cummings’s personal thoughts about multiple topics, but that’s what you signed up for in reading the essay. There’s nothing wrong with writing a personal essay which alludes to a wide range of topics without going into depth on most of them.
Notably, practically the only specific concrete criticism of anything in Cummings’s essay that I found in your review was concerning one of these many digressions on technical issues of interest to him that he goes into: “he draws false equivalences between the count of neurons in a brain and the processing power of computers, when this field still has many deep uncertainties” which, for one, is a fairly mild objection but also seems only tangential to the main themes (to the extent there are any) of the essay.
I think it would have been more useful if you engaged substantively with some of the arguments Cummings makes and explained specifically where you think he goes wrong. For example, you grant that “[Cummings] agrees that markets can fail, need to be regulated, and that the government plays an important role in fostering innovation.” But then you write “even advocates of market approaches, like Harvard academics Iversen and Soskice (2019) argue that successful capitalism has to always be embedded in the institutional features of democratic states” as though this you are pointing out a flaw in Cummings’s position. As it stands, if I hadn’t read Cummings’s essay, I would have virtually no idea from reading your review what his distinctive views are and I barely know what you actually disagree with him about.
Thanks for your feedback! I agree that people should read the essay and make up their minds for themselves.
To address the points you raised:
As a set of notes, it claims to address the most important economic and political priorities, and I think this is the criteria on which it should be judged. My view is that it fails to do so.
My main beef with Cummings is that he overreaches in areas he’s not familiar with, and he has uncharitable disdain for the work of others, and I think this is consistent throughout the piece.
In my view there is a tension between his admiration of big government projects, but his failure to talk about democracy and link government activity to public needs. If I rewrite the piece I will make this more explicit.
Thanks for your reply!
1. I don’t think this is the right standard (or a fair standard) for a few reasons.
1a. I don’t recall Cummings claiming that this was a _comprehensive_ description of the “most important economic and political priorities.” But it’s been a while since I read the essay, perhaps you can correct me.
1b. Even if this essay was presented as a description of the top economic and political priorities, it’s always trivially easy to think of _some_ potentially highly important issue that wasn’t discussed. I think it’s a bad idea to dismiss an article on that basis. One could easily think of multiple potentially huge global issues that aren’t discussed at any length in _Doing Good Better_ for example. As such this seems like an unrealistic standard.
1c. This strikes me as an asymmetric demand for rigor. If someone wrote an article or blog post discussing their personal thoughts on how climate change, poverty, various forms of discrimination are all inter-linked as top priorities, I think it would be churlish and inappropriate to respond that this didn’t discuss (at sufficient length for your liking) technological risks or democratic reform or whatever.
2. Maybe he does, perhaps especially in one of the various digressions he goes into where he just starts talking about Quantum Computing or Set Theory or whatever. But I didn’t see anything particular in the review to suggest that he does. Per my original comment, it seems to me that you mostly just observe that he hasn’t discussed certain topics.
3. I think you presenting an argument for this would be worthwhile. Notably, he _does_ discuss democratic and democratic institutions at numerous points throughout the essay, so I think this would require engaging in more detail with the substance of his arguments.
1a,1b. My interpretation is that the essay aims to provide a sketch of what should be covered in an education, e.g. p7: ‘In order to provide some structure to such an enterprise, a schema of seven big areas and some material is sketched’. I think it is a poor sketch.
1c. I think that if DGB claimed to be a sketch of the most important areas there are, and it missed out a huge area, e.g. global poverty, then it could be rightly challenged as a poor guide.
2. In the review I mention that his digressions into neurons and processing power draws false conclusions. He is also particularly scornful of the social sciences, and arts and humanities.
3. It is true that he briefly discusses voting in a section on decision-making and in an endnote, but in both places it is incidental to his point rather than a main topic. A discussion of voting and democracy is absent from the section I was expecting it, ′ 7. Political economy, philosophy, and avoiding catastrophes.’, and I cannot see it covered elsewhere in the piece.
I note that you’ve switched from suggesting that the essay is supposed to give a comprehensive account of “most important economic and political priorities” to suggesting this is supposed to give “a sketch of what should be covered in an education”, but I think this is a better characterization of the point of the essay so that’s fine.
However, I think it’s only plausible to think that the essay is aiming to sketch some necessary prerequisites of an education, not as claiming that the contents are sufficient for or fully exhaustive of a good education. Complaining that he hasn’t discussed certain topics (in enough depth) seems an unreasonable complaint: of course, no single essay is going to describe every topic that should be in an education.
As an aside, I think it’s somewhat perverse given that the majority of educations almost completely fail to address topics like probability, forecasting, overcoming bias, decision-making about risk (the topics which Cummings highlights and EAs are rightly concerned about) and yet the response is to single out this essay to complain that it doesn’t egage with topics like climate change (which it actually does).
Yes, in my original comments I highlighted your claim that “he draws false equivalences between the count of neurons in a brain and the processing power of computers, when this field still has many deep uncertainties” because that was the only point where I could find you actually disagreeing with something specific in the essay. Having reviewed every mention of “neuron” in the text, I’m not sure that this does actually lead to any “false conclusion.” But that aside, as I noted in my original comment, this putative “false equivalence” in a field with “deep uncertainties” concerning a side point that he goes into doesn’t seem like much of an objection to the essay as a whole.
I think this falls under my general response that you can’t reasonably criticize the (already hugely long, multi-topic spanning) essay for not discussing certain specific topics (that it discusses) more. Much of the piece is arguably about improving democratic institutions (through discussions of better thinking about risk, probability, forecasting and complex systems), so just saying that it could have discussed voting more in a specific section seems an unreasonable demand.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I’ve thought about the points you raise and I think they are all good challenges. I agree that Cummings raises interesting and relevant points in a range of areas.
I think you and I have different views on several points. The most important one seems to be that I think the piece at times aspires to represent the whole, even as a sketch (‘An Odyssean education’). And my view is that two of the most important areas (if I were writing such an essay) would be voting and political systems, and climate change, neither of which I feel get sufficient attention in the piece. It seems that on each of these topics you take a different viewpoint, which I respect. Again, thanks for your feedback. Unless there’s much else you think we can do to resolve this difference, I’d probably leave it there.
I have read the entirety of “An ‘Odyssean’ Education” as well as another ~300 pages of blogposts from him, fascinated by how someone with someone who seemingly has formed his beliefs from much of the same literature I have, comes to such vastly different conclusions than me.
I mostly agree with your book review, your summary hit the nail on its head.
An ‘Odyssean’ Education, reads like a rough first draft at its best and like a stream of thoughts at its worst. But that’s alright. Its purpose is to be a rough sketch of Dominic Cummings’ worldview. It gives us insight to why he holds his beliefs and push for certain policies but not others.
I wish I could read a similar document for other prominent political figures, and get a similar understanding of their worldview as well.
I had read this following a link in the UK Guardian newspaper “Mad, Bad, or Brilliant”, how could I resist?
I agree with most of the above, what I found also was that climate change was the issue that doomed the essay. Throughout the essay he discusses moving forward economically, what this means and how best to move forwards societally. However whilst he gives climate change lip service I found that all his other propositions are undermined by that he gives lip-service only. He has stated the problem but then not made any effort to figure it into any other solution. This is my mind leaves him as a climate denier in standing.
Interestingly, this reminds me of Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
I really enjoyed this, thank you!