Insightful post, thanks—researching movement-building strategy always throws up fascinating new concepts for the toolkit.
On a related note—this is a fascinating read (long but worth it): Dominic Cummings, the chief Brexit campaign strategist discusses the campaign, with lots of provocative points about option values, branching futures, unrecognised simplicities of effective action, and non-linearities of political progress. While I may not be a particular fan of his politics, he’s a provocative and uncompromising thinker and perhaps has a few similarities to how EAs approach complex strategic questions (he’s wary of ideology and grand historical teleologies, and is a fan of Tetlock and of quantifying wherever possible). Plus, he’s a serious autodidact: after leaving government he spent two and a half years in a bunker he and his father built for him on their farm in Durham, reading science and history and trying to understand the world.
Insightful post, thanks—researching movement-building strategy always throws up fascinating new concepts for the toolkit.
On a related note—this is a fascinating read (long but worth it): Dominic Cummings, the chief Brexit campaign strategist discusses the campaign, with lots of provocative points about option values, branching futures, unrecognised simplicities of effective action, and non-linearities of political progress. While I may not be a particular fan of his politics, he’s a provocative and uncompromising thinker and perhaps has a few similarities to how EAs approach complex strategic questions (he’s wary of ideology and grand historical teleologies, and is a fan of Tetlock and of quantifying wherever possible). Plus, he’s a serious autodidact: after leaving government he spent two and a half years in a bunker he and his father built for him on their farm in Durham, reading science and history and trying to understand the world.
https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/