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This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy. > the technocratic Plimsoll line phenomenon is a fact of life. As such it can

This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy. > the technocratic Plimsoll line phenomenon is a fact of life. As such it can become a subject of research. Well: 1) it’s not a ‘fact of life’, as described. It’s a very simplified, Western-centric view that assumes certain things about rule of law and the nature of political accountability and maps loosely onto some organizations, yet doesn’t even manage to address the US or European systems it seems to be drawing its understanding from. In this model is the Supreme Court a technocratic or political institution? And 2) what makes the author think this isn’t an area that has been extensively studied already? Political science has a rich literature with sophisticated work on the relationship between the administrative state, and democratic and anti democratic institutions. Seems a little bold to just wade in and claim to have noticed a universal rule of government... was this written by a programmer?

meheleventyone 5y ago
> This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy. This almost seems like the raison d'être for LessWrong.
sideshowb 5y ago
It's easy to criticise, but I'd be interested to know 1. Some key ways in which this model breaks down outside of the West, 2. A good summary of the literature you mention?
- jameshart 5y ago
  It doesn’t break down outside the west - it doesn’t even understand how this dynamic plays out in the west. Look at the terms of reference here: “Why can't the political appointees and the technocrats be formally separated in the same way as the executive, the legislative and the judiciary?” - I mean, this is laughable. It asks why something can’t be done that manifestly is done in many government systems. It takes as a given though that executive, legislative and judiciary separation is always practiced, which is a little like assuming you have the right to remain silent when arrested everywhere in the world. As an example of the kind of system that this simple dividing line with politicians on top and technocrats below breaks down, look at the role of organizations like the military in Pakistan, Turkey or Thailand - or of theocratic bodies in countries like Iran. For the kicker, consider the reporting in this Axios article about the relationship between the Trump whitehouse and the Pentagon bureaucracy: https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-afghanistan-5717012a-d55d-4819-a79f-805d5eb3c6e2.html https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-... - and map that to a simple horizontal line with politicians on top and technocrats below. As for a literature survey - I mean, bureaucracy or ‘administration studies’ is practically a sub-field of political science. It’s probably the subject of a lecture in most intro level undergrad classes, and I’d expect a decent political science program to have one or two upper level classes on the subject. Comparative politics might be a fruitful topic to search on. There are journals. This is not untrodden material.
  - sideshowb 5y ago
    Tbf I don't have time to dog into journals on the subject, we're browsing hn here after all and short summaries are appreciated. But since penning that comment I'm feeling a little more educated by https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...
claudiawerner 5y ago
>Seems a little bold to just wade in and claim to have noticed a universal rule of government.. This is, for better or worse, the way the 'rationalist' community operates. The maximum amount of reading on any topic not directly related to computers or electronics is one or - for the truly enlightened - two pop-polsci or pop-phil books. That's all you can expect. Sometimes it extends more generally than just computing, for instance, Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist. But the spirit is the same - almost unlimited license to opine on any topic with the minimal amount of background knowledge possible in order to properly secure the status of being an ignorant (on the topic) person's smart person. That's not to say it's entirely bad. Sometimes outside perspectives are good in that they challenge us to think in a new way about things. They ask questions with some thought that a domain expert may have trouble answering. They don't work in any particular established framework of the topic, so situating their theoretical commitments because less relevant to the topic at hand (which can also be a good thing). They love to write and make their opinions known. That's also not a bad thing. But it doesn't inspire confidence. If you're knowledgable about a field and you see one of their posts that's either on a theory that's been covered a century ago (and refuted) or a theory that is fundamentally at odds with the discipline, it makes you skeptical. You start to think "if they're wrong about this, then what else are they wrong about?". These bloggers have all heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. It's just too bad they don't realize it applies to them just as much, if not more, than to the journalists they typically decry for having no background knowledge on a topic. Every bold and poorly-argued claim you used to see in undergrad theses is now published in blog form - the only difference is these people never had a supervisor to look over their shoulder and question them. I wrote about this phenomenon as practiced by "hacker bloggers" a little more than a year ago in this comment[0], though I think I was being a little too harsh back then, and ironically, also speaking beyond my field of knowledge. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989

meheleventyone 5y ago

> This seems to just be amateur idle musing, masquerading as political philosophy. This almost seems like the raison d'être for LessWrong.

sideshowb 5y ago

It's easy to criticise, but I'd be interested to know 1. Some key ways in which this model breaks down outside of the West, 2. A good summary of the literature you mention?

jameshart 5y ago
It doesn’t break down outside the west - it doesn’t even understand how this dynamic plays out in the west. Look at the terms of reference here: “Why can't the political appointees and the technocrats be formally separated in the same way as the executive, the legislative and the judiciary?” - I mean, this is laughable. It asks why something can’t be done that manifestly is done in many government systems. It takes as a given though that executive, legislative and judiciary separation is always practiced, which is a little like assuming you have the right to remain silent when arrested everywhere in the world. As an example of the kind of system that this simple dividing line with politicians on top and technocrats below breaks down, look at the role of organizations like the military in Pakistan, Turkey or Thailand - or of theocratic bodies in countries like Iran. For the kicker, consider the reporting in this Axios article about the relationship between the Trump whitehouse and the Pentagon bureaucracy: https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-afghanistan-5717012a-d55d-4819-a79f-805d5eb3c6e2.html https://www.axios.com/off-the-rails-trump-military-withdraw-... - and map that to a simple horizontal line with politicians on top and technocrats below. As for a literature survey - I mean, bureaucracy or ‘administration studies’ is practically a sub-field of political science. It’s probably the subject of a lecture in most intro level undergrad classes, and I’d expect a decent political science program to have one or two upper level classes on the subject. Comparative politics might be a fruitful topic to search on. There are journals. This is not untrodden material.
- sideshowb 5y ago
  Tbf I don't have time to dog into journals on the subject, we're browsing hn here after all and short summaries are appreciated. But since penning that comment I'm feeling a little more educated by https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-like-a-state/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/03/16/book-review-seeing-lik...

claudiawerner 5y ago

>Seems a little bold to just wade in and claim to have noticed a universal rule of government.. This is, for better or worse, the way the 'rationalist' community operates. The maximum amount of reading on any topic not directly related to computers or electronics is one or - for the truly enlightened - two pop-polsci or pop-phil books. That's all you can expect. Sometimes it extends more generally than just computing, for instance, Scott Alexander is a psychiatrist. But the spirit is the same - almost unlimited license to opine on any topic with the minimal amount of background knowledge possible in order to properly secure the status of being an ignorant (on the topic) person's smart person. That's not to say it's entirely bad. Sometimes outside perspectives are good in that they challenge us to think in a new way about things. They ask questions with some thought that a domain expert may have trouble answering. They don't work in any particular established framework of the topic, so situating their theoretical commitments because less relevant to the topic at hand (which can also be a good thing). They love to write and make their opinions known. That's also not a bad thing. But it doesn't inspire confidence. If you're knowledgable about a field and you see one of their posts that's either on a theory that's been covered a century ago (and refuted) or a theory that is fundamentally at odds with the discipline, it makes you skeptical. You start to think "if they're wrong about this, then what else are they wrong about?". These bloggers have all heard of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect. It's just too bad they don't realize it applies to them just as much, if not more, than to the journalists they typically decry for having no background knowledge on a topic. Every bold and poorly-argued claim you used to see in undergrad theses is now published in blog form - the only difference is these people never had a supervisor to look over their shoulder and question them. I wrote about this phenomenon as practiced by "hacker bloggers" a little more than a year ago in this comment[0], though I think I was being a little too harsh back then, and ironically, also speaking beyond my field of knowledge. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989