4 ms·

Oh man, as a programmer who fancies themself a systems thinker I do find this argument a little seductive. I'm not going to argue that software development does

Oh man, as a programmer who fancies themself a systems thinker I do find this argument a little seductive. I'm not going to argue that software development doesn't promote strong systems thinking skills but I don't know how much of that is because I truly believe that it's sharpened my abilities and how much of it is because I want to flatter myself. My discomfort with this line of thinking is that I've seen a lot of systems thinking hampered by bad abstractions. In fact, I'm currently working on one now. Given the extraordinary complexity of human society, we're much more likely to make bad abstractions and to ignore or even completely fail to observe critical feedback. I also disagree that I shouldn't criticize him for his method of thinking. Criticism is our best path forward to refining our thought. Lastly, I'd like to note that I think this comment was the kind of thoughtful and nuanced thinking I'd like to see more of. Even if we don't agree, you're asking better questions and attempting to synthesize different positions and processes. I appreciate that.

ItsMonkk 5y ago
I will say that I'm a huge fan of SlateStarCodex's epistemic status system, where before posts where he is unsure of he will clearly state how far he has gone down the rabbit hole, and such a status would have made for a better blog post, and that such a status would have made your argument less required or more pointed depending on what he put as his status. At the very least we need to be asking these questions... 1. What has global positive or negative externalities? 2. What has country-level positive or negative externalities? 3. What has local positive or negative externalities? If you aren't at least asking those questions, you are never going to arrive at the correct level of abstraction. Should we have a World Government? We have global externalities, so probably. What should that government do? As little as required.

ItsMonkk 5y ago

I will say that I'm a huge fan of SlateStarCodex's epistemic status system, where before posts where he is unsure of he will clearly state how far he has gone down the rabbit hole, and such a status would have made for a better blog post, and that such a status would have made your argument less required or more pointed depending on what he put as his status. At the very least we need to be asking these questions... 1. What has global positive or negative externalities? 2. What has country-level positive or negative externalities? 3. What has local positive or negative externalities? If you aren't at least asking those questions, you are never going to arrive at the correct level of abstraction. Should we have a World Government? We have global externalities, so probably. What should that government do? As little as required.