9 ms·

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems

124 points by kulor 3y ago

intellectronica 3y ago
Great conversation. The best part IMO was Patrick's statement about the importance of the Internet. Agree 100% and never heard anyone express that view so clearly. "I have an ebullience and love for it in a way that people in our social class in the United States are aggressively socialized out of having ebullience and true love for anything. I think that the internet is the capital G, capital W, Great Work of the human race in a lot of respects, that it is magical. It is an encapsulation of the best things about our society that is also tremendously, instrumentally useful in making all the good things better and ameliorating all the problems over sufficiently long time scales. It seems naturally to me that this is extremely important. This is extremely valuable, and it seems extremely underrated by almost everyone, including people who would consider themselves great fans of the internet but say, “Oh, I’m a great fan of the internet, but I’m a great fan of penicillin, too. I think, in aggregate, the internet is obviously more important than penicillin by many orders of magnitude. Is it more important than medicine? I will bite that bullet. The internet is more important than medicine, the entire institution of medicine, from time immemorial to reasonable extrapolations of what we can do right now. Is it more important than writing? You couldn’t have the internet without writing, so writing was very important to get to the development of the internet. That might be one of the most important things about writing, that writing got us to the internet. That sounds like a little bit of . . . I know people will take that full quote and say, “Oh, this crazy, nonintellectual person,” but I think that there is a reasonable case for it."
- RandomLensman 3y ago
  I'd take medicine over the internet. That would get us to at least a 1970s/1980s world. Having zero medicine but the internet would be a very very different world, with people dying left and right from infections, broken bones would not be set crippling quite a few, accidents would be a lot more fatal (also because there would be no understanding of effects and causes of injuries), no wounds would ever be treated, etc etc. It would be a truly bizarre world where humans wouldn't care one bit about damage to and problems with their bodies (but would have highly optimized advertising systems).
  - YetAnotherNick 3y ago
    Both sits in different level of the needs hierarchy[1]. First level that is most important is food, water, shelter etc., then second level is medicine, safety etc. Internet is one of the most important invention for the top 2 levels. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%2...
  - kamikaz1k 3y ago
    You’re mixing up morality of life with impact on humanity. Medicine is great because it helps save lives (there is “non-medicine” which also achieves some good outcomes here). The internet, the instant exchange of information, is great because it magnifies humanity’s greatest power: mass collaboration. With the Internet, medicine could emerge. At least in the form of exchange of ideas and data, and subsequently spread its positive impact faster. The world’s greatest physician scientists working together. Also I am guessing the ads bit was hyperbolic but like, common, Google is a verb for a reason. We’ve never had access to information like this before. And this is just focusing on something abstract like “information”. And so, I disagree.
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      I am thinking quite practical: do I prefer the internet over dying from smallpox or appendicitis, for example? The added benefit of the internet for mass collaboration isn't that much in the data... why hasn't productivity exploded upward? Why hasn't medical progress gone through the roof? Scientist collaborated long before the internet. Quite strong progress was made without it.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - verinus 3y ago
        I am certain in some areas it has. but on the other hand in others it has damaged it- screentime is an awesome feature measuring "destroyed" productivity ;)
- glimshe 3y ago
  People have lived happy lives without the Internet for millennia, in fact I've lived a portion of my life without the Internet and I can remember the "good old days". Life with the Internet is very cool, but it was pretty cool also before it. I won't say that our lives were better before the Internet, but such argument can be made - imagine a world without X, Facebook, TikTok and the scourge of social media; for many people that was a better, slightly simpler world. Medicine, on the other hand, was responsible for removing an immeasurable amount of pain and suffering from humanity, including having our loved ones (and ourselves) around for much longer. I find hard to believe people would give back antibiotics for anything we have from the post-Internet revolution.
  - verinus 3y ago
    esp. when it comes with all the stress of modern work with all the real time communication, social media pressure, constant advertising. now that I have kids, I grow increasingly conscious towards the effects this has on them.
- tejohnso 3y ago
  Without medicine, I'd probably have died of a severe throat infection while hospitalized as a pre-internet teenager. Without the internet, I'd have vastly reduced choice in entertainment. I'll take the medicine. By many orders of magnitude. Now if we focus on "sufficiently long time scales" perhaps the internet is going to be the human invention that enables us to get where we need to be. But that's a guess. Perhaps I'm dim but I don't see how the internet is obviously more important than penicillin by orders of magnitude.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - rlpb 3y ago
    It's great that medicine managed to develop despite the Internet not being available at the time. But the next generation of medicine will only exist because of the Internet, and it will be orders of magnitude more advanced. In the long term, people will look back and say that although medicine did develop first, it only really got serious traction when the Internet and related technologies appeared. > Without the internet, I'd have vastly reduced choice in entertainment. This is facetious. Do you really believe that current medical care does not benefit from the Internet at all; that it's only used for entertainment?
    - RandomLensman 3y ago
      Anesthesia, antibiotics, or vaccinations - to take some examples - are all not "serious traction" as far as medicine is concerned? What part of medicine will be get serious traction from the internet?
      - toyg 3y ago
        One could argue that the development of any technology, including medicine, is augmented by the internet allowing people to instantaneously pool knowledge and skills across the entire world. There are obvious benefits to that - the rates of technological development seen since the invention of telephone and fast transportation are sky-high, compared to pretty much the rest of known human history, so it stands to reason that the internet will do the same but even better. Would have we seen a COVID vaccine (or rather, multiple vaccines) in a matter of mere months, without the internet? Probably not - it took decades to get a vaccine for influenza. Looking back, I don't think we'll look at it like "the internet allowed us to create technology X and Y", but rather "the internet turned our tech development rates, across the board, into hockey sticks steeper than we'd ever seen before".
- epcoa 3y ago
  [dead]
jstummbillig 3y ago
It's interesting; most of Patrick's writing I find unnecessarily tedious to parse, regardless of substance of content. This one really clicked and easily is one of my favorite CwT episodes full of insightful answers.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- Sol- 3y ago
  As someone who very much feels the same way about his writing, that's a good endorsement of the podcast. Will give it a listen, thanks!
- guillaumec 3y ago
  I often wondered if Patrick uses unnecessarily convoluted sentences, or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology, and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.
  - hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
    To me, he writes like a precursor of how most of the folks on LessWrong write. I think it's a case of convergent nerd evolution. Someone else I put in this group is CGP Grey, the YouTuber, specifically his early podcast episodes. That guy's ideas changed my life in a lot of ways as a teenager in ways I think I can't fully describe today.
  - edouard-harris 3y ago
    There's a hidden advantage to writing like this. It comes up when, e.g., you're communicating on a controversial topic in a forum like Twitter with a history of forming mobs against folks who communicate on controversial topics. Suppose an angry reader is looking for a reason to form a mob against you. If you write in simple sentences, that makes it easy for the angry reader to process your statements and go after them. But if your sentences are more complicated, the angry reader needs to decode them logically before they can justify their anger. Angry people tend to be poor at logic. So when they run into this kind of writing, they often get bored before they have a chance to get outraged. You get your message across, and the angry reader moves on to the next tweet in their feed. Everybody wins. This doesn't work 100% of the time. But if you do it right, it cuts down on a lot of negative virality. I'm not saying this is or isn't Patrick's intentional strategy. I have no idea. It's just one among many consequences of this communication style.
braindrain22 3y ago
[flagged]
- pc86 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - tptacek 3y ago
    Nobody ever, ever thought he was making Levels cash from Bingo Card Creator. He published his number every year! I flagged this comment for obvious reasons, but I can't not speak up about this inane claim. He doesn't have a "nerdcore obsession with Japan", either; he lived there for like 20 years.
    - pc86 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
  - dang 3y ago
    Crossing into personal attack like this is seriously not ok. Moreover, we've had to ask you not to do this on more than one occasion in the past. Fortunately that was a long time ago. Please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- sillyfluke 3y ago
  For me, this wins the most HN comment of the day. If I were patio11 I'd use the second sentence as my tongue-in-cheek twitter bio line and wear it as a badge of honor:) Given enough neuroticism, preciseness driven by fear of being misunderstood or being incorrect may be indistinguishable from pseudointellectualism. I personally would not reach for "attention seeker" when someone's actions tend to be helpful even when no one is looking (or reading).
mooreds 3y ago
Tyler's method of interviewing was pretty unique (this is the first podcast of his I have heard, though I've listened to him being interviewed before). Very rapid fire, jumping from topic to topic, not a lot of thematic linking. Is that typical?
- legitster 3y ago
  Yes. Very. Cowen probably puts in more research than any other interviewer. His style is pretty unique, but the interviews never become rambly and the guests get to showcase much more range.
  - maroonblazer 3y ago
    Agree. I was a little turned off by TC's style when I first discovered his podcast, but quickly picked up the fact that the guy has done his research and there's a method to the seeming 'madness'. The result is a conversation with extremely high signal. I've been listening to him for years.
  - shuckles 3y ago
    The best researched interviewer is likely Nardwuar, though he also has the ADD style. I wonder if the reason is to show off how much the interviewer knows.
    - keiferski 3y ago
      That was definitely the vibe I got from Tyler's interview with David Bentley Hart, although it backfired because Tyler didn't seem to know much about the topics at all... https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-bentley-hart/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-bentley-ha...
  - drpgq 3y ago
    Econtalk is good that way as well.
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
olliecornelia 3y ago
Why is this guy such a celebrity on here?
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Good thinkers are fun to listen to and read?
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

124 points by kulor 3y ago

Great conversation. The best part IMO was Patrick's statement about the importance of the Internet. Agree 100% and never heard anyone express that view so clearly. "I have an ebullience and love for it in a way that people in our social class in the United States are aggressively socialized out of having ebullience and true love for anything. I think that the internet is the capital G, capital W, Great Work of the human race in a lot of respects, that it is magical. It is an encapsulation of the best things about our society that is also tremendously, instrumentally useful in making all the good things better and ameliorating all the problems over sufficiently long time scales. It seems naturally to me that this is extremely important. This is extremely valuable, and it seems extremely underrated by almost everyone, including people who would consider themselves great fans of the internet but say, “Oh, I’m a great fan of the internet, but I’m a great fan of penicillin, too. I think, in aggregate, the internet is obviously more important than penicillin by many orders of magnitude. Is it more important than medicine? I will bite that bullet. The internet is more important than medicine, the entire institution of medicine, from time immemorial to reasonable extrapolations of what we can do right now. Is it more important than writing? You couldn’t have the internet without writing, so writing was very important to get to the development of the internet. That might be one of the most important things about writing, that writing got us to the internet. That sounds like a little bit of . . . I know people will take that full quote and say, “Oh, this crazy, nonintellectual person,” but I think that there is a reasonable case for it."

RandomLensman 3y ago
I'd take medicine over the internet. That would get us to at least a 1970s/1980s world. Having zero medicine but the internet would be a very very different world, with people dying left and right from infections, broken bones would not be set crippling quite a few, accidents would be a lot more fatal (also because there would be no understanding of effects and causes of injuries), no wounds would ever be treated, etc etc. It would be a truly bizarre world where humans wouldn't care one bit about damage to and problems with their bodies (but would have highly optimized advertising systems).
- YetAnotherNick 3y ago
  Both sits in different level of the needs hierarchy[1]. First level that is most important is food, water, shelter etc., then second level is medicine, safety etc. Internet is one of the most important invention for the top 2 levels. [1]: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%27s_Hierarchy_of_Needs2.svg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Maslow%2...
- kamikaz1k 3y ago
  You’re mixing up morality of life with impact on humanity. Medicine is great because it helps save lives (there is “non-medicine” which also achieves some good outcomes here). The internet, the instant exchange of information, is great because it magnifies humanity’s greatest power: mass collaboration. With the Internet, medicine could emerge. At least in the form of exchange of ideas and data, and subsequently spread its positive impact faster. The world’s greatest physician scientists working together. Also I am guessing the ads bit was hyperbolic but like, common, Google is a verb for a reason. We’ve never had access to information like this before. And this is just focusing on something abstract like “information”. And so, I disagree.
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    I am thinking quite practical: do I prefer the internet over dying from smallpox or appendicitis, for example? The added benefit of the internet for mass collaboration isn't that much in the data... why hasn't productivity exploded upward? Why hasn't medical progress gone through the roof? Scientist collaborated long before the internet. Quite strong progress was made without it.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - verinus 3y ago
      I am certain in some areas it has. but on the other hand in others it has damaged it- screentime is an awesome feature measuring "destroyed" productivity ;)
glimshe 3y ago
People have lived happy lives without the Internet for millennia, in fact I've lived a portion of my life without the Internet and I can remember the "good old days". Life with the Internet is very cool, but it was pretty cool also before it. I won't say that our lives were better before the Internet, but such argument can be made - imagine a world without X, Facebook, TikTok and the scourge of social media; for many people that was a better, slightly simpler world. Medicine, on the other hand, was responsible for removing an immeasurable amount of pain and suffering from humanity, including having our loved ones (and ourselves) around for much longer. I find hard to believe people would give back antibiotics for anything we have from the post-Internet revolution.
- verinus 3y ago
  esp. when it comes with all the stress of modern work with all the real time communication, social media pressure, constant advertising. now that I have kids, I grow increasingly conscious towards the effects this has on them.
tejohnso 3y ago
Without medicine, I'd probably have died of a severe throat infection while hospitalized as a pre-internet teenager. Without the internet, I'd have vastly reduced choice in entertainment. I'll take the medicine. By many orders of magnitude. Now if we focus on "sufficiently long time scales" perhaps the internet is going to be the human invention that enables us to get where we need to be. But that's a guess. Perhaps I'm dim but I don't see how the internet is obviously more important than penicillin by orders of magnitude.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- rlpb 3y ago
  It's great that medicine managed to develop despite the Internet not being available at the time. But the next generation of medicine will only exist because of the Internet, and it will be orders of magnitude more advanced. In the long term, people will look back and say that although medicine did develop first, it only really got serious traction when the Internet and related technologies appeared. > Without the internet, I'd have vastly reduced choice in entertainment. This is facetious. Do you really believe that current medical care does not benefit from the Internet at all; that it's only used for entertainment?
  - RandomLensman 3y ago
    Anesthesia, antibiotics, or vaccinations - to take some examples - are all not "serious traction" as far as medicine is concerned? What part of medicine will be get serious traction from the internet?
    - toyg 3y ago
      One could argue that the development of any technology, including medicine, is augmented by the internet allowing people to instantaneously pool knowledge and skills across the entire world. There are obvious benefits to that - the rates of technological development seen since the invention of telephone and fast transportation are sky-high, compared to pretty much the rest of known human history, so it stands to reason that the internet will do the same but even better. Would have we seen a COVID vaccine (or rather, multiple vaccines) in a matter of mere months, without the internet? Probably not - it took decades to get a vaccine for influenza. Looking back, I don't think we'll look at it like "the internet allowed us to create technology X and Y", but rather "the internet turned our tech development rates, across the board, into hockey sticks steeper than we'd ever seen before".
epcoa 3y ago
[dead]

jstummbillig 3y ago

It's interesting; most of Patrick's writing I find unnecessarily tedious to parse, regardless of substance of content. This one really clicked and easily is one of my favorite CwT episodes full of insightful answers.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Sol- 3y ago
As someone who very much feels the same way about his writing, that's a good endorsement of the podcast. Will give it a listen, thanks!
guillaumec 3y ago
I often wondered if Patrick uses unnecessarily convoluted sentences, or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology, and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.
- hiAndrewQuinn 3y ago
  To me, he writes like a precursor of how most of the folks on LessWrong write. I think it's a case of convergent nerd evolution. Someone else I put in this group is CGP Grey, the YouTuber, specifically his early podcast episodes. That guy's ideas changed my life in a lot of ways as a teenager in ways I think I can't fully describe today.
- edouard-harris 3y ago
  There's a hidden advantage to writing like this. It comes up when, e.g., you're communicating on a controversial topic in a forum like Twitter with a history of forming mobs against folks who communicate on controversial topics. Suppose an angry reader is looking for a reason to form a mob against you. If you write in simple sentences, that makes it easy for the angry reader to process your statements and go after them. But if your sentences are more complicated, the angry reader needs to decode them logically before they can justify their anger. Angry people tend to be poor at logic. So when they run into this kind of writing, they often get bored before they have a chance to get outraged. You get your message across, and the angry reader moves on to the next tweet in their feed. Everybody wins. This doesn't work 100% of the time. But if you do it right, it cuts down on a lot of negative virality. I'm not saying this is or isn't Patrick's intentional strategy. I have no idea. It's just one among many consequences of this communication style.

braindrain22 3y ago

[flagged]

pc86 3y ago
[flagged]
- tptacek 3y ago
  Nobody ever, ever thought he was making Levels cash from Bingo Card Creator. He published his number every year! I flagged this comment for obvious reasons, but I can't not speak up about this inane claim. He doesn't have a "nerdcore obsession with Japan", either; he lived there for like 20 years.
  - pc86 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- dang 3y ago
  Crossing into personal attack like this is seriously not ok. Moreover, we've had to ask you not to do this on more than one occasion in the past. Fortunately that was a long time ago. Please don't do this again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sillyfluke 3y ago
For me, this wins the most HN comment of the day. If I were patio11 I'd use the second sentence as my tongue-in-cheek twitter bio line and wear it as a badge of honor:) Given enough neuroticism, preciseness driven by fear of being misunderstood or being incorrect may be indistinguishable from pseudointellectualism. I personally would not reach for "attention seeker" when someone's actions tend to be helpful even when no one is looking (or reading).

mooreds 3y ago

Tyler's method of interviewing was pretty unique (this is the first podcast of his I have heard, though I've listened to him being interviewed before). Very rapid fire, jumping from topic to topic, not a lot of thematic linking. Is that typical?

legitster 3y ago
Yes. Very. Cowen probably puts in more research than any other interviewer. His style is pretty unique, but the interviews never become rambly and the guests get to showcase much more range.
- maroonblazer 3y ago
  Agree. I was a little turned off by TC's style when I first discovered his podcast, but quickly picked up the fact that the guy has done his research and there's a method to the seeming 'madness'. The result is a conversation with extremely high signal. I've been listening to him for years.
- shuckles 3y ago
  The best researched interviewer is likely Nardwuar, though he also has the ADD style. I wonder if the reason is to show off how much the interviewer knows.
  - keiferski 3y ago
    That was definitely the vibe I got from Tyler's interview with David Bentley Hart, although it backfired because Tyler didn't seem to know much about the topics at all... https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-bentley-hart/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-bentley-ha...
- drpgq 3y ago
  Econtalk is good that way as well.
  - 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

olliecornelia 3y ago

Why is this guy such a celebrity on here?

ethanbond 3y ago
Good thinkers are fun to listen to and read?
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]