Some thoughts on education And political priorities
Dominic Cummings
The essay can be found here. The sweep of this is extraordinary and mirrors the scope of his reading. I read it over several evenings and I think it’d take me many more if I followed all of the links and references.
It doesn’t really have a concise message, instead visiting several recurring themes that I’ve outlined below:
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Systems thinking and emergent behaviours in non-linear systems
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The benefits of backing the super-talented in quite loose non goal-oriented ways
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How the UK political system favours individuals with media skills over management, analytical and numerical skills
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Things are changing very fast and the skills needed to manage such change can be fostered through an Odyssean education. This term isn’t Cummings’ but Murray Gell Mann’s
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Brainstorming is of little worth when there is no criticism of ideas
It was written in 2013 and it’s interesting to see the technologies that have advanced to ubiquity over the last 8 years, versus those that are stil quite far off. I can’t really do it justice because there’s so much in there, but it is the most interesting essay I’ve read.
Quotes
”We’ve arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements - transportation, communications, and all other industries; agriculture, medicine, education, entertainment, protecting the environment; and even the key democratic institution of voting - profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology.” - Carl Sagan.
”A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” - Herbert Simon
”Everything in war is very simple, but the simplest thing is difficult. The difficulties accumulate and end by producing a kind of friction that is inconceivable unless one has experienced war… Countless minor incidents - the kind you can never really foresee - combine to lower the general level of performance, so that one always falls short of the intended goal. Iron will-power can overcome this friction … but of course it wears down the machine as well… Friction is the only concept that … corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. The … army and everything else related to it is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But … each part is composed of individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction… This tremendous friction … is everywhere in contact with chance, and brings about effects that cannot be measured… Friction … is the force that makes the apparently easy so difficult.” - Clausewitz.
”In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he’s the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land.” - Feynman
“Never forget that a section can do in the first hour what by nightfall would require a company, the following day a battalion, and by the end of the week an army corps.” - Rommell.