![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Dune and Taleb Crossover
Jul. 4th, 2020 12:24 pm| Dune | Taleb |
|---|---|
| Is your religion real when it costs you nothing and carries no risk? - Children of Dune |
The strength of a creed did not rest on “evidence” of the powers of its gods, but evidence of the skin in the game on the part of its worshippers. - Skin in the Game, No Worship Without Skin in the Game |
| The tyranny of the minority cloaked in the mask of the majority. - Chapterhouse Dune |
It suffices for an intransigent minority – a certain type of intransigent minorities – to reach a minutely small level, say three or four percent of the total population, for the entire population to have to submit to their preferences. Further, an optical illusion comes with the dominance of the minority: a naive observer would be under the impression that the choices and preferences are those of the majority. - Skin in the Game, The Most Intolerant Wins: the Dictatorship of the Small Minority |
| Bureaucracies ask different questions. Do you know what those are? These are typical questions, Suipol: Who gets the credit? Who will be blamed if it causes problems? Will it shift the power structure, costing us jobs? Or will it make some subsidiary department more important? These are political questions... They demonstrate how motives of bureaucracy are directly opposed to the need for adapting to change. Adaptability is a prime requirement for life to survive. - Chapterhouse Dune |
Bureaucracy is a construction by which a person is conveniently separated from the consequences of his or her actions. Policymakers and slow-thinking bureaucrats stupidly let terrorism grow by ignoring its roots—because that was not a course that was optimal for their jobs, even if optimal for the country. Some bureaucrats and businesspersons may owe part of their income to protective regulations and franchises, and lobby for them. Note that regulations are easier to put in than to correct and remove. Recall that it is at the foundation of evolution that systems get smart by elimination. - Skin in the Game, multiple locations |
| Golden Path: humankind "erupting" into the universe . . . never again confined to any single planet and susceptible to a singular fate. All of our eggs no longer in one basket. - Chapterhouse Dune |
Note for now that I have a finite shelf life; my survival is not as important as the survival of things that do not have a limited life expectancy, such as mankind or planet earth. Hence the more “systemic” things are, the more important survival becomes. Rationality is avoidance of systemic ruin. - Skin in the Game, How to be Rational about Rationality, The Logic of Risk Taking (probably the central point of Incerto's entire discussion of risk management) |
First, a Civil Service law masked in the lie that it was the only way to correct demagogic excesses and spoils systems. Then the accumulation of power in places voters could not touch. And finally, aristocracy.
Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoils systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence.
- Chapterhouse Dune
Power attracts the corruptible. Absolute power attracts the absolutely corruptible. This is the danger of entrenched bureaucracy to its subject population. Even spoils systems are preferable because levels of tolerance are lower and the corrupt can be thrown out periodically. Entrenched bureaucracy seldom can be touched short of violence.
- Chapterhouse Dune
