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So this is a subject that fascinates me for one reason.

Authoritarians (both followers and leaders) tend to see their leaders as god-like figures, and if you cut off the head, the body follows.

This is why they try to find "leftist leaders".


Most of this is drawn from one of my favorite books on the subject, The Authoritarians, by Bob Altemeyer.

You can find it

The thing about authoritarian followers, is that they don't ask why. They don't question. They don't get suspicious. They don't suspect ulterior motives. When someone tells them what they wanna hear, they buy it, hook, line, and sinker... and they assume everyone else does too.

Therefor, they assume others do this too, and they try to poke holes in their opponents arguments. They think that if they catch, say, Hillary Clinton lying, then her "followers" will leave her.

Under the assumption that they aren't already aware she probably is lying at times.

They don't understand how a decentralized movement works, they don't understand how to be properly critical of politicians you vote for, and they see this as one giant political game of King of the Mountain.

Just shove people off and you win.
I’m guessing these responses really reflect people’s weighted averages (age*current average effort fraction) though I kept it simple and asked for just averages.


I suspect a healthy weighted average should be ~ (age-20)/2. So a 30 year old should be at 5, a 40 year old at 10, a 50 year old at 15 etc.

Standard deviation should be ~average/3 maybe, so distribution spreads as you age and accumulate projects and get better at them.

Other things being equal, people get good at starting in their 20s, at follow through in 30s, at finishing in 40s.

No point learning food follow through until you’ve found a few good starts to bet on. No point getting good at finishing until a few projects have aged gracefully.

I’m in the 7+ range myself. Probably 8-9. Slightly less than healthy for my age.

I suspect most self-judgments on being good starters/follow-through-ers/finishers are really flawed because of the non-ergodicity of project management skill learning. You can’t learn good practices for the 3 phases in an arbitrary order. On,y one order actually works.
This is a good @mattyglesias post about techno-politics but I want to quibble with the part of it that’s about my essay on the policy feedback loops you can build by Just Helping People Fast. Matt writes: https://t.co/MuBlgQV6LW


Over at Mischiefs of Faction, @Smotus makes a similar point:
https://t.co/al6fS5tZXP


I want to be clear here: I’m saying that the Affordable Care act was, from a political perspective, badly designed, and that *a different health care plan* might’ve led to a better Dem performance in 2010. But these arguments don't grapple with that.

To @Smotus’s point, Pelosi released those House Democrats at the end, not the beginning. Having covered the beginning of this, I can tell you a lot of those Democrats thought a bipartisan health care bill would be great politics for them!

But they didn’t get that.

This is key. The ACA was built on the political theory that:

1. Bipartisan policy is easier to pass — and more popular once passed.

2. Working off of the Heritage Foundation/Romney template could get you a bipartisan health bill.

1 was probably right. 2 was utterly wrong.