Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems

https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/patrick-mckenzie/

by kulor • 3 years ago

124 86 3 years 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."

RandomLensman15• 3 years 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• 3 years 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%2...

kamikaz1k• 3 years 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.

roenxi3• 3 years ago

It is nonsensical as thought experiments go; we're comparing two things that can't be compared. But just for fun - if we existed in a world with no medicine and the internet, we'd be able to rediscover modern medicine extremely quickly. We might reasonably expect to get further than the current state of the art, in fact, because the initial wild west phase wouldn't be encumbered by overzealous safety regulation and we'd learn more before the legislatures of the world start shutting it down (especially since the baseline would be so horrific, they'd probably have tougher stomachs for some broken eggs while making omelettes).

We ran the reverse (medicine then internet) and it took a long time to get to the internet.

andy_ppp4• 3 years ago

Most Doctors look stuff up on the Internet from what I’ve seen, so I’m not sure you can remove one from the other. You can for sure have two Great Works.

glimshe• 3 years 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.

verinus5• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

rlpb• 3 years 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?

uticus• 3 years ago

I mean, great point, but the internet is more than entertainment, in the way that electricity and light is more than movies.

Many people may use a significant portion of their electricity and lights on watching... whatever. But the statistical majority of use cases does not define the medium.

Maybe a less controversial way to say it is "global communication is more important than medicine," but I still like the way patio11 said it.

jstummbillig• 3 years 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.

Sol-• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

zith• 3 years ago

I've come to the same conclusion as you. I sometimes find it very hard to parse, but given all the praise he gets from very smart individuals, I put it down to not being native.

nadam• 3 years ago

I was wondering the same lately. It is interesting to compare his tweets to pg's tweets which are the complete opposite: patio11's tweets feel like oddly specific and extremely hard to parse while pg's tweets seem very generic and easy to parse yet insightful. Honestly the only reason I follow patio11 is that his style and content is so different from other people I follow that I feel I need this diversification.

idlewords5• 3 years ago

It's the former; your English is great.

patio11• 3 years ago

I’m glad you liked the interview.

Some people do not enjoy my writing style. That is fine; it’s a big Internet and there are writers with many styles on it. Some people think my style is poorly considered or unnecessary. I invite them to attempt writing a few million words. It will give one a very considered view on one’s own style.

I have spent half my life working in a foreign-to-me language and so I feel for non-native speakers who try to read my writing. That said, all choices in life have trade-offs. Many publications in the U.S. target a fifth to eighth grade reading level. You likely would have little difficulty reading those publications, much like I have comparatively little difficulty reading Japanese aimed at 5th graders. However, people rarely associate those publications with dense, insightful, textured prose on complicated technical and interdisciplinary subjects. (If some HNers do, awesome; stuff you’ll love is available at the obvious places on the Internet.)

csa2• 3 years ago

I often wondered if Patrick uses unnecessarily convoluted sentences

One of my weird qualifications is evaluating text complexity. Most of Patrick’s writing is simply highly accurate and precise erudite language. Frankly, compared to other writers at a comparable level of erudition, his writing is downright economical rather than convoluted.

His texts tend to be very information dense in a way that I’m not sure all readers appreciate or value.

. or if he is simply careful about using the proper terminology

Yep. All that.

and my English is just not good enough to follow him like a native speaker would.

Probably (not sure about your English proficiency level), but that’s not a knock on your English.

Note that Patrick’s writing is very high level, and I think many native speakers don’t read his texts with a high degree of fluency. Specifically, they simply don’t make it through the text, they don’t understand what he wrote, or they are not able to identify the preciseness and accuracy (and sometimes artfulness) with which he communicates his ideas.

On a personal level, I am a big fan of his writing — it’s just a delight to read material on a complex topic with a high degree of confidence that what he says is extremely accurate.

Another author who I think writes at a high level is Scott Alexander of slatestarcodex and astralcodexten (or wherever he writes these days) — very high brow style on complex topics. It’s not for everyone. Fwiw, I’ve had to read (and reread) some of Scott Alexander’s pieces in small chunks with breaks to process what I had read — sometimes it’s just oozing with intellectual goodness.

For someone who writes in finance in a more casual style, I recommend Matt Levine and his newsletter Money Stuff (free).

keiferski2• 3 years ago

As much as his interview style annoys me, I think Tyler is the perfect antidote to people that write this way. It forces them to clarify their key thoughts and convey them in a few sentences. A blog doesn't do that.

paulcole• 3 years ago

tedious to parse, regardless of substance

We've got an early leader in the clubhouse for the 2024 Accidental HN Slogan Contest.

kristjansson• 3 years ago

As just another person on the internet: I like Patrick's style, and I like that he _has_ a distinctive style when so much writing is bland drab bullets. At worst it can be ... oblique ... in places, but some strikes are an inevitable consequence of taking swings.

mooreds2• 3 years 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• 3 years 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• 3 years 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.

shuckles2• 3 years 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.

drpgq• 3 years ago

Econtalk is good that way as well.

olliecornelia• 3 years ago

Why is this guy such a celebrity on here?

ethanbond• 3 years ago

Good thinkers are fun to listen to and read?

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) on navigating complex systems

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