The discussion in the summary between 'networks' and 'bureaucracies' looks similar to the way Burja describes leaders giving projects to 'delegates' (who you trust to be competent and aligned and therefore grant autonomy and "owned power") or to 'bureaucrats' (who follow rigid procedures and align them to your goals). https://samoburja.com/how-to-use-bureaucracies/
Hmmm okay so I've had a skim through and got Claude to pull out the key points and arguments:
- Great Founder Theory: a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society, and these institutions are imperfectly imitated by the rest of society, multiplying their effect
- Non-functional institutions: the vast majority of non-functional institutions merely inadequately imitate functional institutions, attempting to copy relevant social technology from one or several functional institutions
- Functional institutions: functional institutions are the exception and require a founder who knows how to coordinate people to achieve the institution's purpose and uses this knowledge to build new institutions or dismantle and rebuild existing ones
- Limits to knowledge and imitation: societies can make do with having some functional institutions and some dysfunctional institutions, but there is a high and often invisible opportunity cost to having too many non-functional institutions; ultimately, vital functions must be realized or society will fail
- Social technology: the social technology behind functional institutions wasn't discovered through blind tinkering, but is ultimately grounded in an existing tradition of knowledge; once that tradition is lost, you are making photocopies of photocopies
- Success through reverse engineering: this kind of imitation can bring you to an increasingly better approximation of a given set of social technology, but since the fidelity of transmitting intricate social technologies is so low, complex adaptations cannot arise
- Historical examples: the manuscript uses a number of historical examples to bolster its arguments, including the Roman Empire, late Zhou China, and the succession problem in ancient Rome
This does feel pretty similar to great man theory of history and I do wonder about the implications of AI for replication of excellent social technologies (ie. like Agile for software development). Tbh I think a great founder can be replaced by a great set of principles
Have you read Samo Burja's manuscript of Great Founder Theory: https://samoburja.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Great_Founder_Theory_by_Samo_Burja_2020_Manuscript.pdf
The discussion in the summary between 'networks' and 'bureaucracies' looks similar to the way Burja describes leaders giving projects to 'delegates' (who you trust to be competent and aligned and therefore grant autonomy and "owned power") or to 'bureaucrats' (who follow rigid procedures and align them to your goals). https://samoburja.com/how-to-use-bureaucracies/
Hmmm okay so I've had a skim through and got Claude to pull out the key points and arguments:
- Great Founder Theory: a small number of functional institutions founded by exceptional individuals form the core of society, and these institutions are imperfectly imitated by the rest of society, multiplying their effect
- Non-functional institutions: the vast majority of non-functional institutions merely inadequately imitate functional institutions, attempting to copy relevant social technology from one or several functional institutions
- Functional institutions: functional institutions are the exception and require a founder who knows how to coordinate people to achieve the institution's purpose and uses this knowledge to build new institutions or dismantle and rebuild existing ones
- Limits to knowledge and imitation: societies can make do with having some functional institutions and some dysfunctional institutions, but there is a high and often invisible opportunity cost to having too many non-functional institutions; ultimately, vital functions must be realized or society will fail
- Social technology: the social technology behind functional institutions wasn't discovered through blind tinkering, but is ultimately grounded in an existing tradition of knowledge; once that tradition is lost, you are making photocopies of photocopies
- Success through reverse engineering: this kind of imitation can bring you to an increasingly better approximation of a given set of social technology, but since the fidelity of transmitting intricate social technologies is so low, complex adaptations cannot arise
- Historical examples: the manuscript uses a number of historical examples to bolster its arguments, including the Roman Empire, late Zhou China, and the succession problem in ancient Rome
This does feel pretty similar to great man theory of history and I do wonder about the implications of AI for replication of excellent social technologies (ie. like Agile for software development). Tbh I think a great founder can be replaced by a great set of principles
Ohhhh that's really cool. I'll give it a read - thank you!!!