Astral Codex Ten

mechanism design

3 min read

mechanism design

Article

mechanism design is a recurring concept in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between January 29, 2021 and January 29, 2021. The archive places it in contexts such as “It ties this into modern “evidence-based policy” and “mechanism design""; “I am best known as a mechanism designer”. It most often appears alongside Glen Weyl, Harvard, rationalist community.

Metadata

  • Category: Concepts
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: January 29, 2021
  • Last seen: January 29, 2021

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Contra Weyl On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
I am not defending technocracy. But I do like evidence-based policy. So I read with interest Glen Weyl's Why I Am Not A Technocrat. It starts with a short summary of Seeing Like A State. It ties this into modern "evidence-based policy" and "mechanism design". It talks about how technocrats will always have their own insular culture and biases and paradigms, which prevent them from seeing the real world in its full complexity. Therefore, we should be careful about supposedly "objective" policies, and make sure they are always heavily informed by real people's real knowledge. Then it draws on vague rumors of the "rationalist community" and a shadowy figure named "Eliezer Yudkowsky" to create a completely fictional reimagination of us as a group of benighted people who don't understand any of these things, and just go around saying "hurr durr top-down systems are great, no way there could possibly be anything our models don't capture."
Inline links: Why I Am Not A Technocrat
Weyl Contra Me On Technocracy
January 29, 2021 · Original source
2. Given the last point, I fully acknowledge the danger of throwing stones lest I shatter my own glass house. However, leaving aside any blame, I think to make sense of my piece and Scott's response requires a bit of context that clearly he lacked. First, outside some specific blog post I wrote, I am best known as a mechanism designer. To cast me as a general opponent of technology and mechanisms runs against literally everything I am known for and have worked on my whole career. The piece was as much a self-critique and caution about taking the sorts of work I do in the wrong, over-zealous spirit as I had seen many in the rationalist community doing as anything else. Second, if responding to anything directly, it was this review of my book by https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20191533 I think that piece perfectly exemplifies the spirit I am responding to and critiquing. I think we need to avoid that spirit of mechanism design.
Inline links: https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20191533