Guest on The Federalist Radio Hour: Emergent Leadership and Tech Policy
The FTC, the Metaverse, Bad Habits, and Institutions
Hello,
I recently appeared on an episode of The Federalist Radio Hour podcast to discuss Getting Out of Control: Emergent Leadership in a Complex World and how the idea of emergent order applies to government regulation of the tech industry. It was a great conversation with the Federalist’s culture editor Emily Jashinsky: we talked about Instagram’s effect on teens, the metaverse, the 100 years war, intuitions, and more.
Here’s a few quotes from our conversation.
On my book:
“The central thesis of the book is that in a world of increasingly complex connected systems — international trade, international travel, international communications — when you can pick up your phone and be exposed to millions of ideas that are outside of your previous experience, that can really feel like things are out of control. And I think the natural instinct is for us to grasp for control, to feel in control. What my book argues is that there’s very little we actually can control. And that’s okay, because our world is full of systems that exhibit something called emergent order.”
On technology and human nature:
“[T]he idea that technology is somehow going to let us route around human nature is a fantasy. And it’s a very dangerous fantasy because it suggests that somebody can be in control if they just design the right tech.”
On the stereotype of libertarians as purely individualist:
“[Libertarians] can get stereotyped - and actually not without justification sometimes - as being overly individualistic, that somehow I am the master of my own fate, and, and nobody should mess with me. But [in] complex systems … you’re not the master of your own fate. [Y]ou have some influence over it right you have a lot of influence over it. But what's really important, and my book talks about this, is choosing the constraints that we surround ourselves with. And those constraints include the institutions that we participate in whether our churches, our families, our friendships, but they also include our habits that we build ourselves and those things are very important to our success.
More on the importance of institutions:
“Institutions are really the only way to get big substantive things done to help improve the world and so … one of the biggest effects that you as an individual can have is to help shape the institutions that you’re part of. You can’t control them, just like you can’t control the world, but you have the ability to have a huge impact on the world by shaping the institutions that you participate in.”
On the side effects of top-down solutions to complex problems:
“With complicated problems, you can't top down control your way out of them. [Top down control] takes a complex system that serves many needs, even though it might cause some problems and makes it into a simple system that [only] serves the government’s needs … [T]hat's a solution that's worse than the problem often.
Listen to the full episode here.