Nathan Labenz: belief

Transcript context

…Talk- Rohan, yeah, and talked about how, yeah, we don't wanna make commitments. We wanna make, we wanna make plans, and we wanna be serious about those plans, but we also don't wanna make hard commitments because we don't want to... It's actively bad if we lock ourselves down too much with a bunch of prior commitments because there's so much uncertainty. There's a, there's a subtle, there's a balance that you have to strike there, but I think it is possible to do. I think last time we talked a little bit about the sort of great man of history theory. You just mentioned, like, very, you know, local politics, individual personalities mattering, that kind of thing. What is your expectation in terms of how much technology fundamentals will determine outcomes versus how much key decision-makers and their ability to work well together and make good decisions in timely ways will really matter? Uh, well, this is, you know, in, in many ways, one of my sub-focuses in college was the philosophy of history, and I've always loved the philosophy of history. And this is, like, you know, the, the central, like, to the extent there are, like, you know, uh, uh, taking bong rips in the dorm room version of philosophy of history. The philosophy of history question is this one, right? It is the structural forces versus great man theory. Um, and you know, the, the, the, the, like, somewhat unsatisfying answer is that it's, it is both. And in some ways, what I would say is that the structural forces of history, um, are, are, like, that's kind of like the river that you're in by default. And then sometimes in history, in little ways, in big ways, there are people that don't just swim with the current and actually stand against it for whatever reason, and ultimately shape the trajectory of the river by virt- by the sheer force of standing against it, by the sheer determin- determination with which they stand against it. And I think those are the gr- I think, in other words, it is the real, the people who disobey the structural forces are the great men of history in, in many ways. A big update for me in the last year working in government and then just having the perch I've had since I left government, is that much of what happens in the world is determined by the personal relationships of small number of individuals to one another.…

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