Fields make huge progress when they move from stories (e.g Icarus) and authority (e.g 'witch doctor') to evidence/experiment (e.g physics, wind tunnels) and quantitative models (e.g design of modern aircraft). — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
The reason why Whitehall is full of people failing in predictable ways on an hourly basis is because, first, there is general system-wide failure… — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
The audience for facts, evidence and research about microtargeting, Facebook and Brexit is tiny. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
In the commercial world, big companies mostly die within a few decades because they cannot maintain an internal system to keep them aligned to… — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
Physicists and mathematicians regularly invade other fields but other fields do not invade theirs so we can see which fields are hardest for very… — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
Fundamental to real expertise is 1: whether the informational structure of the environment is sufficiently regular that it's possible to make good predictions and… — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
The panic over Sputnik brought many good things such as a huge increase in science funding. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
In history books, luck is always underplayed and the talent of individuals is usually overplayed. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
Changing the world in a profound and beneficial way is not enough to put a dint in bureaucracies which operate on their own dynamics. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
I make judgments about people and ideas individually - for me, parties are just a vehicle of convenience. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
Technology enables people to improve communication with unprecedented speed, scale and iterative testing. It also allows people to wreak chaos with high leverage. — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
If you want to avoid the usual fate in politics of failure, you need to understand some basic principles about why people make mistakes… — Dominic Cummings Copy Share Image
