\n\n\nsome thoughts on leadership:
I used to think something like\u00a0\u201cit\u2019s bad to be overconfident, and people who say things about how leaders should be confident are just promoting bad epistemic norms.\u201d
now I think something more like\u2013there are lots of situations where no one really knows what to do, and you need to make a decision. lots of people\u2019s instinct in those situations is to ask the person in charge; but it turns out, the person in charge often doesn\u2019t really know what to do either!
and leadership, in these cases, means not panicking or doing nothing or trying to find a person even more in charge, but instead coming up with your best guess\u2013even if you\u2019re super uncertain\u2013and stating confidently and decisively\u00a0\u201clet\u2019s do X.\u201d
and if someone says\u00a0\u201cno actually, wouldn\u2019t it be better to do Y instead because of Z\u201d then great! none of this means you shouldn\u2019t update on evidence or listen to other people\u2019s opinions. just that there are a lot of situations that come down to\u00a0\u201cno one really knows, and someone needs to make a call and accept the responsibility if it turns out to be totally wrong\u201d and being willing to do that is really valuable.
In coming to understand military leadership I realized “everyone pulling together on the same halfassed plan now” often yields better results than “argue about it for a while, then everyone pursues several better ones”
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