No. 10 Downing Street hiring data scientists, physicists, weirdos

Cummings shares some qualities with the rest of that list, but he’s not a nationalist if you believe his extensive blogging.

Although he is comfortable using the language of nationalism, which perhaps amounts to the same thing practically.

I’m also not sure how right wing he really is. He seems fairly liberal in his own views on immigration, race and so on. Although again, he panders to those with different views.

I don’t agree with Cummings on many things, but I don’t think it’s fair to put him in a list with those other names.

I stand to be corrected. It’s possible I misunderstand him. He’s hard to misunderstand.

Hey, a left-leaning folk here (in that I broadly approve of Labour’s manifesto, if not its execution or current leadership).

The things Cummings gets right are already well-discussed, among the lefties in my social group at least. And he gets a fair bit of not-entirely-negative analysis in the Guardian.

I like almost everything Cummings says about data-driven government. That’s all fine. But that’s also not what people are generally taking exception to.

On the other hand, I think Seumas Milne is terrifying. Perhaps more so than Cummings, were Milne to have actual power.

You use the expression “left-leaning”. Cummings himself demonstrates the limits of simple left/right, liberal/conservative labels. He’s a little bit of all of those things. He’s not a Conservative party member, for example. Immigration doesn’t bother him personally.

To me, it's rather strange that he calls on "unusual economists" but apparently one of the requirements for being unusual is simply knowledge of mainstream theories. Surely the unusual economists are the post-Keynesians, Sraffians, Marxians and Austrians. In fact, even a Nobel Prize winner like Sen would be more unusual than anyone he's summoning with that list. From the topics he lists as what might be discussed, it seems he's much more interested in economics grads with an interest in AI than in economics grads with, say, an interest in Veneziani and Yoshihara's work on mathematical proofs of FMT or Roemer's game-theoretical approach to capitalist markets.

For all the talk of being "rational", the "rationalsphere" and unfortunately now a UK government minister have neglected learning about social science, political philosophy, and the critiques of utilitarianism in favour of... what, I'm not sure. One starts to see this repeatedly; Scott Alexander's only encounter with Marxian sociology, for instance, comes from a "Very Short Introduction" book by Peter Singer of all people. Even subject areas one would expect would appeal to them, such as game-theoretic Rational Choice Marxian economics have completely missed their radar.

Perhaps it would be better if Cummings were to educate himself on the wealth of heterodox economics (and I say this just because he wants "weirdos"), political philosophy and sociology - because at the moment it looks like he wouldn't hire a Nozick, Friedman or Roemer, and he definitely wouldn't hire a Rawls, Sen or Marx.

"Unusual" for this man means "rationalist", technocratic, LessWrong reader, and capitalist free market evangelist.

> his friends (like Farage)

Err...

'The Daily Telegraph reported on Cummings's past rivalry with Nigel Farage from the 2016 referendum campaign, and quoted Farage as saying that: "He has never liked me. He can't stand the ERG. I can't see him coming to any accommodation with anyone. He has huge personal enmity with the true believers in Brexit"'

Agreed.

But if we’ve learned anything from the last 4 years it’s that “low quality lies” (which I’ll read as “obvious untruths”) presenting a simple message are fiendishly, fiendishly difficult to defend against when the truth is complex and unpalatable.

It’s an important job to be able to cope with lies, certainly (ideally without lying in turn). But it’s not easy.