
Branching histories of the 2016 UK referendum and ‘the frogs before the storm’ - robinhouston
https://dominiccummings.wordpress.com/2017/01/09/on-the-referendum-21-branching-histories-of-the-2016-referendum-and-the-frogs-before-the-storm-2/
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rndmize
While unfortunately I don't have time to finish reading it at the moment, this
is a very interesting post, even for someone with no interest in brexit. It
feels more like a discussion of effectiveness/efficiency, organizational
structure, motivations and their effects, with the leave org being an example
of how these can benefit/harm your efforts. I found the occasional paragraph
on advertising/media strategy especially interesting.

That said, 20k words is lengthy to the point that I suspect this will fall off
the front page before any reasonable discussion can happen.

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pm24601
Whatever you feel the Brexit result should have been, read this article to
understand deeply how politics plays out.

Dominic spends much of the article showing how it was the errors of IN that
gave the opportunity for Leave to have a chance.

In the US, the progressive movement is learning from the Tea Party how to
fight Trump. Pro-EU Brits should learn from the euroskeptics.

As Dominic says, the easiest person to lie to is yourself.

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prodmerc
Oh wow, I never say this, but this post definitely needs a TL;DR

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alva
Summary of topics covered, although I highly recommend reading the whole
thing. The author appears to be a relative insider to politics however
approached the entire campaign in a very different manner than is expected
from political types.

1\. Game theory

2\. Probability

3\. Issues with managing a large number of people, some with diverging
motivations and how that effects succeeding in the group's aim

4\. Enormity of establishment backing of Remain and how that helped/hindered

5\. 3 conditions that left the Leave vote possible. Maybe the best section,
parallels to recent US election obvious here.

6\. Making persuasive arguments to a wide demographic, including their timing.

7\. Warranted distrust of establishment post 2008 and its effects.

8\. IYI (intellectual yet idiot) class.

9\. Incredibly strong post establishment media backlash and its
motivation,"Fake news", "Idiots couldn't understand", "Racists".

10\. Importance of error-correction in large systems.

11\. Some very innovative solutions to the above.

Overall a fantastic summary of why we have seen some political "shocks" in the
West.

~~~
smikhanov
Sounds like a typical "Lessons Learned from My Year as a Startup CEO" post on
Medium!

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losvedir
Ooh, I'm going to like this article. I had to stop to post this comment when I
came across this statement:

 _Much political analysis revolves around competing simple stories based on
one big factor such that, in retrospect, ‘it was always clear that immigration
would trump economic interest / Cameron’s negotiation was never going to be
enough / there is an unstoppable populist tide’, and so on. Alternatives are
quickly thought to have been impossible (even if X argued the exact opposite
repeatedly). The big event must have had an equally big single cause.
Confirmation bias kicks in and evidence seeming to suggest that what actually
happened would happen looms larger. People who are quite wrong quickly
persuade themselves they were ‘mostly right’ and ‘had a strong feeling’
unlike, of course, the blind fools around them. Soon our actual history seems
like the only way things could have played out. Brexit had to happen. Trump
had to win._

It really reminds me of this[0] wonderful blog post "Tuesday shouldn't change
the narrative" which predicted very well how the narrative changed after the
election of Trump.

This Brexit blog post also has this wonderful epistemic statement:

> _Also, it is clear that almost nobody agrees with me about some of my
> general ideas. It is more likely that I am wrong than 99% of people who work
> in this field professionally. Still, cognitive diversity is inherently good
> for political analysis so I’ll say what I think and others will judge if
> there’s anything to learn._

Both of these quotes really resonate with me. I fear that many people will
downvote this because the author is a Leaver, but I think that would be a
mistake. The author clearly isn't dumb and is telling a firsthand story of
their involvement in this important event. People should read and watch
primary sources more often, I think.

[0] [http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/07/tuesday-shouldnt-
change...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/11/07/tuesday-shouldnt-change-the-
narrative/)

