
Book Review: Hoover - tlb
https://slatestarcodex.com/2020/03/17/book-review-hoover/
======
russnewcomer
I've recently been reading The Power Broker by Robert Caro, about Robert
Moses, the Parks Commisioner who drove most of the building of the parks and
roadway infrastructure of New York in the 20s-60s. It's a huge book, with a
lot of asides into Alfred Smith, Tammany Hall, FDR, etc. (I'm only about
halfway in, before Moses runs for Governor).

I can't help but notice parallels with Moses and Hoover, with the
'politicians' they decry, the ones they seem to celebrate, their sympathy for
the masses crossed with personal antipathy toward individuals. I can't help
but consider lessons this has for our current crisis, I can't help but think
about how Truman relatively successfully navigated the assumption of the
presidency from Roosevelt after being frozen out and manages to not totally
bungle the end of WWII. I can't help but note how some people are who are
completely effective in one time requiring action end up totally screwing up
in others.

All that to say, I think we can learn lessons from Hoover, from the past, and
apply them to our current situation and the future.

1) Sometimes, the egomaniacl jerk gets great things done. Later, they can use
the power to screw up massively. 2) History lets us review responses to
crisises and point out how they could have been done better, but we probably
won't apply any of those lesssons to our own crisis. 3) Demonstrably
compentent people can have demonstrably incompetent responses to crisises -
demonstrably incompetent people rarely have compentent ones.

~~~
mistermann
These lessons seem very logically sound to me.

I wonder, if we were to think of (realize) human minds as nodes of a
supercomputer, connected via wires and human "biology" (data to screen to
eyeballs to cpu (brain), cpu to fingers to keyboard to central controller),
and designed a system to optimize away the obvious efficiencies, what could
mankind be capable of?

If we could wire in all the nodes from HN, SSC, LW, IDW, [insert
communities/professions of your choice], and then pointed this "thing" at the
problems we have on this planet, what might be the result?

But first, I wonder if you have to believe it's possible, if that makes any
sense. I have a strange feeling that might be the hardest part.

EDIT: assume this is workable. What should be the first two problems to
address?

~~~
tlb
Curing disease. Not just the current pandemic, but cancer and everything else.

There are only 70,000 cancer researchers in the world. You could 1000x this
and still only be 1% of people. 1000xing isn't likely to create 1000x the
progress, but maybe you could hope for √1000x. So the progress of 31.6 years
happens every year.

~~~
ema
I wonder how much of the work those 70.000 cancer researchers do is
theoretically unnecessary busywork like applying for research grants or
dealing with office politics. Further I wonder how much of their research is
optimized for looking reputable to the people writing the checks vs. what they
think would really move the needle. Sure cancer is a complex problem but 70
thousand is already a massive amount of people so I can't shake the suspicion
that instead of throwing even more people at the problem changing the
environment in which they work would be much more effective.

~~~
mirimir
I suspect that "helps cure cancer" is a popular touchstone for grant
applications, no matter how indirect the association.

------
Symmetry
Scott Sumner (an economist who specialized in the Great Depression) talks
about bit more about Hoover versus FDR.

[https://www.econlib.org/scott-alexander-on-herbert-
hoover/](https://www.econlib.org/scott-alexander-on-herbert-hoover/)

------
vonnik
This was an extraordinary book review, and an extraordinary life, even if you
discount for the biographer's positive bias towards his own subject. Hoover is
really under-rated, and unfairly remembered for some of his policies at the
start of the Great Depression. If he had not been elected president, his
combination of engineering efficiency and competitive altruism, and his
accomplishments as a businessman and philanthropist, would earn him
comparisons to Bill Gates.

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Taikonerd
I feel like Hoover was, at least from this book review, a quintessential geek
type: a great lover of systems, math, and detail, but people found him cold
and aloof. (During the relief of Belgium, people accused him of thinking of
the starving Belgians as just numbers on a sheet.)

And Hoover lived the geek fantasy, right? "You're so smart, we're going to put
you in charge of everything!" And then it ACTUALLY WORKED.

~~~
jhbadger
He also arranged the famine relief in the Soviet Union in 1922. There was a
fascinating book published recently "The Russian Job: The Forgotten Story of
How America Saved the Soviet Union From Ruin" that tells the story.

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david-cako
Slate Star Codex is one of my favorite blogs, much needed corporate and
political philosophy. The musings on Moloch are psychedelic :)

It’s interesting to me also how these sorts of “skeptic” blogs are such strong
affirmations of faith for me. Skepticism is what makes faith real.

------
mirimir
This is the _best_ book review that I've ever read. Or at least, the funniest.
And perhaps the most honest.

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peisistratos
"heroic defender of Tientsin during the Boxer Rebellion"

Kind of a deluded notion - 40 years after the US and UK fought the First and
Second Opium war to steal Hong Kong and push opium and heroin on the Chinese
population, Chinamen rose up and began pushing the imperialists out. The
heroes were the Chinese men fighting to push the foreign drug dealers out.

~~~
jessaustin
_(please don 't interrupt the protagonists of history...)_

