I'm one of the people quoted in the article and most of the others quoted are my peers. A bunch of us have worked on Capitol Hill as staff; several of us worked for Congress's think tank; others have written books on Congress. I say this only to emphasize my point that what Ringwiss has done is truly remarkable.
He has an apparent deep understanding of the rules of procedure that govern the House and the Senate, which are very different from one another, and he can keep them straight. I wouldn't have the patience to watch the floor for hours on end, and while I'm sure I could read through the precedents, it's doubtful that I could retain in active memory more than a fraction. I have read the House and Senate rules cover to cover, more than once -- but that's not the same as being able to operationalize them and recall it at an instant, and it's also not the same as digging through the precedents and understanding what they mean. That comes from a lot of practice.
Besides having a particular interest in the topic, my suspicion is Ringwiss has an eidetic memory. He is a remarkable person and I'm glad that he's doing what he does.
In my opinion, the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them. The procedures are used to gather power in the hands of a few, which undermines their original purpose: to facilitate orderly debate and empower all the members equally. I compare them to Roberts Rules of Order, Revised, which are straightforward enough that most people can grasp them with a reading or two.
As I said, what he's doing is remarkable, but it's also remarkable that few can do what he's doing.
> In my opinion, the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them. The procedures are used to gather power in the hands of a few, which undermines their original purpose: to facilitate orderly debate and empower all the members equally.
I disagree, and so does Surdy, as noted extensively in the latter part of this article. Congressional power is gathered and perpetuated primarily through means outside Congressional procedure like fundraising, PAC distributions, control of party apparatus, committee assignments, endorsements, PR, etc. Members of Congress have quite a lot of procedural power but choose not to exercise it in the face of these other incentives. This is not a view specific to Surdy; other parliamentary experts like James Wallner sound the same tune.
Those incentives also therefore dominate the attention of most staff, lobbyists, journalists, etc who make a living supporting, influencing, and covering members of Congress. This is the primary reason so few bother to put in the work to do what Surdy does.
I don’t mean to minimize the intelligence and hard work of Surdy, which is impressive. He may have a significant advantage by being so far from the Beltway bubble that he can ignore all that politics stuff above and just sink into the pure procedure.
He’s also free to tweet. There are other people in DC with at least the same level of parliamentary command, but generally they make a living by providing that expertise privately to those willing to pay for it.
I don't know if what you said contradicts the parent comment. The parent complains that congressional rules don't favor equality in its membership; you say that doesn't matter because lobbying and committee assignments mean more.
Both can be true, but the structural forces (described by snowwrestler) predominate the influence of parliamentary expertise. Parliamentarianism is a game in itself, and it's only effective insofar as actual politics are being done, which is rarely the case on the floor of the US congress, which is more like a theatre stage where politics have usually been preempted by economics relations.
As readyman says, these are two very well expressed, both valid views of how the system operates. There's a system of rules, and there's a power structure. The formal rules operate almost all of the time, and can be an interesting sport to follow. But there's a lot in that "almost". The moment a mob comes through the window with guns, the rules become irrelevant and the power and loyalty structure becomes extremely important.
And even in the everyday there are attempts by all parties to simply end-run round congressional process, at State, presidential, or Supreme Court level.
I think you are missing the connection between the rules and the maintenance of power -- both the chamber rules and the caucus/conference rules and arguing there's a disjunction in my and Surdy's vies on power. Let's start by analyzing how power works in the chamber.
Let's use the House as an example. The three major pillars of power in the House are: (1) control of the floor, (2) control of committee assignments, and (3) fundraising/candidate recruitment.
1. Control of the floor is largely managed through the House Rules committee, the members of which are solely appointed by the Democratic and Republican leaders. This contrasts with other committees, whose members are appointed by the parties via the steering committees. From where does leadership derive this power? The chamber rules and the caucus/conference rules. (Suspensions go at the direction of the Speaker, and discharge petitions are rare enough to discount.)
2. While some committees are appointed by the Democratic/Republican leadership, most committee members are selected through the steering committees. When you read the party rules, you can see that steering committee membership is largely chosen by the Democratic and Republican leaders. Because leadership dominates the steering committees, they dominate how those folks are chosen. And, rarely, they will remove people from committees for not following their leadership.
3. What controls the head of the House and Senate fundraising entities? Those folks are appointed by operation of the party rules, which again gives most of the power to leadership. Plus in the modern era, the party leaders are the heavy fundraisers. And they play a significant role in candidate selection.
James Wallner, who you cite, and I agree a lot. We both think it is important for the factions in the chambers to be able to express themselves. The current incentives for party leadership is to keep their team together and to split the opposing team. What that means is that they've crafted rules and norms designed to keep their team together and prevent defections. That's why most members don't make use of the procedural rules on the floor -- because it's not in their interest to do so. They feign helplessness. When you read the article, it first quotes me, and then him, making a point that Wallner would also agree with.
"But, Schuman said, something of a “rules revolution” has begun to brew in Congress lately, with House Republicans ousting their own speaker and defeating several procedural motions, while their Senate counterparts have freelanced on foreign aid and military nominations, bucking Mitch McConnell.
Surdy, for one, views many of these developments as welcome changes: His tweets often feature critiques of Congress’ centralized power (and how it is unquestioningly reported). He likes to note that leaders — by the rules alone — are mostly figureheads; it is only years of members following the pack, and choosing not to learn their own power, that have made the status quo so rigid."
Let me repeat it: power is centralized (at the top) and the members defer to it. The members choose not to learn their own power, IMO, because there's a collection action problem (which is described in the article). So far, only the Freedom Caucus-aligned folks have been willing to break that mold in the modern era.
One powerful committee chair (this was a while ago) said: “If I let you write the substance and you let me write the procedure, I’ll screw you every time.” The process dominates the results, and the process currently is designed to empower those at the top.
You're arguing here that leadership uses procedure to help them wield power. I agree with that.
What you said above is "the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them." I disagree with that. For example, obviously the leadership and their staff can understand them, since they use them to wield power.
My argument all along is that Congressional procedure is not that complex, but most people don't bother to learn it because there is no incentive to do so. If you are in leadership, you have the incentive.
Also be clear, I think that the rules are used to wield power but are not themselves the source of much power. You don't become Speaker just by knowing the rules better than anyone else. But once you're Speaker, knowing the rules can help you do things.
This is a serious question. I assume many entities pay for ‘inside scoops’ and lobbying. But who really needs to know the ins and outs of congressional procedure?
People who play the game, people who study it (as it will evolve over time) and public who may need to know whether these rules affecting them possibly and more likely by independent rule studier.
The straightforward answer is because they like their current rules more than Robert's rules. I'd imagine literally every rule was voted on by the body in question, so they are all things that people supported.
If you want to get really cynical, the major parties are complex coalitions of interest groups. It is really convenient for the power brokers to have arcane rules because issues can be delayed and the waters muddied around which politicians support what. Doesn't need to be perfect, it just needs to be weird enough that the average voter gets confused about whats and whys of procedural details.
Because the rules of the chambers are not designed to be neutral, they're designed to advance the goals of whoever has written them. In the House, it's leadership. In the Senate, it's to protect the powers of each individual senator.
The House Rules change every 2 years. In the Senate, changing the rules takes 2/3s, and that basically never happens.
Awesome to see this kind of use for the internet. People who are really passionate of a subject and can help educate other people on it.
And if you think about it, this is what the internet, reddit, Twitter etc were at the beginning and this is what HN is today (hoping the barbarians don't reach us)
If you want to just stop at one, or the minimum, well, I guess that's fine. But some prefer to express themselves with more than the minimum. Do you want to just do the minimum?
Teenagers will frequent this site, and will say stupidly naive things about topics they know nothing of, and they will grow from it. It happened to me, it happened to you.
It's not about people consistently bringing their A-game to HN because it's higher tier - most of its users are not far from their teenage counterparts.
A very small minority of experts will weigh in on one topic, and because their audience is a few hundred people instead of a few tens of thousands, a discussion can actually form.
Experts exist on every public forum in the world. Whether they are heard or not makes the difference. It's quantity that's the detrimental factor.
I think I know what you mean, but even if I disagree with the professionals, I can't help but respect that their opinion is likely more informed than my own, at least in the high circles they revolve in.
> And if you think about it, this is what the internet, reddit, Twitter etc were at the beginning
I would agree with you if you stopped at internet. By the time reddit and twitter came around, we'd already seen the trend of where things were going. they just took the knob and turned them to 11
back in the day, reddit was really like that, then digg collapsed after getting redesigned and then reddit started to dilute. that's when r/truereddit and later r/truetruereddit happened. but this is history by this point!
truly there's something about "internet scale" that is still boggling our collective mind/culture to this day
> truly there's something about "internet scale" that is still boggling our collective mind/culture to this day
to me, this is precisely why the echo chamber style places are the most popular. people just don't want to go some place to have their views challenged. the internet echo chambers are just internet scale versions of everyday life though. people hang out with like minded people. they prefer to live, shop, assemble with like minded people. it is the rare person that ventures of to areas that differ.
the internet is just trying to homogenize itself, or the users are making it that way whether intentionally or not
Well, I think here in HN we have a healthy (and educated) level of challenge no?
And it seems to have a broad audience in terms of knowledge (not only techies now) and also lots of countries and cultures.
There is a point of critical mass that turns the community very toxic, I can pinpoint when exactly, but my guess is when you can't properly moderate everything anymore. The bigger the community the heavier the moderation.
In the beginning there was Usenet. It was a wonderful microcosmos of technical expertise and niche hobbies. Then 1993 came and the constant flood of new users overwhelmed the culture and ability to enforce norms [1]. Truthfully, it didn't begin with Usenet. It's the old dilemma of universal access and freedom versus mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon. Even before that, Aristotle wrote "That which is common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care. Men pay most attention to what is their own: they care less for what is common." Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.
It may also not be wrong to say: "those who know history, are destined to repeat it".
"That which is the common to the greatest number gets the least amount of care..." is not a universal law, and it is easy to think of counterexamples. Without listing these, here are some axes that can govern which side of well-cared-for resources in the commons may end up:
- the extent to which people hold cooperation to be an important ingredient, versus dispensable
- the extent to which people are able to trust others, versus not
- the extent to which a commonly held resource is considered as much a personal resource, as a common one, versus purely common and otherwise inconsequential
- the extent to which people are able to value the importance (and impact) of small, consistent actions versus grand(iose) ones
- the extent to which people are willing to learn from mistakes and change, versus the extent to which people feel entrenched and defensive
Most of these come down to education, culture, and type of previous interactions with other humans.
This makes me think of the fun people get with sports, tons of information over a long history with lots of stories. Imagine how many people we can get into politics with a fantasy congress! It would be like fantasy sports but you choose your representatives.
For a second I missed the irony here, genuinely thought to myself 'wow that would be awesome'. Just joined my first fantasy league so I am gung-ho on fantasy now, apologies.
> It would be like fantasy sports but you choose your representatives.
Cheeky.
I think there's something here, though. High school civics classes have Model UN, why not gamify congressional proceedings in a similar way? You'd have to simplify the rules a bit, I guess.
> Matt Glassman — a congressional scholar at Georgetown who has spent most of his adult life studying the Hill — wanted to know the answer to an obscure procedural question. “When was the last time a ruling of the chair was overturned on appeal in the House?” he asked on X, tagging an anonymous user named @ringwiss.
> Less than a minute later, the mysterious account responded with an answer — 1938 — and a decades-old edition of the Congressional Record to prove it.
No, a copy of the 1938 Congressional record does not prove that. The question was “When was the last time…?” I don’t doubt that he’s correct, and the error is on the part of the writer, but what he’s proven is that the answer can’t be earlier than 1938.
And yes, very much a pedantic nitpick in an otherwise interesting article.
I had this idea to create some sort of gamified RPG battle log format for government procedure. Members of government would be characters in the battle, actions like amendments/comments/votes would be attacks/spells/defensive moves (not respectively). Monsters would be the bills/resolutions/etc.
Then you could playback a session of congress/etc as a battle.
The purpose would be to mystify the procedure and analogize it to something people are more familiar with.
If we had version control for the law and a linter for the constitution, how would that change the political landscape? How would you feel about people arguing against codifying their values?
I don't think our legal or political processes can survive the rigor coming their way.
There are some games that attempt to simulate the political process. "Democracy 4" for instance. PC game, not tabletop, but might be a source of inspiration.
I don't think any game has really done full justice to the political process yet. The Democracy series is very limited in terms of its model and obviously the games about elections (like President Infinity) only cover the elections. They bore me really quickly because it is really easy to break the model and end up unable to lose elections and with nothing to do.
It'd also be very hard to create a truly great political simulator because few people who'd be interested in doing that are going to be detached enough[0] to create a truly balanced and realistic game that stays compelling decades or even centuries into the game like Football Manager or Out of the Park Baseball does. Basically, I'm thinking of something much more complicated than Victoria that would be set in the present and be able to generate a different plausible future on every playthrough.
[0]: Most people seem to see policy outcomes and even the range of possibilities through the lens of their own worldview. The Democracy series, in particular, breaks because it assumes constant linear changes in the number of people in certain interest groups based on your policies. But in reality, you are never going to get 100% of society to be religious no matter how much the governments subsidizes religion, passes theocratic laws and promotes it in the schools. That's why the Spanish Inquisition was so infamously paranoid about the possibility of a few people secretly not being Catholic.
I've had a similar idea for a card game like yugioh but all the cards represent court instruments like affidavits and subpoenas and instead of mana points actions in game are measured in money.
I’m going to be pedantic but he’s not a college student in the UK, he’s a university student in the UK. College is where UK students study from 16 to 18. He’s 20 studying at Durham University.
Most UK universities consists of colleges [1], and you study at one of them. Durham is one of the ones that has colleges [2].
He is this both studying at Durham University and in a college.
While you're right the terms are usually used the way you point out in British English, and it would have been unusual for a British article to describe him as a college student because it'd be misleading, if being pedantic the language used is technically correct even when used in the UK. Certainly when writing American English in a US publication about the UK.
[1] Not all, as far as I know. E.g. I don't think LSE or Kings or any of the other former University of London colleges that are now full universities in their own right have their own colleges (they're still part of University of London, but gained the right to apply for university status in 2018) but I might be wrong about that.
Literally no UK university student would call themselves a college student, regardless of the few UK universities that structure themselves into colleges. I, and everyone of my university friends stopped saying we were in college when we left college (at 18) and instead said we were in uni. Every uni grad I know talks about “when I was at university” and not “when I was in college”.
The article is talking about a student in the UK, it should use the correct terminology for that country and not the US specific one.
He was not writing about himself. He was being written about by a US publication using American English, and it's a perfectly valid choice for a US publication to use American English rather than British English.
That just changes who is to "blame", and the submitter appears to be American, based on the link in his profile, so it also makes no difference to the original issue.
In any case the fact remains that the person in question goes to one of the ones with colleges. It's in any case largely moot to how a US publication describes him, and that was a tongue in cheek way of making the point that if you're going to pick and choose which part of the context you care about, that goes both ways.
I was being snarky in response to a pedantic response that was itself founded on conveniently ignoring that the article was written in a US publication using American English. As such, if they were called school students in American English, and someone chose to ignore that and complain about how it was called something else in British English, I might have been tempted to make that same argument in that situation.
The point more that if one person can apply "pedantry" with disregard for convention and context, then so can I.
For all the downsides to anonymity online the ability to establish aliases and build trust using them is a powerful tool for online community building. This and the case of Beff Jezos really make a strong argument for not mandating everyone's online id be tied to their real world one.
Nothing ironic at all that a uni student immigrant from a former communist country now living in a monarchy should be an expert on parliamentary procedure of the supposed world champion of democracy.
Maybe the bar is just set super low? The guy started following US politics in 2020 and now he’s a savant.
And isn’t this just normal twitter use? I know I’ve woken up and entered a debate on Twitter and then misspent a morning researching and going back and forth on Twitter.
Or maybe it isn't, and this person is a rare savant?
The article presents a very clear case that it's the latter, but I guess it's much easier for some to dismiss an entire field as inept than to accept that there's a 20-year-old savant somewhere in the UK.
The critique is based upon an implicit, unstated assumption that the UK student is not extraordinary. The conclusion that "the bar is set very low" follows from that.
Note that utltmately, knowing the intricacies of procedures and protocols to find loopholes to abuse in the letter of the law has not been a component of politics until very recently.
That's the thing about implicit things though. You read it as an implicit critique of a UK student, I read it as an implicit critique of US politics being so dumb that a UK student can become an expert in a few short years. Until the OP comments about the actual intention behind their statement we'll never know. This is a whole different discussion though, especially now-a-days when you can get in trouble for "implicit" this and that irrespective of intention.
I personally don't think it's a recent thing for politicians to be looking for loopholes, pretty sure that's one of the main jobs of any politician.
>I read it as an implicit critique of US politics being so dumb that a UK student can become an expert in a few short years.
We both read the same thing.
The thing is, a UK student can't become an expert in a few short years.
This particular one can, because he's a savant.
It's not a critique of the student, it's just devaluing his extraordinary achievement.
If you start with the assumption that the UK student has done something extraordinary, you can't conclude that the Hill staffers are dumb.
To reach that conclusion, you need to assume that Ringwiss didn't do anything beyond what a very motivated person with a strong interest in subject matter could do.
Nope it was a critique of how could a person, even a brilliant person, on their own, in their spare time, become the most knowledgeable entity on these very important matters. Matters that have wall to wall coverage on the news, not just in the US but globally. Where there are all types of researcher, lawyers, politicians, think tanks, journalists, academics, and working in organised teams. So many many qualified and organised eyes are on this. The article even says the lawmakers don’t know what powers they have! I kinda think these are things they should know.
For what it’s worth, I think he might be a brilliant mind, but I also think it’s easy to look brilliant if you learn a bit about an arcane area. My main point was have we made a very important part of democracy arcane when it really shouldn’t be.
It's "normal" Twitter use, but the identity of the average Twitter user does not end up being the speculation of Washington insiders because of their insight.
This Twitter account, and the DC scene reaction to it, is actually a condemnation of our current state of American national politics and government.
People are acting like this guy is some sort of savant. But we're talking about knowledge that a 20 year old UK college student picked up in his spare time by watching TV and reading a few books. It's not rocket science! Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex as what you need to know to build an average office building, something that is being done all over the U.S. every day to a very high level of competence.
The commentary on this Twitter account (including this article) says way more about the people commenting on it. Specifically it reveals how few national politicians, consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some history. All of which is freely available to anyone.
>People are acting like this guy is some sort of savant.
And we have an extensive record that shows that he is one.
>Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex as what you need to know to build an average office building
[Citation needed].
Unless you're both a congressman and a construction worker, this is just an unqualified (i.e., worthless) opinion.
In contrast, the opinion that this guy is some sort of savant is that of professional staff on the Hill (named in the article), and is, by definition, qualified.
>But we're talking about knowledge that a 20 year old UK college student picked up in his spare time by watching TV and reading a few books
You just described every historian which learns from primary sources.
And "watching TV" is a very peculiar way to describe "watching live broadcasts of Congressional hearings and pouring through the archives".
>Specifically it reveals how few national politicians, consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some history.
"I refuse to acknowledge that a 20 year old can be exceptional, so I baselessly assert that literally everyone in the field must be stupid and inept instead"
>The commentary on this Twitter account (including this article) says way more about the people commenting on it.
Indeed it does. And to a larger extent than you seem to be aware of.
>"I refuse to acknowledge that a 20 year old can be exceptional, so I baselessly assert that literally everyone in the field must be stupid and inept instead"
Why not both. An above average (but not savant) 20 year old who appears more exceptional than he is because the professional class he's being compared with really does have a lot of rot.
> the opinion that this guy is some sort of savant is that of professional staff on the Hill (named in the article), and is, by definition, qualified.
"Qualified" based on their personal experience with what is apparently common practice for Congress and its staffers, yes. But that just means that the common practice for Congress and its staffers involves an appalling level of ignorance about the rules and procedures of the very institution they are working for.
To run with the construction analogy, it's as if a bunch of structural engineers were calling a college student on Twitter who isn't even majoring in engineering a "savant" for having and sharing detailed knowledge of how to do load calculations to determine what size I-beams are required for a bridge or a building, based on reading the reference works that describe the details of those calculations. Yes, it would be impressive that a college student not majoring in engineering could gain such a detailed knowledge of structural engineering calculations in their spare time. But it would emphatically not be impressive for the people who are supposed to already have all that knowledge to be calling the college student a "savant".
>But that just means that the common practice for Congress and its staffers involves an appalling level of ignorance about the rules and procedures of the very institution they are working for.&
And what basis do you have to say that their "level of ignorance" is, indeed, "appalling"?
Let me guess, it's the fact that they found the expertise of the 20-year-old useful, isn't it?
Circular logic at its finest.
>To run with the construction analogy,...*
Oh, an unqualified (i.e. worthless) construction analogy, based on zero experience in subject matter. Great.
An analogy can be used to clarify your point (which is unnecessary - it's clear enough), but in itself, it can't be used to argue your point is valid, because you have zero basis to say that this analogy applies.
Maybe he's sharing the equivalent of I-beam sizes. Maybe he's sharing the equivalent of a Space X rocket blueprint.
You don't know which analogy is applicable, because you are not an expert in the field and your opinion is unqualified. And nobody should be convinced by your argument, since it is supported only by the conclusion you're trying to arrive at.
> what basis do you have to say that their "level of ignorance" is, indeed, "appalling"?
Um, the fact that they did not know the rules of their own institution?
If you don't find that appalling, I gotta ask, why not? These are the people who run Congress. It's their job to know these things.
> Circular logic at its finest.
Not at all. Just applying common sense to what people who run an institution ought to know as part of their jobs. See above.
> based on zero experience in subject matter.
Um, actually, no, I have considerable experience in the construction industry. That's why I picked that particular analogy to run with: beacuse I do know what people whose job it is to do things like structural engineering calculations are expected to know, and I can compare that with what my common sense would expect people whose job it is to run Congress would be expected to know.
> nobody should be convinced by your argument
It seems to me that if anyone here is making arguments based on unwarranted assumptions and zero actual information, it's you.
>Um, the fact that they did not know the rules of their own institution? If you don't find that appalling, I gotta ask, why not? These are the people who run Congress. It's their job to know these things.
I'd say that problem is that the rules are too obscure, unclear, complicated, and unsuited for the way they are used today.
It is appalling that we are at that stage, but assuming that the rules are simple, and the staffers are inept is unwarranted.
>Not at all. Just applying common sense to what people who run an institution ought to know as part of their jobs. See above.
Ah, same common sense that would require any lawyer to just know all the laws and precedent.
Similarly, every software engineer just knows the full spec of all programming languages, and in particular = C++, and would not ever need to resort to StackOverflow to look up or ask a question. It's just common sense!
Wait, no, it isn't, and your entire argument boils down to "it's just common sense that I'm right!".
For one, the US Congress is not a common institution, but even if it were, it's just common sense!" isn't even an argument.
>Um, actually, no, I have considerable experience in the construction industry.
The subject matter is congressional rules. You can talk about construction all day long, but your opinions on the subject matter are unqualified and based on zero experience (i.e. worthless).
Again, you aren't even trying to present any basis for why the work of that 20-year-old isn't deep and complex.
>It seems to me that if anyone here is making arguments based on unwarranted assumptions and zero actual information, it's you.
It seems incorrectly. I am basing my opinions on the information presented in the article, and on the qualified opinions of the professionals in the field who, having many years of experience, do think that person is a savant.
Also, a person quoted in the article commented in this very thread, saying essentially the same things as I said above [1].
So, I have a lot of basis for my assumptions, as well as actual information.
> I'd say that problem is that the rules are too obscure, unclear, complicated, and unsuited for the way they are used today.
Then it's the job of the people who run Congress to fix that. Which requires them to know what the rules currently are, so they can figure out how to fix them.
> assuming that the rules are simple
I made no such assumption.
> and the staffers are inept is unwarranted.
I didn't assume the staffers are inept; I concluded it from their observed behavior. I don't see what else I could conclude from the fact that they don't know the rules that it's their job to know.
> same common sense that would require any lawyer to just know all the laws and precedent.
Not off the top of their head, but being able to look them up without having to depend on someone on Twitter, yes. Similarly, the people who run Congress should be able to find this information themselves; they shouldn't have to depend on someone on Twitter to do it.
> every software engineer just knows the full spec of all programming languages
Not all of them, because no software engineer uses all of them. But for the ones you do use, yes, you should have a good working knowledge of their spec, and should be able to look up details when you need to, and not depend on someone on Twitter (or Stack Overflow, for that matter) to do it.
If you're at the stage where you're having to ask people on the Internet about such things, you aren't yet a software engineer. You're just an aspiring one. The people who run Congress are not "aspiring" to that job. They have it. Big difference.
Apparently you have much lower standards than I do for what people are supposed to know as part of their jobs. At least when those jobs are at the level of power and influence of Congress and its staffers. Sure, if you're just writing software for yourself or for a small company, you can get away with asking questions on Stack Overflow a lot. If you're just doing structural calculations for a doll house for your kid to play with, you don't need a PE license.
But we're not talking about that kind of job here. We're talking about the US Congress, the legislative body of the most powerful country in the world. You say the US Congress is not a "common" institution, and indeed it's not: our standards for what its members and staffers should know should be higher than they would be for a "common" institution. If your common sense isn't telling you that, I don't know what else to say: clearly you and I live on different planets if that's the case.
> you aren't even trying to present any basis for why the work of that 20-year-old isn't deep and complex.
I have made no such claim. I am claiming that the work of that 20-year-old should be being done by Congress and its staffers. That's their job. The fact that the work required is "deep and complex" does not excuse Congress and its staffers from doing it.
> the qualified opinions of the professionals in the field who, having many years of experience, do think that person is a savant.
Again, you're missing my point. I'm not saying that the 20-year-old is not a "savant". I'm saying that the fact that Congress and its staffers are calling him one means that they are not doing their jobs. If they were doing their jobs, their response to him would be something like "Wow, you have a level of knowledge of this stuff pretty close to ours." Not "Hey, can we ask you questions because we can't be bothered to do our jobs ourselves?"
>But for the ones you do use, yes, you should have a good working knowledge of their spec, and should be able to look up details when you need to, and not depend on someone on Twitter (or Stack Overflow, for that matter) to do it.
The staffers don't depend on Twitter to do their job, and software engineers don't need to depend on Stack Overflow to use it.
To say that people who ask questions on Stack Overflow aren't yet software engineers is asinine.
>If you're at the stage where you're having to ask people on the Internet about such things, you aren't yet a software engineer. You're just an aspiring one.
If your definition of proficiency is "never asks questions", then your definition is a bad one.
Otherwise, it makes no difference whether questions are asked on the Internet or not.
>If they were doing their jobs, their response to him would be something like "Wow, you have a level of knowledge of this stuff pretty close to ours." Not "Hey, can we ask you questions because we can't be bothered to do our jobs ourselves?"
They are doing their jobs. The responsibility for the job falls on them. And if they can use a resource (an enthusiastic savant, Twitter, reddit, ChatGPT, ...) that allows them to do it faster, they're doing a good job.
As a software engineer, if you are spending an hour on something you could find out by asking in 5 minutes (taking 5 minutes of your time, and 5 minutes of someone else's), you are a bad software engineer, and are wasting your employer's money.
If they can't do their job without Twitter, then I can agree with the rest of what you said.
Sadly, the entire Congress is so dysfunctional that it's very hard to determine whether the staffers do or don't do a good job (and which of these possibilities is a better one).
That's the part which the UK student doesn't seem to get (and which makes me feel the savant label is fitting): knowing all the rules doesn't matter when playing by the rules isn't a goal.
Same goes for having the power which they never intended to use in the first place, because the unwritten rules matter more.
The whole thing about rules is that without a central enforcement mechanism, it's all about whether you have enough clout and chutzpah to use or break a certain rule. Just because a rule exists (and has been enacted before), doesn't mean invoking it isn't free.
It's just cheaper than doing the same thing against the rules.
> > Congressional procedure is not even remotely as complex as what you need to know to build an average office building
> [Citation needed].
We can just compare the books, per the article the Congressional procedures are 1000 pages and the International Building code is 832 pages https://shop.iccsafe.org/2021-international-building-coder.h.... So at first glance building seems easier. But then when you crack it open, you also need to read up on gas, mechanical, plumbing, fire, and energy efficiency, so there is an extra 200+186+270+692+302=1650 pages. So I think it is true - a Congressperson only needs one book, but to build an office building you need 6 books (and probably 6 people, each specialized in a book). Now building a residential house, that is the IRC which is roughly comparable in page count to Congress, and you do see house flipping businesses run by a single well-versed entrepreneur.
As a fellow Brit with an American Studies degree, I follow US news and events to this day with a detached eye that really helps understand it, which I cannot possibly do with the UK, at least not politics, and having formally studied US history, culture, politics, foreign policy, means I know more about it than any of my American friends - so far - and I expect the converse to be true about Americans studying the UK.
This guy, however, is un-fucking-believable, because he's doing this for FUN and he possesses an amazing power that few people have - TO READ THE FINE MANUAL.
It's fascinating how distance encourages both absurd curiosity (“How does that work?”) and some form of detachment (“At least it isn’t personal to me.“).
As a German I started following British politics in the Brexit years, first for the fun of an utterly funny parliamentary culture (“ORDAAAAH!”) – then a few months later I found myself looking into Erskine May. But I'll be never on that guys level, too easily satisfied after a small-ish dose of something different.
I've noticed this in a lot of fields. The people best at making money are often those who have no emotional attachment to it, and treat it just like a number to be maximized. Oftentimes the best surgeons are the ones who don't really care about patients as people (witness the Dr. House trope, or McDreamy on Grey's Anatomy) but rather as bodies to be patched up.
Personally I think my big-company employer is deeply dysfunctional, but I (unfortunately) seem to be relatively good at operating within it, wracking up launches and promos for myself and my team. I suspect this is because I don't try to pretend it's something that it's not: I know that I'm in a fucked up system and nothing I do has any meaning long-term and don't pretend otherwise, which lets me look at things as they actually are and determine my best course of action rationally. A lot of other people are blinded by the halo effect and try to operate within the company as they think it should be, which is self-defeating because that's not reality.
It might be the same for Americans trying to navigate the American political system. We're so blinded by the myths and propaganda that we've been fed since childhood that we can't see how the system actually operates.
I'm American in the UK for the past seven years, and this resonates with me. It's nice to be outside the daily fray and constant social commentary in the US, but still have the ability to watch and participate when I feel like it. The funny thing is, I don't care about UK politics at all... I enjoy learning the procedures but I don't follow the drama.
Another point from the article that resonated with me:
> Another advantage of his geographic distance: Congress generally gavels in around 10 a.m., perfect timing for Surdy, whose classes are just coming to an end at 3 p.m. in the UK.
I absolutely love the UK timezone. It's my favorite part about living here. I work remotely for a global company, and by sitting in the UK, I get significant overlap with people from California all the way through Japan. It's particularly nice for me as a night owl, because I don't mind evening meetings and chats. But I would hate to wake up at 530am like some on the West coast need to do.
Sometimes living in the UK really feels like having a head start on the US... I like to say that I'm geographically GMT, but biologically EST :)
Yes, British politics has been on an absolute roll for entertainment the last few years for anyone not effected by it, but that said, you can never accuse the Brits of ever, ever, losing their own sense of humour about it (Economist & the Liz Truss lettuce comment stands as an absolute masterpiece). And I quite enjoy listening to German news here describing Uk politics in a far more truthful - and expletive-laden - way than the UK press can ("complete fucking shitshow" as one German newscaster labelled it).
Haven't been able to get into German politics in quite the same way, mainly due to my rage against the current hypocrisy, but as my German improves, maybe I'll understand it better.
Some politicians will know a lot more about procedure. Especially if they want to go for a leadership position.
People like Lyndon Johnson knew Senate rules backward. If you could win or lose a critical vote based on some obscure rule last used 30 years ago it was worth learning them.
> “When was the last time a ruling of the chair was overturned on appeal in the House?”
> Less than a minute later, the mysterious account responded with an answer — 1938 — and a decades-old edition of the Congressional Record to prove it.
It's not so much that he knows procedures well, it appears that he has some sort of didactic memory that he has focused on this topic. He would have had to basically already memorized this fact obscure enough that a congressional scholar was tweeting for an answer.
Or he knows how to use the resources available for finding the answer to this question, which is a more useful skill than memorizing facts anyway. The embarrassing part is that congressional aides don't have the same skill. I wonder if they'll stop tagging him in questions now that they know he's just a college student from the UK. Hopefully someone recognizes his talent and hires him as a staffer (there are plenty of Brits working in US government).
I agree, how to use the resources available is an underrated skill. I find an increasing part of the value I add is in being able to find answers in our vendor’s less-than-optimal documentation and search.
I do think the subject of the article has something much deeper going on.
It is the former. The latter is not necessary: lots of those of us with ASD don't need anything close to an idetic memory to hold insane amounts of minutiae about some random topic or other if it happens to be the topic we're deeply interested in
Or perhaps really well trained AI? Until they named him I was expecting that to be the answer. That’s exactly the type of question a well trained LLM could answer, the proof is what gives it away as not AI, as most AIs I know are unable to offer up any sort of evidence to back up any claims they make bec they don’t actually know what they’re saying or why they “believe” something.
Not to mention the fact that he's been pouring through video archives to do his research, and finding the information needed for research is a big part of the work he's been doing (it's not available as readily as one would hope).
I agree, it’s quite the scathing indictment. This is nothing to be proud or excited about. Unfortunately, if there’s one thing politicians lack, it’s shame. Also, what does that say about Georgetown’s program?
> Specifically it reveals how few national politicians, consultants, staffers, reporters, etc. in DC want to do boring-seeming work like reading a procedural manual and some history.
I think Hanlon's Razor is thrown around far too casually in this era/culture....I find it very hard to believe that all of this is mere accidental incompetence.
Surdy first began following American politics during the 2020 election, which he said many of his friends and peers in the UK paid close attention to as well.
An outgrowth of a globally connected information source is the transfer of political interest and influence (beyond pop culture) to other countries in ways that wouldn't have happened in the past. From the Economist in 2022:
British politics is obsessed with America. mps, wonks and journalists gorge on American history and follow its politics in fine detail. They also ape its language. Local elections, when council voters decide who has the privilege of collecting bins and cutting services to pay for social care, are sometimes called “mid-terms”. Parts of Britain are occasionally labelled “flyover country”, even if 90% of the population lives within a four-hour drive of Northampton."
Then there was the Canadian trucker protests, in which some cited their "First Amendment rights":
Tamara Lich, the Alberta woman whose GoFundMe campaign raised over $10 million for the convoy, and her husband had their day in court—and Dwayne Lich said he was innocent, because: “Honestly? I thought it was a peaceful protest and based on my First Amendment, I thought that was part of our rights.”
The judge then asked, “What do you mean, First Amendment? What’s that?”
Because, of course, the First Amendment is part of the U.S. Constitution, not the Canadian Charter.
The British fascination with America is indeed quite fascinating.
I think Britain recently even decided to get a Supreme Court. You have British politicians now talking about the independence of the judiciary* and other philosophical ideas that are present frequently in American discourse but I guess is new for Britain now that they recently got an independent Supreme Court.
*This, by the way, happened in a Prime Minister's Questions thing a few years ago. Jeremy Corbyn asked PM Theresa May if she would respect the "independence of the judiciary" regarding some UK Supreme Court ruling and PM May said she would.
It's not really that surprising. America is the superpower gepolitically aligned to the UK and the importance more so in the face of waning British influence. To put it blunt: 'what happens over there matters over here'.
As for the SCOTUK, they have been effectively independent as Law Lords for decades, appointed for life, unremovable, etc etc. What they got was a title change and a new building and removed from voting on legislation.
The independence of the judiciary stuff has always been the case, it's just rarely been newsworthy until recent cases - we've been doing some fairly fundamental legal restructuring. They've never been influenceable by the government post appointment.
Blackstone wrote approvingly of constitutional arrangements under which ‘each branch [is] armed with a negative power, sufficient to repel any innovation which it shall think inexpedient or dangerous’ (Commentaries, Introduction, § 2). Of course, the branches were different.
The Supreme Court is superficially, by nomenclature, an Americanism. But I am yet to see any convincing argument that its jurisprudence has meaningfully been Americanised. It was in the Appellate Committee, not the Supreme Court, that in R (Jackson) v Attorney General Lord Steyn, Lady Hale and Lord Hope in obiter expressed some doubt as to the Diceyan notion of parliamentary sovereignty. The independence of the Appellate Committee was not new. It was, perhaps, rather casually treated (‘Prologue’, Stevens, The independence of the judiciary) and under-theorised. But no non-law Lord has tried to vote since the 1880s. Reference to judicial independence is hardly a novelty.
Have British jurisprudence and constitutional discourse been Americanised in substance? Perhaps, but you make no, and hardly even advert to, such an argument.
That's my prediction. I have fed some extremely tedious enterprise contracts into ChatGPT and got a nice summary and answers for my questions. It wasn't perfect but with some tuning I think this will work really well.
IME LLMs are decent at summarizing text, I can see how it can help summarize various processes that must be done. I am unsure how it summarizes truly novel things tho, I would assume it might hallucinate more but haven't experimented much.
Not understanding why this is cruel. Let's just say I have more than a passing familiarity with autism, of which special interests are a common feature.
There are many other possible explanations for this person's abilities, and regardless of whether you are correct or not, it is their business. A drive by comment to label them as 'different' is unneeded, unwarranted and in poor taste.
The fact that you so innately equate autistic with “different” that you put it in quotes falsely implying it is in the comment you replied to is far more offensive than anything the person you’re replying to said
I manage that maybe 20% of the time. It's definitely possible.
I could get that much higher if I had a good way to index resources: as-is, I have to resort to exhaustive search when I can't remember an exact phrase, and that can take upwards of half an hour. I'm definitely not on @ringwiss's level.
I find it kind of sad for you that you have not yet met a savant. Spending time with someone that has more than encyclopedic knowledge is very interesting, and even sometimes creepy. But that can be said about any super human ability regardless of the form it takes.
He has an apparent deep understanding of the rules of procedure that govern the House and the Senate, which are very different from one another, and he can keep them straight. I wouldn't have the patience to watch the floor for hours on end, and while I'm sure I could read through the precedents, it's doubtful that I could retain in active memory more than a fraction. I have read the House and Senate rules cover to cover, more than once -- but that's not the same as being able to operationalize them and recall it at an instant, and it's also not the same as digging through the precedents and understanding what they mean. That comes from a lot of practice.
Besides having a particular interest in the topic, my suspicion is Ringwiss has an eidetic memory. He is a remarkable person and I'm glad that he's doing what he does.
In my opinion, the House and Senate rules are so complicated that only a few people can understand them. The procedures are used to gather power in the hands of a few, which undermines their original purpose: to facilitate orderly debate and empower all the members equally. I compare them to Roberts Rules of Order, Revised, which are straightforward enough that most people can grasp them with a reading or two.
As I said, what he's doing is remarkable, but it's also remarkable that few can do what he's doing.