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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (389639)	11/24/2018 11:09:57 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Respond to of 543798

Political science and many other social disciplines have much to learn from modern IT and computer science. Unlike what most people think, modern IT is not as logical as algebra. There is far more cultural dimensions and social work involved than non-IT people think. This is one of the reasons behind the spectacular failures of early IT outsourcing to India and China; the MBAs thought that programming is programming and they can just ship it anywhere. But the cultural aspects aside, there are also very hardcore social aspects involved. When you have to write over a million lines of code involving a lot of people with different perspectives, agendas, and ambitions, and fights over budgets while the decision as to what to make is a moving target - you have the makings of all the issues that you deal with in politics. So how does the IT industry manages to keep it together (or at least do so 10x better than most other social activities)? We rely on two seemingly opposite and complementary tools: Frameworks and Architectural Patterns. A framework in IT is a pre-fabricated incomplete program that you fill in with your own code. In other words, the structure of what you want to achieve is perfected well in advance and all you have to do is to customize it by filling it in with the routine that meets your needs. Architectural patterns are the opposite of (or counterpart of) Frameworks. They are a set of bundled steps and small-scale playbooks that you have perfected and will put together to safely (and quickly) achieve bigger programs. In building construction, they could be as simple as simple as insisting that doors should open to the inside (this is so that you don't hit the people in the hallway when you open a door). I drew the example from construction because it is more accessible that programming patterns - but IT patterns serve the same purpose as building codes and building architecture patterns. What do these mean in concrete terms for a political party? It means that you think about what you want to achieve - say removing gerrymandering. Then you work backward as to what that entails at a state level and at a federal level. And I am not just talking about the legality of it or the process of the getting it done. I am talking about the end-to-end process including how to market it to the masses and how to compensate for various interests and overcome stumbling blocks. You make your playbook and then fill it in with the right people who can shoehorn it for the various situations - this would be responding to the realities on the ground. My point is that you cannot build a great cathedral by wringing it. You need a good blueprint. But you also cannot build a complete blueprint if you don't know how much land and budget you have. So you build a lose scalable prototype and perfect the art of various building blocks. Then when you get the chance, you can hit the ground running...think of Dick Cheney and his gang - they knew what kind of man they needed in the office and what kind of events could play into their hands. They had all those building blocks and large plans in place before they approached GWB. This has been one of my core debates with John. I've been saying that you cannot beat something with nothing and that the party needs proper platforms and frameworks. And he's been saying that it can't happen until Dems win the Presidency and that everything should be in flux and responsive to local whims till then.