Nicholas Gruen

Latest Episodes:

Amateurs or experts: who should you trust? Jul 22, 2022

Show notes

How much should we defer to expertise, and how do we know who’s an expert and who’s not? How does ‘the system’ know that? How did Kaggle revolutionise not just the way data science was done, but how we recognise expertise in data science. And why does weather forecasting offer the epitome of what I call ‘Socratic expertise’?

As usual, this was a wide-ranging and exciting conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman.

You can find the video here.

The republic: a way forward (and plenty of other things) Jul 08, 2022

Show notes

This was a great conversation with a friend of mine Sam Roggeveen in which Sam solves the dilemma of how to get to a republic once and for all! Sam argues we're mistaking decline in the party system for the decline of democracy.

I think the foundations of democracy have been under attack for a generation or more. We both agree that social media has accelerated the decline. What’s going on in the US is a crucial test for Sam's case.

We both think that citizens’ juries and similar institutions have a lot to offer.

Then Sam comes up with a novel solution to the republican dilemma! Allow the people to choose the president but rather than an election for the president, have them selected by a citizens’ assembly.

We then offer our advice to the government and to the independents. The video can be seen here.

Transparency: It's role in strangling democracy Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

I enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman and our guest James D'Angelo who has campaigned for greater secrecy in the committee stages of Congress. Why would he do that? Surely we need more, not less transparency? Turns out too much could be strangling our democracy. It’s strangling his country’s response to gun violence.

It strangled Australia’s capacity to deal with climate change. And it brought about Brexit against the better judgement of — say — four fifths of the British Parliament. It’s a good discussion though it takes a while to get going. Start at the beginning if you wish, but I’ve set the link above about ten minutes in where we start getting down to it. From there it just gets interestinger and interestinger as Lewis Carroll might have said.

The YouTube video is available here.

Should politics be boring? Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

I enjoyed this conversation with Peyton Bowman. Can you remember the names of any Swiss Prime Ministers? Peyton couldn’t. I couldn’t, and neither, I’m guessing, can you.? The answer is a few minutes in. More generally, what do we get and what do we lose from politics being as entertaining as it is? And why are some of the most dysfunctional social institutions of ours
highly theatrical — like politics and court cases? What’s driving all the dysfunction and what tweaks could be made to improve the situation? We explore these issues, and go on a couple of interesting diversions — Around ‘ground-truthing’ in arguments and the way gender plays out in the recognition of expertise. Also available as a video here.

Once more on democracy Jun 30, 2022

Show notes

Harry Corbett, founder and mover and shaker behind the Intelligence Forum (https://www.intelligence-forums.com/) wrote me a letter (!) mentioning that, on account of encountering me on the net, he would like me to talk to his forum. I suggested that my ideas on democracy would be appropriate and so that's what I talked about. So … for anyone who wants to hear a 25 minute summary of my views and/or listen to an excellent question and answer session lasting nearly twice as long, here's the video.

The video — which can be useful in identifying speakers in the Q&A — can be watched here.

The right to be Heard: Red, green or Amber? Jun 17, 2022

Show notes

Peyton and I recorded this discussion last week with my friend Isabella Perez. It arose from my own dissatisfaction with much of the commentary I was reading. Everyone seemed preoccupied with whose side you should be on and what it all meant for #MeToo. These are of course legitimate questions, but then the commentators’ ideological preferences were no secret, nor was the way the case could be ‘spun’. If a woman is unanimously held by a jury to be lying about domestic violence, then that will set back a movement if one of its slogans is ‘always believe women’. Anyway, have a listen and let us know what you thought of what we made of it all. If you prefer video, the YouTube video is here.

Internalise and compromise or divide and rule: a chat with Leon Gettler Jun 11, 2022

Show notes

A discussion with Leon Gettler on the election of the Albanese Government. I reprise the arguments I set in this essay which I wrote in 2008 just after Kevin Rudd had been elected for government by coalition-building and compromise around solving national problems rather than by divide and rule. The success of the independents in this election means it's very much in Labor's interest to revive that model of governance.

Idols of the modern mind: stragisation, thematisation and theorisation Jun 03, 2022

Show notes

In my essay recently published by the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) I outlined a strategy by which people imagine they’re doing economics, by sounding like an economist with all their talk of trade-offs. But they’re really engaged in a kind of pretend thinking. I call it ‘theorisation’ by analogy with ‘strategisation’ — a term I coined a while back to refer to those portentous ways in which some worthy words are launched upon the world with bold protestations of how they are uniquely suited to current circumstances. We are assured that this thing that’s being said (say the need for wage restraint, or more competition) has ‘never been more important when in fact it’s often been more important. They’re just thoughtful sounding words, but embodying the opposite of thought.

Anyway, this led to my writing up these ideas as idols of the modern mind and to this discussion with Peyton. If you’d like to read the essay, drop me a line on ngruen at gmail I’ll send you access to the full draft essay.

The Iron law of business-as-usual: What is it and can we escape it? Jun 02, 2022

Show notes

Delivered to the Communities in Control conference in 2020 Why is it that new agendas in policy arrive, hold the stage for a few years and, when they are swept away by the next fad, have next to nothing to show for themselves? New Zealand has garnered world attention for its ‘Wellbeing Budget’.

But Australia’s Treasury had a wellbeing framework a decade ago. It was quietly scrapped a few years ago and no one noticed the difference. It looks like New Zealand is heading down a similar path. Likewise, governments around the world — including Australia’s — pitch the idea that NGOs will innovate and governments will fund the successful programs so they can scale. But it almost never happens.

That’s because there’s a catch 22 for would-be innovators, unacknowledged even by those who’d like to help them. In this talk, Nicholas Gruen explains the problem and how we can overcome it.

Here's a link to the video of the presentation — together with slides shown during the presentation.

Include and compromise — don’t divide and conquer: Tendrils of Hope from Australia. May 28, 2022

Show notes

I really enjoyed this conversation with my friend Peyton Bowman which celebrates the possibility that Australia might be able to show the world how to push back against the Trumpian madness.

We tried to turn Peyton's lack of inside knowledge of Australia's electoral system into a feature rather than a bug as I used the conversation to explain to him (and to myself!) the significance I saw in the recent election of a new Labor Government.

I think Australian culture and two specific features of our electoral system make it easier for our politicians to govern from the centre. Now the triumph of a number of independents from the wealthier, previously conservative voting suburbs of Australia’s big cities has swung the pendulum back towards the centre and opened up new opportunities, not just for the country, but for each of us.

And I explain my own plans for making a small contribution to a new and better Australia. The video of the same discussion is here.