The Nonlinear Library LW - "Model UN Solutions" by Arjun Panickssery
Dec 9, 2023
02:27
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: "Model UN Solutions", published by Arjun Panickssery on December 9, 2023 on LessWrong.
When I was in high school, because I was on the history bowl team the teacher who advised the model UN club recruited me to play as their delegate in various "historical committees" like the Roman Senate or 1789 French Assembly. I never engaged in any normal committees since you couldn't undertake false flag attacks or convince the Pope to excommunicate other delegates.
In most committees, as far as I can tell, players represent countries trying to pass a resolution addressing some topic like climate change that's decided beforehand. An award is given to the player the facilitator decides is the "best delegate" - an unwritten combination of speaking ability, social dominance, and accurately representing (or at least not fatally misunderstanding) your assigned country's positions and interests.
I often make a mental metaphor about "model UN discussions" and "model UN solutions." Model UN discussions revolve around people expecting to be rewarded for making many remarks, even though their actual positions could be expressed simply or don't permit much elaboration.
This leads to the "model UN solutions," which have a few types, e.g.
Applause lights: You could just say buzzwords or unobjectionable trivialities ("When addressing the climate change question we should consider the interests of all the relevant stakeholders. We should apply neither an {extreme viewpoint} nor {the opposite extreme}")
Unspecified solutions: You could give very little information that uniquely identifies a specific change from the status quo in the listener's mind. At the extreme you get a lot of remarks of the form "To address the problem we should {devote resources} to {solving the problem}" where the bracketed parts are replaced with phrases that aren't much more specific ("To address climate change we should set up task forces to identify the best technological and policy approaches")
Tradeoff-ignorant solutions: You could even give a directional suggestion but avoid any consideration of the relevant costs or tradeoffs ("We should fund a new educational outreach program related to climate change").
You could imagine responses that try to identify empty remarks:
Ask whether anyone holds the opposite of the remark.
Ask how a proposed solution is specifically different from the status quo.
Ask who loses out in a proposal (or how resources will be reallocated). Sometimes no one loses out but more often this is just an unstated tradeoff.
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org
When I was in high school, because I was on the history bowl team the teacher who advised the model UN club recruited me to play as their delegate in various "historical committees" like the Roman Senate or 1789 French Assembly. I never engaged in any normal committees since you couldn't undertake false flag attacks or convince the Pope to excommunicate other delegates.
In most committees, as far as I can tell, players represent countries trying to pass a resolution addressing some topic like climate change that's decided beforehand. An award is given to the player the facilitator decides is the "best delegate" - an unwritten combination of speaking ability, social dominance, and accurately representing (or at least not fatally misunderstanding) your assigned country's positions and interests.
I often make a mental metaphor about "model UN discussions" and "model UN solutions." Model UN discussions revolve around people expecting to be rewarded for making many remarks, even though their actual positions could be expressed simply or don't permit much elaboration.
This leads to the "model UN solutions," which have a few types, e.g.
Applause lights: You could just say buzzwords or unobjectionable trivialities ("When addressing the climate change question we should consider the interests of all the relevant stakeholders. We should apply neither an {extreme viewpoint} nor {the opposite extreme}")
Unspecified solutions: You could give very little information that uniquely identifies a specific change from the status quo in the listener's mind. At the extreme you get a lot of remarks of the form "To address the problem we should {devote resources} to {solving the problem}" where the bracketed parts are replaced with phrases that aren't much more specific ("To address climate change we should set up task forces to identify the best technological and policy approaches")
Tradeoff-ignorant solutions: You could even give a directional suggestion but avoid any consideration of the relevant costs or tradeoffs ("We should fund a new educational outreach program related to climate change").
You could imagine responses that try to identify empty remarks:
Ask whether anyone holds the opposite of the remark.
Ask how a proposed solution is specifically different from the status quo.
Ask who loses out in a proposal (or how resources will be reallocated). Sometimes no one loses out but more often this is just an unstated tradeoff.
Thanks for listening. To help us out with The Nonlinear Library or to learn more, please visit nonlinear.org