Turtleocracy

[keiferski]

This seems like an overly-complex derivation of Isaiah Berlin's concept of The Hedgehog and the Fox:

Berlin...divides writers and thinkers into two categories: hedgehogs, who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea (examples given include Plato, Lucretius, Dante Alighieri, Blaise Pascal, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Henrik Ibsen, Marcel Proust and Fernand Braudel), and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences and for whom the world cannot be boiled down to a single idea (examples given include Herodotus, Aristotle, Desiderius Erasmus, William Shakespeare, Michel de Montaigne, Molière, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Aleksandr Pushkin, Honoré de Balzac, James Joyce and Philip Warren Anderson).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hedgehog_and_the_Fox

[edelwax]

Venkat Rao thinks it's more the opposite, that turtle is a interesting refactoring of Berlin

https://twitter.com/vgr/status/1217153866447212544

[wk0]

Is the Hedgehog and the Fox just an overly-complex (but more concrete) derivation of monism vs pluralism?

[derefr]

I thought this would be fluff, but this is a genuinely interesting schema for modelling research-type organizations that I haven’t seen before. (If you think it’s “just X”, the page does spend some time clearly compare-and-contrasting with anything you might think to analogize it to. It’s not quite any existing thing.) It probably is consultingware of some form, but I don’t mind scavenging insight from a predatory situation if there’s some there to be taken.

One thing I would like to see, though, is a list of historical evidence that this paradigm does better than the standard academic “publish papers to gain notoriety” paradigm. Turtleocracy has been tried before, I’m sure, even if by accident—there are only so many relationship graphs a small set of humans can end up in. I’m pretty sure some private research organizations work[ed] like this?

But I’d like an analysis of how much their working-like-this contributed to their success or lack thereof. It’d be interesting to contrast different private research institutions, e.g. {Bell Labs, RCA Labs, maybe Oak Ridge?} on their comparative Turtleocracy-ness vs their comparative “throughput” in pumping out new foundational knowledge (which I assume is the goal here.)

[edelwax]

Yes, right, Turtleocracy is partly modeled on PARC, Bell Labs, etc. But I don't begin to know how to answer this question about "how much their working-like-this contributed to their success or lack thereof" -- are you an organizational sociologist? If you have some methodological ideas here, I'd love to hear them.

I'm not sure where people are getting the consultingware idea. We don't have any consulting relationships with businesses at all. Guess our copy is misleading somewhere?

[seemslegit]

Ah yes another shot at the kind of people vulnerable to the "organizations aligning themselves around a detached yet critically objective outsider while enabling them with their expertise and ideas and crediting them with the outcome, no hard skills required, just your own innate passion and curiosity !" fantasy.

[foo_barington3]

This reads as coming from the disgruntled perspective of a 'turtle' who resents the strong opinions of 'rabbits' and the lack of experimentalism of 'birds'. Little consideration is given to the value of the other animals except as an inferior contrast to the turtles. An optimal solution would not be a 'Turtleocracy' (tyranny of turtles) but a balanced ecosystem where different strengths are given their due, and no group has tyranny over another.

[aidenn0]

From the first linked page[1]:

> Most organizations should not be turtleocracies. It depends on what your organization wants to do, and whether it's never been done before.

> 1. When you must do things well, in the standard way, you need experts. You can put them together into an expert bureaucracy, a consultancy, etc.

> 2. When most things can go poorly, but you hope some things work out, you can use people with ideas and energy without needing turtles. You can put them together into a do-ocracy or startup ecosystem.

> 3. But, when you must do things well, in a way that's never been done before, you need "takeless" people, without strong ideas, who will slowly experiment over years. You can put them together into a Turtleocracy.

1: https://www.notion.so/Is-Turtleocracy-Right-for-Your-Organiz...

[moron4hire]

Why do we have to zoomorphize concepts like this? Scrum had it, with the chickens and pigs. To me, it just muddies the understanding of the thing, because you have to remember some story or joke about the origin of the specific zoomorphization. It's also really hard to get people to take the process seriously when the process treats itself like a children's story.

[danharaj]

Everything is a metaphor, you probably prefer inanimate metaphors (like channels, pipes, scripts, keys, libraries, etc.) But metaphors involving animals being considered more childish and less serious is purely due to your cultural milieu.

[Xophmeister]

This model doesn't seem too far removed from academia; at least in the "ideal" sense, ignoring the realities of attracting funding and academic politics. The turtle would go from PhD student to tenured professors; rabbits might be undergrads or non-academic faculty staff; birds might be people like librarians and lab techs.

[Matticus_Rex]

I don't think that even works in the ideal -- academics in my experience are something like 45% rabbits and 45% birds, with a small cadre of turtles who manage to survive the politics and bs of academia because their research output is just so strong.

[codezero]

What even is this? Why does it seem to lead to a paid $2000 course? [0] What is the goal, and who is involved? It seems very high minded and deep on the surface, but what are the expected outcomes and timelines of this, system?

[0] https://www.notion.so/HS101-Deluxe-9c92efe621a04d2886e2986ce...

[seltzered_]

I think this was shared on HN without context.

This work was started by Joe Edelman, whose been a part of some of the efforts to help people working in different domains design things with less toxic/addictive aspects (e.g. tech, social networking companies). He arguably prototyped and called for action now being done from bigcos in their “digital wellbeing” and “screen time” efforts.

See http://nxhx.org , try reading some of his earlier essays.

[seemslegit]

It's called a coaching scam

[codezero]

I think I found some of the answers here:

https://www.notion.so/Human-Systems-62a526124acc40d3aa15bc8e...

Also an FAQ: https://www.notion.so/FAQ-f4f7ad008c5043f6946e43544b328ecd

[smacktoward]

All those words, and it never answers the most pressing question: is this philosophy turtley enough for the Turtle Club?

[sosilkj]

Is Notion affiliated with Somalia in some way? Or are companies just picking TLDs out of a hat at this point?

[siphium]

I love notion as a tool but it seems like one of those things people will be crying about in a few years if we continue to put all this valuable information solely in their hands. (yes i know you can export but it doesn't preserve the awesome format they have which is really the point)

[tomp]

Really? Browsing through this site a bit completely turned me off Notion... like, the page is so slow to load, as if the rendering was happening on the client side, not the server side... Can't they just generate & cache the HTML and serve it?

Edit: they also hijack Ctrl-click which I consider extra shitty and non-user-friendly.

[femiagbabiaka]

I know it’s likely not the intent, but this reads a little like raison d'être for McKinsey.

[svaha1728]

the wolveocracy?

[pjc50]

Someone's very annoyed with Twitter's tendency to produce "hot takes"..

[PragmaticPulp]

These mental models can be an interesting perspective, but please take them with a grain of salt. The more branding, marketing, cute names, and emojies applied to a mental model, the more you should be suspicious.

This "Turtleocracy" model might help bring some insight or inspiration in certain challenging environments, but be careful about assuming you're in a "Turtleocracy" or stereotyping people into "Rabbit" or "Bird". It's tempting to reach for these systems and stereotypes when you're in conflict with someone because it gives you a sense of having the upper hand. Ironically, doing so will turn you into the very person this article warns about in the section about Tyranny of People with "Takes". Always be on the look out for signs that you're wrong or that you've misunderstood the situation.

In my experience, it's healthy to have a variety of different models and perspectives through which you can view situations. It's not healthy, however, to try to force every situation to fit your favorite mental model. When you all have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Don't be that guy.

[edelwax]

Strongly agree!

[forgotmypw16]

Blank page...

http://archive.is/ly6T4

[edelwax]

Hi, I'm one of the creators of turtleocracy. I'll be responding to questions below.

[viach]

Just imagine what a corrupted group of turtle + rabbit + bird could achieve in such an organization.

[edelwax]

Yes, for sure. This is a known weakness, mentioned on the page. We hope to test ways to make turtleocracy robust against sociopathic conspiracies and fake turtles over the next year.

[pow_ext]

Wow, first Notion article i've seen here, that platform is so great, i'm so happy :)

[seemslegit]

I wonder if this can be rephrased in terms of walruses, carpenters and oysters

[RcouF1uZ4gsC]

To continue with the example, many times turtles when slowly crossing the highway of innovation get run over by the trucks of disruption that they did not see when they started to cross the highway.

[thisoneworks]

https://www.notion.so/Fundraising-c5092becfe074069b8252fb866... <- tl;dr it's a startup teaching stuff to other people/companies/startups.