Guest opinion by Neil Lock
Today, I’m going to look at two diametrically opposed ways of thinking, and at the practitioners of those two ways. One way, I call bottom up; the other, top down.
Bottom up thinking is like the way we build a house. Starting from the ground, we work upwards, using what we’ve done already as support for what we’re working on at the moment. Top down thinking, on the other hand, starts out from an idea that is a given. It then works downwards, seeking evidence for the idea, or to add detail to it, or to put it into practice.
These two opposed methods bear on far more than just the way we think. The idea of bottom up versus top down can be applied to many dimensions of our lives. It can be applied to our overall world view, and to our views on religion. To how we seek knowledge. To our ethical and political views. To our conception of government and law. To our opinions on economics and environment. To how we communicate with others. To our views on education and media; and many more. Bottom up versus top down isn’t a single scale of (say) 0 to 100, but a multi-dimensional space, in which each individual’s position is represented on many different axes.
Some individuals, like me, seek to use the bottom up method in all or almost all of these dimensions. Others may take a predominantly top down view, or even an extreme top down one. Yet others may apply bottom up thinking in some dimensions, and top down in others.
For brevity, I’ll introduce the phrases “bottom upper” and “top downer” to mean individuals who practise these two methods. Mostly, I’ll be considering only one dimension at a time. In which case, the bottom upper is someone near one end of the scale in that dimension, and the top downer is someone near the other. But at the end of the essay, I’ll take a look at an overall measure of bottom up versus top down thinking.
I’ll give a couple of historical examples. John Locke, my 17th-century hero and almost namesake, and from whose writings I’ll use a few quotes in this essay, was a fine example of a bottom upper. His politics was forward looking and genuinely liberal. While he was a staunch Protestant, his religious views were tolerant for his time. And he had among his friends several of the finest scientists of the day. In contrast, Josef Stalin was an extreme top downer. He set out to impose his style of communism on the Soviet people, regardless of the consequences to those people. And he and his policies ended up causing as many as 20 million deaths of innocents.
Thinking
The most fundamental level at which bottom up versus top down applies is the way in which the individual thinks.
The bottom up thinker seeks to build, using his senses and his mind, a picture of the reality of which he is a part. He examines, critically, the evidence of his senses. He assembles this evidence into percepts, things he perceives as true. Then he pulls them together and generalizes them into concepts. He uses logic and reason to seek understanding, and he often stops to check that he is still on the right lines. And if he finds he has made an error, he tries to correct it.
The top down thinker, on the other hand, has far less concern for logic or reason, or for correcting errors. He tends to accept new ideas only if they fit his pre-existing beliefs. And so, he finds it hard to go beyond the limitations of what he already knows or believes.
World view and religion
Bottom up versus top down orientation also contributes much to the individual’s world view, including his view on religion. When considering whether humans are naturally good or bad, for example, the bottom upper will look into himself, and judge what he finds. He is, therefore, likely to conclude that (occasional lapses notwithstanding) he himself is naturally good. Thus, other human beings must be naturally good, too. And he sees those that behave badly as aberrations; John Locke dubbed them “noxious creatures” and “degenerate men.” Further, the bottom upper probably thinks that he has free will, and others do too. And consequently, each of us has personal responsibility for the effects on others of our voluntary actions.
In religion, he may or may not believe in a god. While some bottom uppers follow one form or other of religion, many (including me) end up as agnostics. And some go further, towards atheism. But the bottom upper has little or no desire to impose his personal religious preferences on others. And so, he reaches a view similar to that I encapsulate in what I call Neil’s First Precept of Religion: “If you let me have my religion (or lack of it), I’ll let you have yours.”
The top downer, on the other hand, is often too lazy to work out his world view for himself, and prefers to take a ready-made world view from others. He is quite likely to think that humans are naturally bad, perhaps because he has been told so by parents or religious instructors. Top downers (particularly Marxists) also have a tendency to see the universe as deterministic, and therefore to deny the existence of free will and so personal responsibility. And in religion, top downers often have a desire to, and many will try to, impose on others their own orthodoxy.
Seeking truth
The bottom upper sees truth as objective, independently of what people happen to think about particular truths. As a result, he believes that we can discover truths. A particular truth or fact may of course be unknown, or poorly understood, or wrongly apprehended, at a particular time. But all truths can, in principle at least, be discovered.
The bottom upper seeks out, and evaluates, the evidence he can find on his subject. He tries to investigate the facts critically. He cultivates and improves his bullshit meter. He uses it to detect things that don’t look quite right, that don’t add up, that seem to contradict facts he knows or believes, or which may repay further investigation. And he values science, and the scientific method which lies at its heart.
In contrast, many top downers hold that facts can be different for different individuals, groups or cultures; and that feelings are often more important than facts. In this view, there is no such thing as objective truth. The top downer can thus ignore or deny evidence, when it fails to fit his pre-conceived notions. He is often unwilling to change his mind, even when presented with a strong case for doing so. He may find little value in science. Or he may even try to pass off as science ideas which are not, in reality, worthy of the name scientific.
Ethics
The bottom up thinker can conceive that, among the moral rules in diverse cultures, there is a core that is (or should be) common to all. He is attracted to the idea of moral universalism. That is, that what is right for one to do, is right for another to do in similar circumstances, and vice versa. And it’s in this sense, he thinks, that all human beings are equal. He doesn’t know what, precisely, the ethical core should be; and he’s aware that it’s a hard problem. But if he has a particular interest in ethics, he will seek to understand and to elicit this core as best he can.
I myself have thought about this issue for many years. The ethical core, as I understand it, begins with three ideas: peacefulness, honesty and respect for others’ rights. I’ve made attempts to list the rights, and I know my list is nowhere near perfect as yet. But they include fundamental rights like life and property. They include what I call rights of non-impedance, like freedom of movement and of association. And they include the presumption of freedom – that, if there is no good reason to prohibit something, then it must be OK to do it – and a right to self-defence. The core must also include the notion of justice. I conceive it thus: “Everyone deserves to be treated, over the long term and in the round, at least as well as he or she treats others.”
Further, the core must include a clear idea of personal responsibility. For example: We should not intentionally do unjust harm to others. We should compensate those to whom we inadvertently or unavoidably do unjust harm. And we should strive to be independent, and not to let ourselves become a drain on others. Moreover, we must always act in good faith. When we have made promises to others, we must strive to keep our side of the bargain, as long as the other party keeps his. And if we choose to have children, we must take responsibility for bringing them up and educating them until they can function fully as human beings.
I recognize, however, that other bottom uppers are likely to have different conceptions of the ethical core. This isn’t “settled science” yet. We must, therefore, be tolerant of those with different ideas, as long as they are equally tolerant towards us. And our motto, in the final analysis, must be: “live and let live.”
In contrast, many top downers are moral relativists. They deny that there are any ethical rules which apply to everyone. Further, some maintain that right and wrong are merely cultural tastes. Some of them run aground on the libertine Scylla of “anything goes.” Others, perhaps most, let themselves be sucked into the authoritarian Charybdis of “might makes right.” They deny moral equality, holding that some (rulers) should have moral rights over and above others (subjects). In place of moral equality, many promote the conceit of equality of outcome for all. And they not only deny real rights, like property and freedom of movement and of association, but also wrongly promote aspirations like social security and “free” education to the status of rights.
Moreover, top downers are very often dishonest. They seem to have no shame about lying or misleading, or failing to deliver on their promises. And they often act in bad faith, too.
Top downers also like to deny the idea of objective or individual justice, substituting for it “social justice” or some other caricature of justice. They often duck personal, individual responsibility for what they do, and seek to evade accountability. Instead, they try to claim that some collective “we” bears responsibility for the ills of the world. This frequently leads them to behave as hypocrites. For example, promoting policies that aim to force others to make sacrifices, but failing to make any such sacrifices themselves.
Society, community and fellowship
For the bottom upper, the fundamental unit of society is the individual. The family is important, too. For the family is the smallest social unit which can survive indefinitely. Beyond the family, when individuals associate, the process must be voluntary and bottom up. As Herbert Spencer put it: “Society exists for the benefit of its members, not the members for the benefit of society.”
The bottom up thinker feels community with those, who behave civilly and cordially towards him. He prefers the company of those who, like him, seek truth and strive to obey basic moral rules such as peacefulness, honesty and respect for rights. So, he seeks to judge others not by who they are, but by what they do, how they behave and what they say. Thus, he cares about his fellow human beings; that is, those who behave both as convivial human beings and as his fellows. And he prefers to associate and to trade with these people, rather than with top downers. Further, he knows that everyone is different. So, he strives to be tolerant of differences in received characteristics such as race, religion or nationality, and in lifestyle preferences.
The top downer, on the other hand, tends towards collectivism. He thinks that individuals should be subordinated to society (with or without a capital S). He expects people to be altruistic, and to sacrifice themselves for the sake of others. He is prone to judging people by characteristics such as their race, their received religion, their nationality or their political affiliations. He cares mainly or exclusively for those who share whichever of these characteristics are important to him. He is often intolerant of those who are different from others. And he has little time or respect for bottom up thinkers.
Politics
The bottom upper may be indifferent to politics. Or, perhaps, he may think of himself as a liberal, in the true sense of the word. That is, someone who desires the maximum freedom for everyone, consistent with being required to behave in a civil manner. Or he may think of himself as a conservative, one who is generally happy with tried and tested ways of doing things. But he doesn’t, as a rule, support the imposition of political agendas on people. And if he votes at all, he tends to do so for what he perceives as the lesser of two, or the least of several, evils. Further, the bottom upper usually has little desire for power over others. Thus he has no time for politics as it is practised today. And he may well hold politics, and those that take part in it, in contempt.
In contrast, the top downer tends to take a positive view of politics in general, and to support a political party or parties. His reasons may be ideological, selfish, or both. Many top downers are inclined to become active for their chosen Causes and agendas. They may favour ideas generally rated as on the left, for example: Socialism or communism. Egalitarianism and welfare-statism. Health fascism and social engineering. Social justice warfare. Suppression of capitalism, and perhaps rejection of property rights. Or ideas commonly seen as on the right, such as: Extreme nationalism. Racism. Religious or social conservatism. Fascism. Control of the economy by large, privileged corporations. Military interventionism. The top downer may combine such ideas with other, newer agendas like identity politics, political correctness and environmentalism.
Most top downers, even if they don’t much want personal power over others, still like to see their agendas imposed on people, particularly on those they don’t like. And those, that do have a desire to wield power, are naturally attracted to politics. As a result, the great majority of politicians today, even in democracies, are top downers. And thus, even in a democracy, we bottom uppers and our views are all but completely unrepresented.
Government, law and justice
The bottom upper generally recognizes that government can be valuable. But its remit must be strongly circumscribed. He may, for example, agree with my list of three, and only three, valid functions of government. These are: First, to maintain peace. Second, to defend the rights and freedoms of every individual among the governed. And third, to resolve disputes justly. Moreover, for the bottom upper, government must be no more than an unbiased umpire. And it must be as small as possible; no larger, or more obtrusive, than it needs to be to fulfil its remit.
The bottom upper knows also that the rule of law can be valuable, as long as the law is consistent with, and no broader than, the common ethical core of civilized behaviour. And he can agree with John Locke that: “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.”
He wants justice to be objective, impartial and individual. Not only must Lady Justice’s scales weigh accurately the evidence and arguments on both sides of each case. But also, justice must fairly balance the interests and desires of each individual or group against the interests and desires of others. Thus everyone should be treated, in the round, as they treat others; and according to what they do, not who they are. And every individual should receive, as far as is feasible, what he deserves. Those that have done unjust wrongs should be made to compensate their victims. And they may also suffer criminal punishment if their acts were greedy, or malicious, or irresponsible beyond the bounds of reason.
The bottom upper also holds that government should never violate rights or freedoms unless strictly necessary in order to deliver its remit; for example, to arrest a criminal suspect to bring him to trial. And any such violations of rights must be kept to the minimum. Further, what a non-criminal individual pays for government should be in proportion to the benefit he receives from it, neither more nor less. Just as, for example, what an individual pays for home contents insurance is in proportion to the sum insured. As John Locke put it: “It is true governments cannot be supported without great charge, and it is fit everyone who enjoys his share of the protection should pay out of his estate his proportion for the maintenance of it.”
The top downer, on the other hand, likes big, active government. He wants government to take on functions like education, health care, transport and insurance, none of which have anything to do with its proper remit. He is also comfortable with the idea of a ruling class – maybe including him or his soulmates – having a right to rule over people in a particular geographical area.
In contrast to law, he favours legislation. He thinks that, just because some group of politicians agree on some putative law, that gives them a right to have their minions enforce it, irrespective of its rightness or wrongness. Moreover, he may well deny the validity of objective, individual justice. And he may promote instead fatuous ideas like social justice, environmental justice or some ill defined idea of fairness.
The top downer often sees government as a tool to achieve the ends of the particular ideology or agenda he favours. He condones arbitrary violations of rights and freedoms by governments, as long as they are done for a cause he believes in. And he not only condones, but applauds, taxation that re-distributes wealth from those who justly earn it to government itself, to its cronies, and to those it seeks to bribe in order to gain their support.
Economics
The bottom upper is not only a bottom up thinker, but a bottom up doer, too. He strives, to the best of his abilities, to be economically productive and independent. He favours the economic free market, which he sees as the best way to achieve the common good; that is, the good of every individual who is willing to put in the effort to be productive. He abhors any kind of restriction on the free market, because such restrictions stifle the abundance of opportunity which he desires for everyone. And he may well favour the culture of small companies over large ones.
In the economy, the people who actually get the jobs done, and so create wealth, are mostly bottom uppers. Some of them work with their hands or with machinery: for example, farmers, industrial workers or artisans. Others create in a more intellectual way: for example computer programmers, mathematicians and some writers. Yet others, such as doctors, do a bit of both. Even architects and accountants are often bottom uppers. Counter-intuitively, bottom uppers can also be good, if often reluctant, managers of people. This is partly because they are usually objective; and partly because they often have a natural empathy with people as individuals. They know that each individual is different, and seek to bring out the best from each of them.
In contrast, those top downers who work in the private sector tend to prefer the top down culture of large corporations. Not being natural doers, they can only succeed through other people. And so, they seek to rise in their organizations. Many of them like company politics and scheming, and aspire to be “snakes in suits” and reach the top corporate level. And some of them treat the people they manage with contempt.
Government jobs, too, attract top downers. They often like to exercise power, and to plan and regulate other people’s lives. And if their jobs are tax funded, they only have to account to higher-ups in the bureaucracy; they don’t have to account to the people who are actually paying for what they do. Another profession that attracts top downers is academe. There have long been many top downers in humanities departments at universities. And recently, they have been increasing even in the supposedly hard sciences. Such positions can bring top downers not only public respect, but also a bully pulpit from which they can peddle their agendas.
Environment
For the bottom upper, the Earth is a home and garden for the human race. The portions of the planet, which we own as individuals or groups, are ours, to be used as we see fit. And our job as a species is to make the best home and garden we can, for every human being worthy of the name. To that end, the planet’s resources, animal, vegetable, mineral and other, are there to be used wisely. They’re our bootstrap to a better world. And those that seek to prevent others making wise use of them are seeking to curtail, or even to extinguish, human civilization.
The bottom upper sees only one valid way to address environmental issues. And that is, to direct on to the matter the cold light of objective reason. To dig into the facts. To do precise, unbiased science, without any political agenda. To assess costs and benefits accurately and objectively, for everyone. And above all, to keep to the true and original precautionary principle: “First, do no harm.” Therefore it is always the responsibility of those, who want others to make changes, to prove their case beyond all reasonable doubt. And those accused of causing environmental damage should never be put in the impossible position of having to prove a negative.
In total contrast, environmental top downers like to intone mantras such as “the earth is not ours” and “sustainable development.” They make scary but unfounded accusations about, for example, humans causing catastrophic climate change, seriously polluting the air, or extinguishing species. They misuse science, and try to cover up their misuses. They endlessly repeat pre-conceived talking points that are without substance. And they call those, who disagree with them, nasty names like “deniers.”
But perhaps the most obvious failing of environmental top downers is the arrant hypocrisy of the prominent among them. Take Al Gore, who tells us we should cut our energy use, yet whose own electricity consumption is 20 or more times the average. Or Prince Charles, who demonizes carbon dioxide emissions from cars and planes, yet himself is chauffeured around in limos and goes on holiday by private plane. As Oscar Wilde asked: “And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves?”
Psychology
The bottom upper knows that he’s not perfect. He can, at times, be unpleasant towards others; particularly when they oppose him on his hot button issues. But as a rule, he tries to behave in a cordial and reasonable manner.
In contrast, top downers – particularly those whose top down views span several dimensions – often show some, or even many, of the symptoms of sociopathy or psychopathy. They may be arrogant, and think they have a right to tell other people how to behave. Their lack of respect for truth may lead them to lie or mislead. Their lack of a strong moral sense may lead them to be insincere, selfish and manipulative, unscrupulous or dishonest. Their lack of concern for the individual can lead them to fail to show empathy or sensitivity towards other people, and even to treat people ruthlessly and without remorse. It can also lead them to behave recklessly; especially when other people, not them, will be expected to bear the consequences of their actions. They may be parasites, and live off others without delivering anything worthwhile in return; most of all, when their jobs are tax funded. And their lack of a sense of personal responsibility can lead them to try to deny wrongdoing, and to evade accountability for their actions.
It’s no coincidence, I think, that high ranking corporate officials include a greater proportion of sociopaths than the population as a whole. Nor that the meme “politicians are psychopaths” has acquired the traction it has. And here’s the reason: they’re both top downers.
Communication
The bottom upper strives to be honest in how he communicates with others. He tries to tell the truth, to the best of his knowledge and belief. He tries to be polite, even if he doesn’t always succeed. He generally respects others’ freedom of speech, and their right to differ from his ideas. When he disagrees, he does his best to respond with logic and reason. If he has to go on the attack, he attacks the message, not the messenger. And, once convinced that he has made an error, he is willing to accept the fact, and move on.
The top downer, on the other hand, likes to parrot the party line, without regard for its truth. This explains why, as Terry Pratchett pithily put it: “A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.” For it’s much easier and quicker to parrot a lie than to separate out truth from untruth. Moreover, the top downer often repeats the same dubious arguments again and again in slightly different guises. When he is wrong, he almost never accepts it. He projects his own failings on to others, for example by calling his opponents “deniers” when he is the one denying the truth. If he can’t shoot down the message, he will try to shoot the messenger instead. When he fails to get his message across, he will often shout louder. And if all else fails, he will try to shut down the freedom of speech of those who argue against him.
Education and media
Young children start their lives thinking bottom up. Until they have acquired language, they have no other way of making sense of the world. And they have a natural curiosity and a desire to learn. Some retain this curiosity throughout their lives; others, unfortunately, lose it.
The bottom upper sees education as a process of nurturing this natural curiosity. For him, education should do exactly what the word “educate” means; it should lead out the human being from the child. It should teach him to think for himself. It should teach him how to learn, and thus give him the tools to teach himself. And it should encourage him to seek information, in whatever media it is available. To evaluate it, and make judgements on it. And to reject, or at least to try to subtract out the biases from, “information” which is politically charged, or doesn’t measure up to his standards of accuracy and honesty.
In contrast, the top downer sees education as, at best, preparing an individual for life in a particular culture. But more often, in the hands of top downers education becomes a process of indoctrination, to turn the child away from his natural bottom up mode and make him into a top down thinker. And this may even turn him in later life into a peddler of top down thinking. Moreover, top downers tend to see the media, not as the source of reliable information it ought to be, but as a means of influencing and even controlling people’s thinking right through their lives. And some of them learn how to make use of the media to spread their own top down messages; including messages that are politically charged, lies, propaganda and so called fake news.
The great divide
It’s plain that, in every one of the dimensions I’ve looked at here, there’s a big divide between bottom uppers and top downers. But different people often think in different ways in different dimensions. Many academics, for example, can think bottom up within their specialities, but when it comes to politics and government, they think top down. I see a need, therefore, for an overall measure of bottom up versus top down. An approach such as rating each dimension separately, then adding up the ratings and dividing by the number of dimensions, is probably over-simple. But however the measuring is done, it’s plain that there’s still a big, big divide.
We are living in a time when virtually every powerful institution in the world is run by top downers. For example: big governments, big corporations, the EU and the UN, big media, and much of academe. They are run, not by the people for the people, but by top downers for top downers; or even by sociopaths for sociopaths.
In this system, we bottom uppers don’t get a look in. Even though we are the honest, productive people of the world; we are the people who build, and who sustain, our human civilization. And it’s worse. Our rights and freedoms, our livelihoods, our lifestyles and ultimately our lives, are under ever increasing pressure from the top downers and their political agendas. This situation is not, to use a top downer word, a sustainable one.
I wonder what will happen when the penny finally drops? When bottom uppers, en masse, come to understand what is being done to them? When the good people at last realize that the top downers are not only unworthy of all respect, but are the worst scum on the planet?
I can only speculate.
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Interesting essay, but classical liberalism/libertarianism is not a common, or ancient, or obvious belief system, even if labeled “bottom-up” thinking. Tribalism is much more common than either bureaucratic authoritarianism, which he labels “top-down” thinking.
I was getting too much, everything about my way of thinking is good. Everything about the other is bad.
Made the article impossible to finish.
I could not get past the assertion that bottom-uppers assume everyone in the world is just like them, or else some rare aberration.
Why would anyone, using logic, start out with the assumption that there is one basic model of the human psyche, or that oneself is a prototypical example.
This strikes me as neither bottom up or logical…more like closed minded, judgmental, and biased.
A shallow and narcissistic attempt at philosophy. If he thinks that Neil Lock is almost that same John Locke in spelling, that’s probably all we need to know.
BTW when you build a house, you start at the top. You want a house. You then decide what kind of house, what it will look like and what materials you have available or want to use. You make an overall plan. Then a detailed plan.
Only then do you start digging and laying the foundations.
Mr Lock’s philosophy falls at the first line.
“Made the article impossible to finish.”
Same here. Artificial characterization that is just wrong. Anyone who has designed and built things (physical and/or virtual) knows planning is from the top, down; building is from the bottom, up.
When no link is given to an article’s source, I generally like to search for a text phrase from the article to find where else it’s posted. “Two diametrically opposed ways of thinking” wasn’t specific enough (“Should You Masturbate Before a Date?” was obviously noise), so I added more words and narrowed it down to just 3 web sites.
“BTW when you build a house, you start at the top. You want a house. You then decide what kind of house, what it will look like and what materials you have available or want to use. You make an overall plan. Then a detailed plan.”
You do know that planning and building are two different things, right?
Jeff, if you had included the next line in the quote, you would have completely refuted your point.
What is up with posting an link to an hour long video that is completely off topic and has not a single word of explanation?
This would seem to violated site policy several times over.
maybe OT but a lot more interesting.
Agree, Menicholas. Happens a lot here.
Site policy is very fluid on WUWT. Who knows what will pass or get binned. Maybe Charles is busy, maybe Anthony had too much coffee, you just never know. Many of my comments have been binned simply for using (I guess) a particular word (No, it’s not cnut, it rhymes with depravity).
Anyway its the same with any media, if you don’t like it don’t read it, move on, turn the page or even turn the whole bloody computer off and go and do something more useful instead like construct a tray of ice in your garden and measure the magnitude of the back radiation when the sun sets.
A problem with a top-down design is that it has to be well thought of. There is a story of a guy who wanted to sell hats. He designed a store with three departments: Big Hats, Straw Hats, and Red Hats.
A former boss of mine said that you design from the top down but build from the bottom up.
My experience also. Business strategy is necessarily top down, because operations become blind to peripheral forces. But strategy execution is necessarily bottom up, accounting for all the local confounding details. We had a consulting saying at BCG: top down, bottom up, middle out. The middle out part had teo meanings. 1. Cut middle management out ( meaning less is more. 2. Use the remaining middle managment to drive bottom up best practices out to all other bottom up endeavors.
In all big projects, you start out with the big picture, then you fill in the details.
The problem with bottom up design is you often forget what it was you were trying to build long before you are finished.
Aye! PiperPaul, ristvan and MarkW.
That approach is a necessity.
Cars are not designed starting with wheels.
Airplanes are designed starting with seats.
Ships are not designed starting with propellers.
Spacecraft are not designed starting with the rocket engine.
Programs designed starting with the code never reach proper fruition.
One must decide
A) what is needed
B) How it should work
C) What it must accomplish
D) Ideally, one decides ease of use. But often the guts of the design are the final determination on what something requires to function properly.
Claiming that designs must originate from the bottom up ignores design targets, requirements, time available, time required, costs, funding, usage, users and customers. Ignoring any one can cause failure.
“Cars are not designed starting with wheels.”
Well they did start with the invention of the wheel and then steam and oil for the horseless carriage and so it’s correct to say these things were designed from the bottom up. Just that we’re forever taking the rising bottom for granted nowadays. Nevertheless when you have a thought bubble that wind and solar generated power can replace despatchable thermal power you’d better understand the bottom line and not go off half cocked with only the top down vision splendid in mind- i.e. it’s a fundamental axiom of engineering that you can’t build a reliable system from unreliable componentry so temper the top down imagineering accordingly.
observa, if you read all of what others are saying, you will find out that your observation does not contradict anything that has been said.
Nice essay! Your characterization of Marxists is spot on. I’m a bottom upper and my approach to the issues Marxists weigh in on is egalitarianism as discussed on my website, https://www.pdrboston.org .
You can see the different approaches in a TV programme called “The Apprentice”. I am trying to think of a useful test for individuals to check which approach they favour. Give them something they are not familiar with, perhaps cooking a 4 course meal?
The bottom upper would just start randomly cooking things until he got to 4 things; the top downer would think about what would go together for a nice meal and then cook them.
The top downer is the guy who says “You’re fired!”.
“You’re fired!” Really? Trump is not a top downer. Methinks you are, however.
“Trump is not a top downer.”
Really? Trump of Trump Tower?
Yes Nick – inevitable after top downers saying “You’re hired!” to practically everything with two legs – little chicken and ladders included. Imagine the current starting the same, but with your money.
Top Down you mean like Climate Science which has gone where no science has gone before now as an “Authority” no less. I like my science old fashioned where we just presented facts and hypothesis for testing and argued over them.
“Bottom up thinking is like the way we build a house. Starting from the ground, we work upwards, using what we’ve done already as support for what we’re working on at the moment. “
This is a ridiculously judgmental and tribalist approach. Bottom up and top down are just dual ways of thinking. We need both. Builders don’t just start building from the bottom. They have a plan, from a designer. And the designer started with some top down considerations – how big a house – what cost – for what purpose? You can’t work those out afterwards.
Bottom up and top down are actually two recognised approaches to programming. Again you need both, although I think most would start from a top down framework.
“Moreover, top downers are very often dishonest. They seem to have no shame about lying or misleading, or failing to deliver on their promises. And they often act in bad faith, too.”
Just nuts.
Sounded quite accurate to me. I believe the author did note that these are extremes, and that most people lie more to the middle.
I agree. Both are essential, the squabble lies in how much of each goes into the synthesis.
Nick writes
Unless the programmer really understood the underlying reasons for doing the programming. ie. understood the detail, in which case knowing the detail may point to a different overall approach that may be unseen to a person who only has a high level, top down approach and understanding of a problem.
I agree that measures of both are needed but at the end of the day the more underlying knowledge you have, the better off you’ll be and the better result you’ll produce.
When I was in the aviation industry, design for a new plane and it’s avionics would start top down.
The customer would start with a design requirement. I want a plane that can carry X passengers Y miles in less than Z hours.
Then the designers would determine the broad outlines of a plane that could meet those criteria.
Then the designers would determine what broad functions such a plane would need to perform those functions.
With each iteration, the design would get more and more specific, until every physical widget and every module of software was specified.
Only then did you actually start designing the plane and writing the software.
MarkW writes
I daresay the designers had sufficient prior experience and knowledge to know that certain configurations were a waste of time to choose/explore though? There is inherent bottom up-ness in your process and it came from knowledge gained from experience.
eg Nobody was going to choose a biplane configuration because there was prior knowledge about drag.
At some point, this kind of distinction reaches absurdity.
To begin with, a design team meets with the customers; often over days, weeks and even months.
Drawings are produced and merits and negatives are discussed. Scale mockups can be produced and evaluated, rough designs are subjected to performance tests, etc.
Engine power is decided, along with targeted fuel consumption, takeoff and landing requirements, etc.
Throwing out a comment that “experience” discards the “bi-plane” design is absurd in this context.
It does not take experience or knowledge to discard a “rock” design. It only takes common sense.
A customer want a plane to lift XX weight, XX passengers, XX crew; it doesn’t take long to realize a two-seater biplane isn’t anywhere near the customer’s desires.
The greater complexity involved in product/project/experiment, the greater the need for solid thorough and vetted top level design.
Is knowledge and experience involved? Definitely!
Is that “bottom-up” design? Hell no!
Or are you claiming that obtaining an advanced degree “bottom-up” designing?
Or is working from a clerk/laborer position up to management bottom-up designing?
Never mind the sweat labor and years of night school required to achieve that higher position.
Most of my life, no matter where I worked, workers claimed to “know better” how a program/product/whatever should be built.
What they could offer of value is from something known as “hindsight”. Wonderful useless thing, hindsight.
Extremely rarely, does a workerbee offer a legitimate valid suggestion early in a design/build.
Once upon a time, I worked as a janitor at Raytheon. (Hey, I liked to eat and sleep in a bed.)
Before we clocked in, we’d wait in a cafeteria corner. Usually, one of the older guys would start to rant on about what the company was doing wrong and could do better.
It was mostly utter BS. None of us low level workers know what management was working on, developing or bidding on contracts.
One interesting side of being a janitor was that we received a lot of overtime hours when a contract or contract phase ended. For that was when Raytheon eliminated staff; whole floors would be either fired or laid off. The better workers would be laid off. Poorer workers canned outright.
We janitors and occasional alleged geniuses would move all of the furniture, strip and rewax floors, then lay out the furniture according to plan sent down from the top.
None of the alleged geniuses ever spotted an approaching RIF beforehand.
Nice to see Nick contributing!
The author described his method in a very positive light compared to the opposite. Top down is an extremely important approach for analyzing data and observations against fundamental truths. The problem comes when people utilize top down thinking based on beliefs instead of truths. That can cause people to do strange things – like changing data to match their beliefs.
Top down design can’t be a one shot thing. After the manager has set out a vision he has to monitor the work being done. Sometimes problems can be solved by assigning more resources to the problem. Sometimes problems can be solved by assigning different people to the problem. Sometimes the problem can’t be solved and the design has to be rethought.
at the risk of agreeing with Nick,
This smacks badly of trying to fit everything into one of two categories, and these scenarios are not binary by nature.
Interesting thought exercise but I too got lost in the weeds about halfway.
My biggest pet peeve is Objective and Subjective but you don’t want to get me started with that.
The founders of Agile are strong proponents of bottoms-up, executed by people who have the skills and experience to make it work right. Not by beginners working alone.
They said they were trying to avoid the world of Dilbert. That world is one way the tops-down can play out. But I presume you don’t find that comic amusing.
I’d really like to watch you building a house by somehow fixing the roof in thin air, then building the top floor and working downwards and after you’ve built the cellar you dig the hole for the fundaments as finishing step! OF COURSE one builds a house bottom-up, gravity, if nothing else, would preclude one from doing otherwise LOL
Well, it’s food for thought, but I think there is a bit of circular logic in this article. Everything disagreed with tends to be ascribed to top-down, hence the conclusion that top downers are scum. I think it comes off the rails right at the beginning with : Top down thinking, on the other hand, starts out from an idea that is a given.“. I would have thought that Einstein’s theories came from top-down thinking, where he starts with an idea (that is in no way a given) and then works down from the idea to the nitty-gritties. That was in the field of science, of course, but in the field of politics the article, to my mind, confuses top-down with authoritarianism. There is plenty of scope for very constructive top-down political thinking which is not authoritarian – for example concepts like do-as-you-would-be-done-by, that most human beings are naturally good, that others’ ideas may be equal to or better than ones own, etc. I don’t think that these concepts can only be arrived at by a process in which a person “will look into himself, and judge what he finds“. More often, surely, the opposite is the case – that one needs to look outside oneself at humanity and the world in general, after which the specifics can develop in more detail including changes to one’s own opinions and behaviour.
That’s exactly what Einstein did. He did some thought experiment and then forced the maths to fit into his preconceived idea without being able to test the physics. He is the founder of top down physics, which is down without experimentation, and is the very reason why so much of modern physics has gone wrong.
All of Einstein’s work has been verified by actual experiments.
How exactly has physics gone wrong?
Special relativity is about as verified as climate models.
Einstein’s cosmological constant has not been verified. Didn’t he abandon it?
Einstein dedicated the last few decades of his life to failed conjectures, notably unified field theory – giving birth to string theory – not really the best achievements in physics. Albert’s most brilliant work was in his youth, which coincided his life with a Serbian physicist Mileva Marić.
>>
Jarryd Beck
October 23, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Special relativity is about as verified as climate models.
<<
You’re either giving too much credit to climate models or too little credit to Special Relativity.
Jim
The real problem is that the so-called “top-downers” have “ideas” and ideologies, but absolutely no concept of how to design or implement them or any end results of what their brain-snap might produce..
You only have to look at our PM in Australia. Every “idea” seems to be a random top-down thought bubble, with zero idea of consequences or implementation.
And yes.. the egotistical arrogance is there in buckets.. never to be met. !!
Engineering/design: top down
Construction: bottom up
But engineering/design has to understand construction for the project to be successful.
The biggest program disasters that I have been involved in are situations in which there was either no top down design done first, or the engineers felt free to ignore the requirements of the top down design.
Like his use of the words psychopath/sociopath… It seems we are now living in a world full of psychopaths. It’s become the new normal (one in which we are expected to get used to)…
Both approaches are useful, as with everything else in life, in moderation. We use both bottoms up and tops down analysis for large programs at my company. Tops down, you look at a market, what customers will pay, what they expect. Bottoms up, we decide what we can make, and how much it will cost. If you can make them meet, you have a program.
Bottoms up is very solid, conservative, engineer-think. You know what you can get. But you often don’t get as much as you could get with some added risk.
Tops down is great for defining a vision for what could be done, goals that can be reached, if we try harder. But it’s easy to over extend and miss your goals.
Either approach, when disconnected from reality, or each other, is a likely disaster. When properly managed and aligned, it is a likely success.
That’s a lot of words, but not much logic, and it’s not a good reflection on my favorite web site, IMHO.
As a previous commenter noted, imagination and design tend to be “top down”, while construction of the plan tends to be “bottom up”. That’s just reality. As human minds work, often the solution to a problem lies in the middle of a very large, dense graph of possible solutions, and often the most efficient way to search for the best solution is to work the problem from both ends, using both top-down and bottom-up logic to narrow the search.
Going to file this one under: There are two types of people, those that tend to believe there are two types of people, and those that don’t. I am certainly in the latter group. Unravel that at your own convenience.
Dr Jordan Peterson is well worth viewing on YouTube for numerous lectures relating to philosophy of post-modernism, which underpins much of the OP’s arguments for the “Top-Downers.” YouTube is replete with good commentators arguing classical liberalism, but they do not get a fraction of the views of the frivolous entertainment that dominates the platform (some of which is excellent in its own right).
Hey! You have pinched my old Usenet signature from the mid 1990’s.
“There are two classes of people. Those who divide people into
two classes, and those who don’t. I belong to the second class”
I derived it while reading Bertrand Russel on the subject of classes which contain themselves as members.
Ah well… great minds. Can’t say I ever studied philosophy, so I can genuinely say I came up with the two kinds of people teaser myself. I sometimes muse if there’s ever an original thought…. surely someone else has thunk it before.
Glad I read through the comments, because I was going to say the same thing, and point out that a decent “There are two kinds or people” meme does not need to be very long.
Certainly not this long.
There are not only two kinds of people, two ways of thinking, two ways of doing things, or much at all that is so binary, really.
Although it may be possible with a lot of work to break down complex ideas into a chain of binary choices.
My one time tagline was “There are two kinds of people in the world: Those that can complete a thought.
Nope. Filing this under “there are three types of people- those who are good at math and those who aren’t.
A rather top down way of thinking about thinking.
The thing you need to question is your spatial metaphor, or the idea that thinking or approaches can be described Accurately in spatial terms.
You won’t be able to see how your spatial metaphor controls your thinking. Because you are really a top down thinker.
Maybe one day even you will think about thinking, mosh.
No sign of it happening yet though.
I got the impression that the author may have been unaware of his own application of top-down thinking — that top-downers are lacking in virtue which bottom-uppers have in abundance. The red flag for me was using Stalin to illustrate top-downers. Why not the framers of the US constitution, or those primarily responsible for ending slavery in the US and British Commonwealth? Surely there were top-down thinkers among them.
I think the US Constitution is a good example of how to order a government to handle top down duties such as keeping the states in a union, where the authority for for waging war lies, how to keep government functions under control, and a bottom up control of who gets appointed to those jobs by competent(responsible) people grouping together separately from the government to decide who will be in the government.
We’ve strayed far from that initial organization, but I think it still is a very useful way to construct a nation unless the self-correcting mechanisms are over ridden, which much of the reason for government disfunction right now.
I recommend a reading of Don Norman’s “The Design of Everyday Things”. Obviously, this is about “things” rather than political or administrative systems, but the findings can be applied generally to other areas of human organisation and development. You have to have both top down AND bottom up approaches to get anything right. In the design of anything in the built environment field, there will be unforeseen consequences if you don’t.
Religion, however defined, is the “cult” in culture. Yes, it makes a very large difference if that religion is atheism, as in Communism, or Islam, or Hinduism, or Christianity.
A “cult” is a religion-like world view that has two leading characteristics:
one, it does not accord with reality, and two, it must use a set of coercive beliefs and practices in order to sustain its existence.
When you are not able to question and examine a belief system, then you have stumbled into a cult.
At the Christian church I attend, we question and explore our belief system all the time. No one tells any of us what we can and cannot read. Many of us go ahead and learn Hebrew and Greek so we can more directly study relevant writings.
We do not tell our fellow believers to avoid others with different belief systems, or who are critical of Christianity. In general, the average person is not really equipped to argue much of anything, including being able to handily debate critics of Christianity. Most individuals would have a hard time arguing that the moon landings were not faked, or that the earth is round. This is simply the truth.
However, there are many regular church members among us who have studied, know a lot, and can carry on civil discussions and debates about our faith.
Any of us are free to “leave” the church whenever we want. If we ever bothered to officially become a member.
We are not required to pay or donate anything.
Roll is not called.
You are welcome to come visit any time. We can inform you what we believe, and why.
Our belief system is both bottom-up and top-down. I have “taught” Sunday school to people from the age of 3 years old, and up. It may be difficult to teach a young kid that 50% is the same as one-half, but they have no problem with the idea of “God.” I believe this is built into us. We have to be exposed to contrary information, and somewhere along the way someone has to intimate that faith is scornful or dumb before we really question this obvious reality.
God showed himself directly to certain people, and piece by piece. Bottom-up. Jesus created a grass-roots campaign of showing who he was and is. Bottom-up. By time the top-down authorities caught up with him, the general populace already knew.
Prophecy works like science: you have the prophecy noted a priori, and then it gets filled. This is one bottom-up way to demonstrate veracity. You can google and look up the many prophecies of Jesus, and there are vast materials to explore Jesus as a bona fide genuine historical figure.
We put our sacred writings in every hotel room we can, on TV, on the internet, etc. You can check our belief system against reality at any time. You can find and discuss this with an expert at any time. You can enter a church at almost any time you might want. Anyone can lecture and preach. This means that there can be a lot of mis-information out there. But controlling any and all speech would not work. The Lord and his guidance can stand on their own despite that type of threat.
So, a lot is similar to “science.” You get to think, question, explore, discuss, debate, etc. You are not forced to belief anything, but can be guided to beliefs that have veracity. A truthful idea will not crumble under testing, or cross-examination, and “science” should not hide from that.
Christianity is not a cult. These things I say are not true of other “religions,” such as Latter Day Saints, or Scientology: there, information is meted out piece by piece, as you “advance” as a member, they want to control your life and your communication, etc.
As far as I have been able to determine, the difference between a cult and a religion is about 100 years. Hehe. Not slamming religion, as I am a believer, and I don’t think you can function as a non-believer without elf delusion.
It is inevitable that when faced with a problem most people will employ top down thinking. Especially in politics, a distinguishing feature is how far down they pursue their thinking. Some stop early “Let’s get rid of poverty by paying everyone a comfortable living wage”. Others will pursue the matter further and do some arithmetic to work out how much money will be required and where it is coming from. A smaller number will dig even deeper and try to determine what the wider effects of such a move might be.
The very shallowest diggers will evaluate the matter simply on their emotional response: “Gee that makes me feel good!” or “I don’t like that idea”. That opens up an entirely different class of analysis.
The big problem with top down thinking is that there are too many people who believe it is there job to create a vision, and then leave the details to the peons.
These people also tend to punish the peons if they fail to properly implement the vision they were given. With no thought given to whether the vision was ever implementable in the first place.
You’d probably enjoy an Aussie series called Utopia, which is based in a civil service office. It’s called Dreamland on Netflix:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3163562/
As a civil servant myself with a healthy degree of cynicism, this show (and Yes Minister/Yes Prime Minister) are viewed more as a training video series than a comedy. The top down policy making you were referring to is the “dot, dot, dot” they referred to in one episode, where they had a terrific slogan and title for a project, but dot dot dot for the detail, to be filled in later. We use this in the office frequently, along with “the vibe” from The Castle, another Aussie classic.
One would not get through the day without a healthy dose of cynical humour. The only other option would be to take several MinusIQ pills (look it up on YouTube – very tempting product).
“The big problem with top down thinking is that there are too many people who believe it is there job to create a vision, and then leave the details to the peons.”
I think that is exactly correct. And one problem today is that many “peon” tasks have been automated/built into software while the “visionaries” don’t really understand how things actually work. So you often have software hard-coded to solve problems only one way*, which imposes a one-size-fits-all centralized type of problem solving.
* Sure, you can write your own, but it costs a fortune
“Let’s get rid of poverty by paying everyone a comfortable living wage”
==========
Do we pay people not to kill each other? No, we tax unwanted behavior. Tax the poor to convince them to give up poverty. If that doesn’t work we imprison people. If you really want to end poverty public lynchings of the poor would be very effective. During the French revolution madame le guillotine got rid of the wealthy in short order. If you start paying people to be poor you will simply end up with more poor people wanting to be paid.
Like many of my articles (to myself mainly) they start with a simple enough premise, which I then chase down, and then after about 10,000 words or so, I look at all my hard work and – hit the delete button.
Neil here has I feel, done some nice logic following, and has without doubt, done much thinking upon the matter – and for that – well done.
Evidence for his supposition wouldn’t be hard to find, and all the way through would be used to support the originating supposition, but falls short in allowing all those other examples which detract or counter the validity of the supposition.
I tend more to the belief that we should be leaning towards or employing BOTH methods, and anyone that focuses on but one, will most likely conclude with a slanted view.
Strange, climate change seems to spring to mind, and I think I could use either approach as an example of proof for each side.
Funny how antisocial our socialist comrades all seem to be.
Especially if they hold power.
I gave up on the overly broad generalizations by the third paragraph.
People are closer to pattern recognizers than they are to logic machines. Chess masters are an example. They can’t logic out a position many more moves than a novice. On the other hand, they can reproduce a sensible board after a brief examination. For non sensible boards, duffers are as good. A master recognizes good and bad positions because she has studied many many many games. link
When we teach mathematics, we give the theory and expect the students to fill in the details. That works for some learners. Those learners become teachers and foist the method on the next generation.
The thing is that when a mathematician is learning something new, he is just as likely to hack away at it, studying it from all angles and studying as many examples as he can find. John Mighton talks about the process in The Myth of Ability.
Most people learn math the way mathematicians do. They have to do lots of examples and eventually see the big picture. That’s not how they’re being taught and the result is that they lose all interest in pursuing math.
Our education system privileges logical analysis over actual knowledge in all areas, not just math. The result is that Dr. Mann can concoct his hockey stick and some folks believe him. A little actual education would cure the problem.
Surely Neil answers his own question about why the “bottom uppers, en masse” don’t “come to understand what is being done to them?”. If as he says “The bottom upper may be indifferent to politics .. And if he votes at all, he tends to do so for what he perceives as the lesser of two, or the least of several, evils.” the the bottom uppers have only themselves to blame. It is hard to feel sympathy for someone who says that they are indifferent to politics and see this as a good thing and then they immediately turn round and complain about how the government is being run.
In general this essay seems full of ridiculous generalisations with basically everything that Neil thinks of as positive being listed as a trait of “bottom uppers” while the opposite is listed as a trait of the “top downers”. I suspect that Stalin (the only example of a top downer given) would not ” run aground on the libertine Scylla of “anything goes.”.
Quite frankly, I think the whole essay is a load of hogwash.
But a bit of fun to discuss for a very short while, as a distraction from the usual AGW nonsense.
Any decent thinker is a broad mix of top, down, lateral, overview and detail thinking.
Pigeonholing is just psychobabble.
Andy writes
Agreed. But top down does seem to be an appropriate description for people who passionately argue the dangers of AGW on little more than believing there to be a scientific consensus.
top.down and bottom.up are metaphoric- nobody has his top down or his bottom up. metaphors are always incomplete and wrong.
the notion the author may have been groping for which seems to resolve the proposition is
open.loop vs closed.loop., where open.loop corresponds to his ‘top.down’ concept and closed.loop corresponds to his ‘bottom up’ concept.
open loop means instructions are given which have zero feedback and therefore are completely non.responsive to context of application whereas closed loop is all about feedback modifying control as it happens.
despite ambiguities and errors mostly resulting from inadequate/improper definitions, the author has done a very good job of making sense of how to make sense and deserves commendation.
he does have some more work to do and for that i recommend visiting mr science.or.fiction’s site which is devoted to the study of the topics the author was striving to rationalize.
it is funny to see how very few grasp what he’s done. he is not pitching to the middle of the bell curve…lol
open/closed loop is independant of top down/bottom up.
All good top down designs are also closed loop for the simple reason that you can never think of everything the first time through.
“you can never think of everything the first time through”
Well, yes. 97% of design is iterative.
Very impressed by the majority of commenters that in general see the benefit that both top down / bottom up bring to problems. Pragmatism at it’s finest ! My experience says the real world requires pragmatism for personal & societal success. Well done WUWT commenters!
he could just as well have termed his distinction ‘ballistic’ vs ‘guided’
but metaphors always open the door to ambiguity and poetry is not the tool for science work.
And Not A Shot Was Fired by Jan Kozak explains how Czechoslovakia was co opted by the Marxist applying this thinking to capture a nation. All subterfuge centered around lies and shaming and the constant theme was “from the top down and the bottom up”.