I said recently that it's an awful shame the SNAFU principle isn't part of the basic rationalist tookit, particularly right now. Discussion of it on the web is tragically scarce, but @chasrmartin wrote a very good introduction. https://web.archive.org/web/20170708000905/http://explorations.chasrmartin.com/2008/01/29/the-snafu-principle/

If you want to understand the last few months (particularly the subject of Big Organizations That Act Like Idiots), please read this. This is important.

"In any social hierarchy, the noise added to a communication between individuals in that hierarchy is directly proportional to the distance between them, and the factor of proportionality will be proportional to the perceived risk to them." Why I'm hostile to hierarchy, in brief.

4chan in practice is smarter than, and processes information faster than, our most sophisticated intelligence services. Why? Anonymity annihilates hierarchy.