📚 Quinn's Highlights

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Perverse Incentives Select for People Who Are the Best at Exploiting a Given System Summary: The original deans and administrators burn out due to their dislike of the US News and World Report rankings and are replaced by individuals driven by ranking success. This shift reflects a difference in mentality between valuing money as a means of support versus valuing money as the sole purpose of life. Similarly, pursuing publications and citations for a job versus making them the ultimate goal shows a significant distinction. However, these differences are connected through a temporal dynamic where initially people adapt their behavior to succeed in a flawed system. The system then filters out those who can best exploit it, resulting in the selection of individuals with specific values. Transcript: Speaker 2 What happens later on, the original deans and administrators burn out because of how much they hate the US news and rule report rankings, and they get replaced by people who are all it. They think the only point is to rise in the rankings. And those people don't hold back. They only have one target. I think something similar is the difference between so realizing I need a lot of money in order to a decent amount of money to support my family, but not thinking money is the point of life. And similarly, realizing that getting a decent number of publications and citations is necessary for a job versus thinking the goal of my life is to max out citations. And for me, there's a huge gulf between those things. Speaker 1 Well, here's where I think they're connected because I see the difference and I understand the difference you're talking about. But I think the difference is that is this temporal dynamic, right, where you start out with, let's say, perverse incentives and people saying, well, I don't necessarily value these Things, but I have to shape my behavior in order to succeed in this system. But the thing is, the system being the way it is creates a filter. And the people who are the best at figuring out how to operate in that are the ones that then end up being successful. And they're the ones that teach the next generation or emulated by the next generation. And over time, the people for whatever reasons, psychologically or behaviorally or ever their path is, are best able to exploit the system are going to be able to thrive in it. And I think that because of that, you end up selecting for people with certain kinds of values, because they're going to be the people who there's always exceptions, but are going to Be best able to thrive in this kind of thing.

Paul Smaldino & C. Thi Nguyen on Problems With Value Metrics & Governance at Scale

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

The Expert Identification Problem and the Challenges of Democratic Decision-Making Key takeaways: • The expert identification problem is a major concern when it comes to trusting experts in a democracy. • Democracies aim to harness the intellectual power of diversity for better solutions. • The challenge lies in recognizing the best solutions when they require expertise that the democratic entity may not possess. • There is no clear solution to this problem, and democracy remains the best way to organize society according to the speaker. Transcript: Speaker 2 So for a long time I would say that the problem I've been most obsessed with is something I call the expert identification problem it's like how does the non-expert figure out which expert To trust if they don't have the expertise and one of the worries about a democracy is that it runs straight into the expert identification problem right like if we're democratically Voting on what to do we are aggregate non-experts I mean I'm not talking here about like oh we are the experts and you all are not even if you are the world expert in X you're a non-expert In a million other fields right so as an aggregate we are non-expert so here's the real worry for me if you have the right solution how would that get democratically approved Helen Landemore Is this a political theorist I really like she's part of a movement who are epistemic democrats and they think that democracies are the best way to harness the intellectual power of Diversity and the basic model is something like diverse people will come up with a better set of solutions and when you put them together the best solutions will rise to the top and my Worry is how will the democratic entity recognize which are the best solutions because if the best solution requires expertise to recognize and the democratic entity as an aggregate Is not an expert how will they figure it out and that's a problem I'm not sure there's a solution to and I also can't think of a better way to organize the world than democratically

Paul Smaldino & C. Thi Nguyen on Problems With Value Metrics & Governance at Scale

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

Pol.is: An Example of Tools for Facilitating Non-Adverserial Debate at Scale Summary: A twitter-like system in Taiwan guides conversations towards consensual outcomes by using k-means clustering. It's a simple proof of concept for fact checking and has been effective in large-scale conversations. The science of plurality can advance to help navigate complexity in diverse opinions. Transcript: Speaker 2 Pol.is i don't know if you guys are familiar with that but it's a system used in Taiwan it's a twitter like format but it deliberately guides conversations towards consensual or partially Consensual outcomes while highlighting the differences that exist in the conversations in a non-judgmental way and it's just a wonderful system and at the same time it's like the Most simplistic proof of concept of the general direction it uses k-means clustering of stated opinions it doesn't use any natural language processing it's like the bargain basement Version of what it's trying to achieve but it still has been transformatively effective for these types of conversations at scale in Taiwan and is being adopted if it survives by the Twitter bird watch folks as the foundations of what they're trying to do for fact checking so i do believe that there is a science here that can advance dramatically i think that we have Not chosen to apply ourselves to it because we've been seduced by oh we're going to do the unbiased algorithm that's going to predict the truth the right way rather than saying no people Are diverse you have a lot of different opinions how do we actually help people navigate that complexity so i really am hopeful that this science what i would call plurality really can Advance and and help us do these things much better and again i'll put in the plug if you're a researcher interested in these things we're trying to build an academic community that really Wants to work on them right to me at when at pluralitynetwork.org

Glen Weyl & Cris Moore on Plurality, Governance, and Decentralized Society

COMPLEXITY: Physics of Life

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