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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
Have we overshot the scale at which humans can effectively coordinate?
Summary:
We need Jim Rutt to join the conversation to discuss whether we have exceeded our ability to coordinate effectively.
The slow progress of science and the population growth curve are related to this question. Sam Bowles and his work on behavioral engineering and the return of civil society are also important in this discussion.
We are currently witnessing a clash between institutions and individuals, and something has to give.
Transcript:
Speaker 3
We need Jim Rutt on this conversation right because ultimately this is about have we actually overshot the scale at which we can effectively coordinate and all these studies like you Know this I know it's controversial but like the slowed canonical progress of science these kinds of questions they seem related in a way to the sigmoidal curve of population growth. Have we risen above a level at which intelligibility can actually happen and if so where was that level. I mean I remember you know Sam Bowles is another person who has been looming large for me over this whole conversation not only for his work on the problems of viewing humans as agents That can be governed through behavioral engineering via incentive but also because of the paper that he wrote with Wendy Carlin the article he wrote in Vox EU in 2020 on the battle for The COVID-19 narrative which talked about the return of the civil society you know meaning that the Mesoscopic world of guilds and church groups and sports clubs and pubs and neighborhood Organizations mutual aid networks and all of these other human scale sub-done bar number structures that we found ourselves suddenly very much in need of and yet were eroded by the Radical success of both state power and market power in every way it feels like we are in a kind of clash of the titans right now we're like you know we watch institutions going up against Large institutions and people are struggling to remain unpolverized underfoot. At some point something has to give right.
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
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