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Is there a name for this pattern? The propagation of (ethically-compromised) dysfunction? An escalating "giving forward" of negative value and technical debt?

Is there a name for this pattern? The propagation of (ethically-compromised) dysfunction? An escalating "giving forward" of negative value and technical debt? I seem to be increasingly noticing it. Where a well-intentioned rational actor, because of upstream ethically-problematic dysfunction, chooses a "least-bad option" of creating their own ethically-questionable dysfunction, which then has a similar effect on downstream actors. Where at any point, you could imagine an upstream channel with a "no, that's beyond the pale, you need to stop doing that", but because of noise or other things, such signalling isn't working. Until it does. Sometimes. In this case, company and press lying, tolerated by press and public, prompts government conduct that further degrades the press, increases tolerance of lying, and impairs everyone's ability to improve government conduct. Or consider the attempt to force TPP ratification in post-election session. The Obama administration has only managed to remain kind of functional, by doing end-runs around a dysfunctional legislature and press. But that has a side-effect of disabling legislative and journalistic checks on groupthink and regulatory capture. And press discourse has become loud and low quality, drowning out signals. So while a (now former) White House official, nicely characterized the regulatory capture of US copyright law, as "extremists are people who talk only among themselves", with only our current functionally-degraded mechanisms, it's a struggle for that insight to constrain policy. The larger context might be a decline of civic society and civil discourse. But this seems a particular feedback pattern, of "things are bad, so now I have to make them worse". But does it have a label?

r00fus 10y ago
What you're describing, to me, seems to be a symptom of information asymmetry/warping caused by a corrupt and ineffective corporate media. Everything makes more sense if you don't think of the media as a medium, but a group of self-interested actors who sell tickets to exposing or suppressing what gets published.
- deleted 10y ago
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- mncharity 10y ago
  Hmm. Some descriptions work better as summaries of black-box behavior, than as insight into white-box causation and potential for intervention. I wonder if "corrupt and ineffective corporate media" is an instance of such. For illustration. Science education is remarkably ineffective, K-14, and worldwide. A rule of thumb that "people don't care whether science education actually works", will rarely steer you wrong. But it is an almost useless description of the underlying tangle of incentives and capabilities and visibilities and costs, which cause that surface behavior. Take a professor teaching cell biology, who isn't disinterested in teaching deep understanding, but who, given severe time constraints, isn't going to disservice their students by trading against a specific superficial understanding that the high-stakes med school MCAT exam tests for. So yes, "don't care", sort of. But change the MCAT, and suddenly... So one can have a observationally good description, one that's fine for spectators, but which isn't illuminating or helpful interventionally. Or take the earlier copyright example. During the fight over SOPA, Hollywood executives publicly and angrily complained about congressmen not staying bought. A surface reading of that isn't a bad description of everyone's behavior. But my understanding is, they were basically saying "we talk among ourselves all the time; and we all agree; only a few weird and confused others disagree; and we're now startled and dismayed to find some politicians disagreeing; and can only imagine that this results from them being bought, or lied to, likely by the tech industry; we payed good money to elect what we thought were good people - why should we pay for the reelection of the corrupt and the gullible?". Will more insight into mechanism help you? Maybe not. But while incentives matter, it's the actual incentives that matter. What if US copyright extensions were fought not with "Constitutional intent" and "public interest", so basically "we want you to give up a few billion dollars a year in Pooh et al merchandising fees", but fought instead with "here's a change in trademark law, or a copyright-excepting guardianship of a national treasure, which will preserve your big revenue streams in perpetuity". Addressing actual incentives, rather than narratives.
blihp 10y ago
Don't over-think it: systemic failure as the result of institutionalized corruption. It doesn't really matter what the initial justification was, it is what it is. You're increasingly noticing it because it is occurring everywhere and without any negative consequences to the bad actors (quite the opposite: significant rewards.)

r00fus 10y ago

What you're describing, to me, seems to be a symptom of information asymmetry/warping caused by a corrupt and ineffective corporate media. Everything makes more sense if you don't think of the media as a medium, but a group of self-interested actors who sell tickets to exposing or suppressing what gets published.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
mncharity 10y ago
Hmm. Some descriptions work better as summaries of black-box behavior, than as insight into white-box causation and potential for intervention. I wonder if "corrupt and ineffective corporate media" is an instance of such. For illustration. Science education is remarkably ineffective, K-14, and worldwide. A rule of thumb that "people don't care whether science education actually works", will rarely steer you wrong. But it is an almost useless description of the underlying tangle of incentives and capabilities and visibilities and costs, which cause that surface behavior. Take a professor teaching cell biology, who isn't disinterested in teaching deep understanding, but who, given severe time constraints, isn't going to disservice their students by trading against a specific superficial understanding that the high-stakes med school MCAT exam tests for. So yes, "don't care", sort of. But change the MCAT, and suddenly... So one can have a observationally good description, one that's fine for spectators, but which isn't illuminating or helpful interventionally. Or take the earlier copyright example. During the fight over SOPA, Hollywood executives publicly and angrily complained about congressmen not staying bought. A surface reading of that isn't a bad description of everyone's behavior. But my understanding is, they were basically saying "we talk among ourselves all the time; and we all agree; only a few weird and confused others disagree; and we're now startled and dismayed to find some politicians disagreeing; and can only imagine that this results from them being bought, or lied to, likely by the tech industry; we payed good money to elect what we thought were good people - why should we pay for the reelection of the corrupt and the gullible?". Will more insight into mechanism help you? Maybe not. But while incentives matter, it's the actual incentives that matter. What if US copyright extensions were fought not with "Constitutional intent" and "public interest", so basically "we want you to give up a few billion dollars a year in Pooh et al merchandising fees", but fought instead with "here's a change in trademark law, or a copyright-excepting guardianship of a national treasure, which will preserve your big revenue streams in perpetuity". Addressing actual incentives, rather than narratives.

blihp 10y ago

Don't over-think it: systemic failure as the result of institutionalized corruption. It doesn't really matter what the initial justification was, it is what it is. You're increasingly noticing it because it is occurring everywhere and without any negative consequences to the bad actors (quite the opposite: significant rewards.)