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> it's a short and murky step ... to outright fraud. Staying vigilant against the normalization of deviance[1] is difficult even in ideal situations. Choosing

by pdkl95 9y ago

> it's a short and murky step ... to outright fraud. Staying vigilant against the normalization of deviance[1] is difficult even in ideal situations. Choosing to normalize deviance as a business strategy is practically guaranteed to rapidly accelerate deviations from acceptable behavior. In any system - including every business - resilience and safety means fixing small problems before they grow into bigger, more damaging problems[2]. > rationalizations for unethical behavior Often, it doesn't even need to be rationalized. When deviant behavior is slowly normalized in small steps, the human mind tends to only see the "small, insignificant problems", and often skips[3] over big changes that should be "obvious". [1] https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_and_the_normalization_of_deviance https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Professionalism/Diane_Vaughan_... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60 [3] https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local/Change%20Blindness_files/plane.gif https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/se367/10/presentation_local...

jnwatson 9y ago
You've hit the nail on the head with "normalization of deviance". First you shade the truth slightly. You're uncomfortable at first, but the line seems to work, so you try it again. You use it another 10 times and you start to believe it. And then you shade the truth a little more. After the hundredth pitch, you're a fabulist, and you barely noticed.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  Well, TBF, if you are doing something genuinely new, it can be hard to figure out what's real and what's not. It can be hard to figure out what are meaningful metrics and what aren't. I was sympathetic to the Theranos side of things until I learned they actually submitted fraudulent test data. That was the point where it became clear to me they were not confused as to where to draw some line. They were being willfully deceptive. Deception like that doesn't grow out of confusion. It grows out of clarity that you are selling BS.

by pdkl95 9y ago

jnwatson 9y ago

You've hit the nail on the head with "normalization of deviance". First you shade the truth slightly. You're uncomfortable at first, but the line seems to work, so you try it again. You use it another 10 times and you start to believe it. And then you shade the truth a little more. After the hundredth pitch, you're a fabulist, and you barely noticed.

DoreenMichele 9y ago
Well, TBF, if you are doing something genuinely new, it can be hard to figure out what's real and what's not. It can be hard to figure out what are meaningful metrics and what aren't. I was sympathetic to the Theranos side of things until I learned they actually submitted fraudulent test data. That was the point where it became clear to me they were not confused as to where to draw some line. They were being willfully deceptive. Deception like that doesn't grow out of confusion. It grows out of clarity that you are selling BS.