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Just because you can't easily put the blame on individuals doesn't mean they're not responsible. Our "system" is great at "blame laundering" or obfuscating ethi

Just because you can't easily put the blame on individuals doesn't mean they're not responsible. Our "system" is great at "blame laundering" or obfuscating ethical implications of decisions through diffusion of responsibility and removal of context at different boundaries. But the system itself is not a thing you can blame, as it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way. Leaders who don't act to change the system are shitty leaders, and they are guilty.

schiffern 8y ago
Stealing the term "blame laundering" btw. Seminal systems theorist Donella Meadows mentioned in an excellent talk[1] that she (and other "systems thinkers") tends to avoid blame entirely, due to understanding the constraints and incentives people operate under. [1] Timecode to her comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=12m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=12m55s Start of her talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=7m03s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=7m03s
- jdpigeon 8y ago
  That's an amazing talk, thank you
  - smolder 8y ago
    agreed, I appreciate the link.
darkerside 8y ago
> it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way This is exactly what I'm talking about. Capitalism is basically a force of nature, like evolution. Claiming anyone can orchestrate it is analogous to intelligent design. I do agree that we all, and leaders more than most, bear responsibility to improve the system. But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. If it were that easy to control complex systems, Obama would have closed Guantanamo.
- musage 8y ago
  I would replace "orchestrate" with "influence". It's obvious it can be influenced negatively, to make the situation worse in context of this discussion -- otherwise the concept of bearing responsibility to influence it positively, which you acknowledge, would make no sense. As for "force of nature", that just sounds like what someone living under monarchy might say about monarchy, etc. Yes, trading things is very old and very useful, but from that doesn't follow that the whole package including "obfuscating ethical implications" is a "force of nature" (which to me doesn't really read differently than "the will of God" btw) > But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. We're first and foremost talking about personal responsibility. To speak about "the system" we should "improve" while kinda skipping about that is like talking about a beach while ignoring the concept of a grain of sand. The system is the people, the beliefs they have about the world, the other people, and so on. If you take away the people, there is no system. With different people, there is a different system. Yes, I cannot easily just change the behavior of others. However, I can change mine, and there are a lot of things I declined to do because I value being able to look at myself in the mirror more than temporary material profit. What force of nature? I only saw and see a bunch of mediocre, insecure people who failed to drag me into their games. When a group of hooligans steals money from a beggar just to be cruel I may not be able or dare to do anything about it. But it's very easy for me to refrain from stealing from a beggar. It's actually way easier for me to refrain from it than to do it. Other people developed differently, probably had different childhoods and so on -- but we still live in the same "system", and "just" behave very differently in it. That matters.
  - darkerside 8y ago
    I agree with most of what you said. I'm not saying capitalism is a mysterious force we can't understand or control, just that it has emergent behavior that is more powerful than any individual directive that can be handed down. Look for another post further down describing this very well. Monarchy is based on social hierarchy, which is literally a force of nature. So there's that. It's easy for you to not steal, and that's great. Just remember to credit your parents who raised you, a healthy environment of anyone that you grew up in, and the fortune not to be catastrophically impoverished at a young age. I'm not saying your environment could inside you to steal now (I don't know you), but I assure you, a childhood where you were raised in a lawless gang would not have gifted you the same set of moral values.
smallnamespace 8y ago
> the system itself is not a thing you can blame, as it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way Strongly disagree with that assessment; viewing systems as solely the product of individual decisions is like viewing your brain solely as the product of the movement of individual atoms. You lose all predictive capability. If you do something immoral, is there some group of cells or atoms that I can directly 'assign blame' to? A more nuanced and honest view would be to observe that certain structures predictably result in the some consequences, often regardless of the initial beliefs, desires, or moral righteousness of the individuals caught within them. Sometimes the only way to change the outcome is to change the large-scale structure and incentives within the system. We can do that by changing laws, regulations, and also sometimes by naming and shaming certain individuals; but first we have to admit that systems do have 'a mind of their own'.
- pharrington 8y ago
  Actually measuring, or even hypothesizing about, the predictive capability of different models of varying levels of abstraction is something that happens disturbingly rarely in fields that aren't the hard sciences. I suspect an important (but not primary) reason for this is that most people simply don't have an opportunity to be exposed to the type of maths and analysis required for systems theory, and thus are extremely unlikely to surmise that something like systems theory is a distinct thing that can even exist.
- smolder 8y ago
  If there is a hierarchical structure to the brain wherein some highly influential neurons direct the rest of the brain toward the immoral behavior, you can at least assign the lions share to them. I do agree that carefully structured incentives and disincentives are the thing that can lead to the best outcomes.

schiffern 8y ago

Stealing the term "blame laundering" btw. Seminal systems theorist Donella Meadows mentioned in an excellent talk[1] that she (and other "systems thinkers") tends to avoid blame entirely, due to understanding the constraints and incentives people operate under. [1] Timecode to her comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=12m55s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuIoego-xVc&t=12m55s Start of her talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=7m03s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMmChiLZZHg&t=7m03s

jdpigeon 8y ago
That's an amazing talk, thank you
- smolder 8y ago
  agreed, I appreciate the link.

darkerside 8y ago

> it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way This is exactly what I'm talking about. Capitalism is basically a force of nature, like evolution. Claiming anyone can orchestrate it is analogous to intelligent design. I do agree that we all, and leaders more than most, bear responsibility to improve the system. But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. If it were that easy to control complex systems, Obama would have closed Guantanamo.

musage 8y ago
I would replace "orchestrate" with "influence". It's obvious it can be influenced negatively, to make the situation worse in context of this discussion -- otherwise the concept of bearing responsibility to influence it positively, which you acknowledge, would make no sense. As for "force of nature", that just sounds like what someone living under monarchy might say about monarchy, etc. Yes, trading things is very old and very useful, but from that doesn't follow that the whole package including "obfuscating ethical implications" is a "force of nature" (which to me doesn't really read differently than "the will of God" btw) > But don't overestimate the capacity of any one person. We're first and foremost talking about personal responsibility. To speak about "the system" we should "improve" while kinda skipping about that is like talking about a beach while ignoring the concept of a grain of sand. The system is the people, the beliefs they have about the world, the other people, and so on. If you take away the people, there is no system. With different people, there is a different system. Yes, I cannot easily just change the behavior of others. However, I can change mine, and there are a lot of things I declined to do because I value being able to look at myself in the mirror more than temporary material profit. What force of nature? I only saw and see a bunch of mediocre, insecure people who failed to drag me into their games. When a group of hooligans steals money from a beggar just to be cruel I may not be able or dare to do anything about it. But it's very easy for me to refrain from stealing from a beggar. It's actually way easier for me to refrain from it than to do it. Other people developed differently, probably had different childhoods and so on -- but we still live in the same "system", and "just" behave very differently in it. That matters.
- darkerside 8y ago
  I agree with most of what you said. I'm not saying capitalism is a mysterious force we can't understand or control, just that it has emergent behavior that is more powerful than any individual directive that can be handed down. Look for another post further down describing this very well. Monarchy is based on social hierarchy, which is literally a force of nature. So there's that. It's easy for you to not steal, and that's great. Just remember to credit your parents who raised you, a healthy environment of anyone that you grew up in, and the fortune not to be catastrophically impoverished at a young age. I'm not saying your environment could inside you to steal now (I don't know you), but I assure you, a childhood where you were raised in a lawless gang would not have gifted you the same set of moral values.

smallnamespace 8y ago

> the system itself is not a thing you can blame, as it's orchestrated by people who wanted it to work that way Strongly disagree with that assessment; viewing systems as solely the product of individual decisions is like viewing your brain solely as the product of the movement of individual atoms. You lose all predictive capability. If you do something immoral, is there some group of cells or atoms that I can directly 'assign blame' to? A more nuanced and honest view would be to observe that certain structures predictably result in the some consequences, often regardless of the initial beliefs, desires, or moral righteousness of the individuals caught within them. Sometimes the only way to change the outcome is to change the large-scale structure and incentives within the system. We can do that by changing laws, regulations, and also sometimes by naming and shaming certain individuals; but first we have to admit that systems do have 'a mind of their own'.

pharrington 8y ago
Actually measuring, or even hypothesizing about, the predictive capability of different models of varying levels of abstraction is something that happens disturbingly rarely in fields that aren't the hard sciences. I suspect an important (but not primary) reason for this is that most people simply don't have an opportunity to be exposed to the type of maths and analysis required for systems theory, and thus are extremely unlikely to surmise that something like systems theory is a distinct thing that can even exist.
smolder 8y ago
If there is a hierarchical structure to the brain wherein some highly influential neurons direct the rest of the brain toward the immoral behavior, you can at least assign the lions share to them. I do agree that carefully structured incentives and disincentives are the thing that can lead to the best outcomes.