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Great points, thank you for going into detail. I think "conflict of interest" is frequently misused. I was taught it describes situations where one's professio
by tantalor 5y ago
Great points, thank you for going into detail.
I think "conflict of interest" is frequently misused. I was taught it describes situations where one's professional/ethical/legal obligations are opposed, such as an attorney representing competing clients, or a board member approving a contract with a company he is an investor in. I realize this is a semantic point.
In this case, I don't think kWh Analytics has any professional obligation to a standard of science or journalism, so there's no conflict.
- jnmandal 5y agoYeah I see your point, and I dont think its semantics actually. You would be right to delineate between a legal notion which could imply some kind of tort or liability versus just a generic issue which is merely cautionary. In this case the authors probably have the latter but not the former (they're not doing anything wrong legally). "Conflict of interest" is definitely the kind of phrase which has a context-specific definition, so I think semantics is probably more important here than it might normally be. FWIW, I re-read my above comment and I think came off more hostile than I intended. Your point about pricing insurance is a really interesting one and I think a lot of other commentators had good takes. Specifically, someone mentioned how information asymmetry benefits insurers which is worth considering too.