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It's always terrified me how one experience or one anecdote can completely change a persons view on a topic and make them blind to the overwhelming evidence the

It's always terrified me how one experience or one anecdote can completely change a persons view on a topic and make them blind to the overwhelming evidence they've previously experienced and accepted (and ignore future evidence) A single rude salesperson and they won't step foot in the entire chain, a bad cop or doctor and the whole police force or medical establishment is corrupt. Listen to a politician giving a speech and people become lifelong supporters even when their policies change radically. There is something deeply embedded in the human mind that makes us very susceptible to some stories - against all evidence, if it fits our preconceived perception or coincides with something in our memory.

8192kjshad09- 5y ago
I think there is an innate human bias to weight negative experiences more strongly than positive ones. For example, I will forget a compliment a day later, but I will never forget that one time I was harshly criticized. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as well, the worst possible experience (death) is far worse than the best possible experience (food,sex,comfort,etc). Re: your example about politics. Politicans explot this by talking about how bad the others are, rather than how good they are.
andrei_says_ 5y ago
> a bad cop or doctor and the whole police force or medical establishment is corrupt. I’m not sure these are the greatest examples. If “good” cops stand by watching “bad” cops abusing their position including stealing, lying, assaulting, murdering or torturing people, then maybe we are speaking of institutional issues blurring the lines between behaviors typical for organized crime and ones observed with the police force. Especially if whole police teams threaten to stop doing their jobs if their insanely inflated budgets get reduced. Of course there are good cops. You can often hear about them getting pushed out of the police force for reporting the crimes of the bad ones. If doctors are allowed 20 minutes per patient visit and are constantly pressured to prescribe medication and procedures for profit then we might have an issue there, too.
- virgilp 5y ago
  One judgment error that people often make is to assume it's about "cops" or "doctors" or "politicians" or whatever. Like, take any large group of people - some of them will be good, some will be bad, some will be weasely, some will be cowards, some will be heroes, some will be psychos. If your reaction to group X is "it needs to be disbanded because <incident>"... I suggest that this is not a wise reaction. In this sense, all "establishment" is corrupt, to some degree, by definition. To try to create brand new "uncorrupted" replacement is often a recipe for disaster (especially if you only rely on "new people", not on actual new systematic ways of weeding out said corruption).
  - watwut 5y ago
    With this theory, you are making it impossible to talk about institutional failure and about culture within institutions. It also makes it impossible to reform those. Because whenever caught, bad stuff will be always framed as individual failure, despite those individual being encouraged to act that way by their bosses and peers.
    - virgilp 5y ago
      No. I'm saying that institutional failure should be addressed/solved "in place", rather than blindly hoping that disbanding said institution would solve anything. - There's a high likelihood that the institution was created because it's useful. Before arguing for its complete removal, the onus is on you to prove that you understand why it was originally needed, and why/how the circumstances changed in a way that makes it non-useful/not needed anymore. - There's a high likelihood that if it's needed, just disbanding it and creating a new one will not solve stuff in the long run. Before replacing the institution one needs to show that they understand what are the challenges of reforming it (why reforming will be impossible/more difficult than recreation; and why the new institution will avoid having the same fate). It's in a way similar to software: many engineers will jump at the opportunity to declare that "old code is garbage and should be rewritten from scratch"; but that is seldom a good choice, and once you start on that path, if you're simply trying to replicate the same functionality you are more likely than not to end up with new code that is still garbage.

8192kjshad09- 5y ago

I think there is an innate human bias to weight negative experiences more strongly than positive ones. For example, I will forget a compliment a day later, but I will never forget that one time I was harshly criticized. It makes sense from an evolutionary perspective as well, the worst possible experience (death) is far worse than the best possible experience (food,sex,comfort,etc). Re: your example about politics. Politicans explot this by talking about how bad the others are, rather than how good they are.

andrei_says_ 5y ago

> a bad cop or doctor and the whole police force or medical establishment is corrupt. I’m not sure these are the greatest examples. If “good” cops stand by watching “bad” cops abusing their position including stealing, lying, assaulting, murdering or torturing people, then maybe we are speaking of institutional issues blurring the lines between behaviors typical for organized crime and ones observed with the police force. Especially if whole police teams threaten to stop doing their jobs if their insanely inflated budgets get reduced. Of course there are good cops. You can often hear about them getting pushed out of the police force for reporting the crimes of the bad ones. If doctors are allowed 20 minutes per patient visit and are constantly pressured to prescribe medication and procedures for profit then we might have an issue there, too.

virgilp 5y ago
One judgment error that people often make is to assume it's about "cops" or "doctors" or "politicians" or whatever. Like, take any large group of people - some of them will be good, some will be bad, some will be weasely, some will be cowards, some will be heroes, some will be psychos. If your reaction to group X is "it needs to be disbanded because <incident>"... I suggest that this is not a wise reaction. In this sense, all "establishment" is corrupt, to some degree, by definition. To try to create brand new "uncorrupted" replacement is often a recipe for disaster (especially if you only rely on "new people", not on actual new systematic ways of weeding out said corruption).
- watwut 5y ago
  With this theory, you are making it impossible to talk about institutional failure and about culture within institutions. It also makes it impossible to reform those. Because whenever caught, bad stuff will be always framed as individual failure, despite those individual being encouraged to act that way by their bosses and peers.
  - virgilp 5y ago
    No. I'm saying that institutional failure should be addressed/solved "in place", rather than blindly hoping that disbanding said institution would solve anything. - There's a high likelihood that the institution was created because it's useful. Before arguing for its complete removal, the onus is on you to prove that you understand why it was originally needed, and why/how the circumstances changed in a way that makes it non-useful/not needed anymore. - There's a high likelihood that if it's needed, just disbanding it and creating a new one will not solve stuff in the long run. Before replacing the institution one needs to show that they understand what are the challenges of reforming it (why reforming will be impossible/more difficult than recreation; and why the new institution will avoid having the same fate). It's in a way similar to software: many engineers will jump at the opportunity to declare that "old code is garbage and should be rewritten from scratch"; but that is seldom a good choice, and once you start on that path, if you're simply trying to replicate the same functionality you are more likely than not to end up with new code that is still garbage.