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These rating systems are a generally poor representation of reality and don't solve the problem they're trying to address. With Uber/Lyft/DoorDash ratings, peo

These rating systems are a generally poor representation of reality and don't solve the problem they're trying to address. With Uber/Lyft/DoorDash ratings, people one might consider "woke" will almost always give a 5 star rating unless something goes horribly wrong (i.e. an actual crime is committed) because they understand that the worker's livelihood depends on their rating. Other people will use the rating as leverage to extract special treatment (similar as what happens with tipping). Finally, there's some number of people who will give "genuine" ratings, but even these are often bimodal (5-star or 1-star). Applying the same system to police will probably change which group does what, but won't change the outcome: the ratings will be gamed and largely useless. Arguably it's even worse because of how politicized the subject of law enforcement has become. I don't understand why this broken model of crowdsourcing ratings is being applied over and over again to different aspects of society. It's as if the managers and MBAs of the world have given up even trying to manage people and want to outsource the task to a howling mob of strangers.

deleted 4y ago
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robonerd 4y ago
> I don't understand why this broken model of crowdsourcing ratings is being applied over and over again to different aspects of society. It's as if the managers and MBAs of the world have given up even trying to manage people and want to outsource the task to a howling mob of strangers. I think it's a manifestation of McNamara's Fallacy. Soliciting ratings is just one method of quantifying things, putting problems in terms of numbers so we can do math with those numbers and generally feel like we're being objective and scientific about the matter. It liberates people from having to get into the weeds of making subjective qualitative judgements. There are obvious problems with it; McNamara's fallacy was being willfully blind to qualitative considerations which turned out to be very important to the war. Furthermore, by picking and choosing what you want to measure, and which metrics to value or ignore, you often end up with a process that although ostensibly objective, is effectively subjective.
runako 4y ago
And yet, the fact that there are ratings appears to result in higher-quality ride services than taxis. Anecdata, but in my experience rideshares (which have ratings) are cleaner, more punctual, have fewer no-shows, and let's zero incidences of refusal to carry than taxis. Obviously there are likely a number of confounders involved, but I would be surprised if ratings were not an important factor.

deleted 4y ago

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robonerd 4y ago

> I don't understand why this broken model of crowdsourcing ratings is being applied over and over again to different aspects of society. It's as if the managers and MBAs of the world have given up even trying to manage people and want to outsource the task to a howling mob of strangers. I think it's a manifestation of McNamara's Fallacy. Soliciting ratings is just one method of quantifying things, putting problems in terms of numbers so we can do math with those numbers and generally feel like we're being objective and scientific about the matter. It liberates people from having to get into the weeds of making subjective qualitative judgements. There are obvious problems with it; McNamara's fallacy was being willfully blind to qualitative considerations which turned out to be very important to the war. Furthermore, by picking and choosing what you want to measure, and which metrics to value or ignore, you often end up with a process that although ostensibly objective, is effectively subjective.

runako 4y ago

And yet, the fact that there are ratings appears to result in higher-quality ride services than taxis. Anecdata, but in my experience rideshares (which have ratings) are cleaner, more punctual, have fewer no-shows, and let's zero incidences of refusal to carry than taxis. Obviously there are likely a number of confounders involved, but I would be surprised if ratings were not an important factor.