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Has anyone else experienced that perverse incentives are extremely hard to get anyone to listen to you about? I find myself saying the words "but then people wi

by feoren 3y ago

Has anyone else experienced that perverse incentives are extremely hard to get anyone to listen to you about? I find myself saying the words "but then people will be incentivized to ..." surprisingly often, and it's almost always dismissed as some irrelevant academic argument. Incentives really genuinely can drive behavior in a big way, and you really genuinely can predict some perverse incentives ahead of time, but even asking to talk through what those incentives might be for some new decision just gets total dismissal, like I'm talking about auras and astrology. What gives?

AlbertCory 3y ago
You are absolutely right. Good intentions are not enough. We should all keep repeating this at the tops of our voices.
6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago
It's super frustrating! Someone says, "Something needs to be done about this problem, and X is something, so X needs to be done." Then if you say X will backfire, you're taken as supporting the problem. It's a real rhetoric challenge.
godelski 3y ago
Quite frequently. Personally, I think part of the issue is explicit vs implicit noise in the system. There's always noise in the system, so there is always reasons to reject or criticize something. Very few things have unobjectionable global optima. But if noise is explicit in the system, people tend to take a bit more care. If it is implicit, well people act like the metric is doing exactly what it is intended to do and can't be hacked. Momentum is a pretty powerful force. [Edit]: I thought I'd add a clear example because I was reminded of it. When I tell people that return free filing taxes could really simplify taxes for people at first agree and then start pointing out a bunch of edge cases. So I argue that if we could just get the 15 million Americans who use the 1040 EZ then that's a big step in the right direction. It never goes well and it is never considered that just autofilling everything you normally put in by hand significantly reduces time regardless of how you do your taxes. Maybe I'm just bad at making cases, maybe people are hard of hearing, maybe both. (this is not the argument I make in full, obviously)
nonrandomstring 3y ago
I've observed that too and it raises some interesting psychological thoughts. A linguistic distinction may help if we say that incentives are not quite the same thing as motives. Motives can be intrinsic, coming only from one actor. "I am motivated to learn the piano". (See Pink, "Drive" etc) Incentives are a relation between two actors, one (leader/manager) who sets the incentives to shape the behaviour of another. The 'incentivised person' is acted upon and is the target of the incentives. That means the leader has to have a working model of both the environment (and other parametric factors) and of the group or individual they want to incentivise. If you challenge that internal working model you're not just playing with logic and reason about parameters, you're challenging someone's perception - and that's much closer to the ego. There was a good article posted earlier by Christine VanDeVelde Luskin on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in the Bing preschool. Kids always know when you're playing games at "incentivising" them. They know it's a "bribe", which lessens your integrity, and they act up in response. In my opinion the manipulator has a bit of a binary choice. Either be absolutely up-front and tell people "I am doing X as an incentive for you to behave as Y, and I expect accordant behaviour", or, be so clever as totally hide your manipulation. The former requires the overt exercise of power, or at least risks the vulnerability of total honesty. I think nost perverse incentives come from people treading the middle ground, being deceptive, thinking they are being clever nudging others. But those others see right through the game.
jerf 3y ago
Not just perverse incentives, or incentives in general. People have a hard time thinking about second-order effects of all kinds and tend to think quite linearly. They're treating you the same as auras and astrology because they are unable to tell the difference.
P_I_Staker 3y ago
Yeah they sure are extra super stupid. oNE Would think they could induce the stupid, but I've been hitting myself in the head with a fry pan all weekend and I still not the stupids!

by feoren 3y ago

AlbertCory 3y ago

You are absolutely right. Good intentions are not enough. We should all keep repeating this at the tops of our voices.

6gvONxR4sf7o 3y ago

It's super frustrating! Someone says, "Something needs to be done about this problem, and X is something, so X needs to be done." Then if you say X will backfire, you're taken as supporting the problem. It's a real rhetoric challenge.

godelski 3y ago

Quite frequently. Personally, I think part of the issue is explicit vs implicit noise in the system. There's always noise in the system, so there is always reasons to reject or criticize something. Very few things have unobjectionable global optima. But if noise is explicit in the system, people tend to take a bit more care. If it is implicit, well people act like the metric is doing exactly what it is intended to do and can't be hacked. Momentum is a pretty powerful force. [Edit]: I thought I'd add a clear example because I was reminded of it. When I tell people that return free filing taxes could really simplify taxes for people at first agree and then start pointing out a bunch of edge cases. So I argue that if we could just get the 15 million Americans who use the 1040 EZ then that's a big step in the right direction. It never goes well and it is never considered that just autofilling everything you normally put in by hand significantly reduces time regardless of how you do your taxes. Maybe I'm just bad at making cases, maybe people are hard of hearing, maybe both. (this is not the argument I make in full, obviously)

nonrandomstring 3y ago

I've observed that too and it raises some interesting psychological thoughts. A linguistic distinction may help if we say that incentives are not quite the same thing as motives. Motives can be intrinsic, coming only from one actor. "I am motivated to learn the piano". (See Pink, "Drive" etc) Incentives are a relation between two actors, one (leader/manager) who sets the incentives to shape the behaviour of another. The 'incentivised person' is acted upon and is the target of the incentives. That means the leader has to have a working model of both the environment (and other parametric factors) and of the group or individual they want to incentivise. If you challenge that internal working model you're not just playing with logic and reason about parameters, you're challenging someone's perception - and that's much closer to the ego. There was a good article posted earlier by Christine VanDeVelde Luskin on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in the Bing preschool. Kids always know when you're playing games at "incentivising" them. They know it's a "bribe", which lessens your integrity, and they act up in response. In my opinion the manipulator has a bit of a binary choice. Either be absolutely up-front and tell people "I am doing X as an incentive for you to behave as Y, and I expect accordant behaviour", or, be so clever as totally hide your manipulation. The former requires the overt exercise of power, or at least risks the vulnerability of total honesty. I think nost perverse incentives come from people treading the middle ground, being deceptive, thinking they are being clever nudging others. But those others see right through the game.

jerf 3y ago

Not just perverse incentives, or incentives in general. People have a hard time thinking about second-order effects of all kinds and tend to think quite linearly. They're treating you the same as auras and astrology because they are unable to tell the difference.

P_I_Staker 3y ago

Yeah they sure are extra super stupid. oNE Would think they could induce the stupid, but I've been hitting myself in the head with a fry pan all weekend and I still not the stupids!