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Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. This shows up everywhere. It's why whistleblower protection laws exist. It's

Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. This shows up everywhere. It's why whistleblower protection laws exist. It's why it's reportedly hazardous for the cops to interrupt domestic disputes. It's why various organizations keep getting caught covering up bad behavior by their members.

shombaboor 2y ago
this just reminded me of the warriors video of draymond green punching his teammate. the organization was more mad that the video got out than anything else. Steve Kerr who likes to moralize carries endless weight for the misdeeds of his players. Institutions protect themselves foremost as a law of nature
AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. It's also worth considering why this happens, instead of just regarding it as something people do because they're inherently malevolent. Suppose you suspect your organization of violating some law. You think they're supposed to be using some safety feature on their equipment and they're not, or what have you. In a normal organization, you report this to the leadership and if it's a real problem they fix it, because they know what happens if you report it to law enforcement or it causes someone to get hurt and they don't want that. Now suppose one of your members reports it to law enforcement instead of the organization's leadership. Government inspectors show up and you have to pay lawyers to deal with them, and lawyers are expensive. Reporters write negative stories about you. These things happen even if the person reporting it was wrong and there was never a real problem. Worse, these outsiders are not always that diligent and you could be prosecuted or dragged through the mud despite the person reporting it being the one who made an error. And if they didn't make an error -- if the problem was real -- that's even worse, because now you're getting convicted instead of having an opportunity to correct the problem. Many laws are even implicitly written under the expectation that honest mistakes are handled internally and only intransigent bastards get reported to the government, so anyone who goes there first is going to be a pariah. This is legitimately hard to fix because there is a trade off between cost and accuracy. If investigators are more diligent, so they get the result right more often, they have to spend more time finding out what's really going on in an organization they don't come into it with any internal understanding of. Which imposes costs on both the government and the possibly-innocent subject of the investigation. But if they're less diligent then they'll be imposing penalties on innocent people more often. In both cases, any group is not going to want there to be an investigation and is going to be resentful of anyone who causes there to be one. Governments often make this worse by trying to make it better and imposing penalties on people who fail to report. Because that requirement doesn't eliminate the structural incentive -- if nobody reports then nobody gets punished for not reporting -- but now the group is going to respond with more severe retaliation for reporting because you've just given everyone who didn't report it the incentive to protect the perpetrators to protect themselves and to retaliate against anybody who does. What you really want here is to do the opposite. Limit the costs and consequences to the unrepentant actual perpetrators, and make sure they're actually guilty, so you don't give the general group the impression that they're all in the same boat and should be collectively fighting against their enemies in the other tribe.
- meiraleal 2y ago
  Your mindset is responsible for so much corruption and abuse. It is sad to see someone smart spend so much time on this - even worse is to imagine the untalkable things you have seen and done.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    If you want systems to work they have to reflect how people will respond to them in reality. Otherwise you get unmitigated fiascos like the War on Drugs. If you make something more expensive, people do it less. If you make engaging with the government more expensive, it's not different. Imposing costs on group members who are not themselves the perpetrators will do that. Creating a system that can ruin the accused even if they're innocent motivates people to circle the wagons. This isn't an argument that the way people respond is normatively good. But the way people respond is what actually happens, so if that's not what you wanted, you need a different system that doesn't cause people to resist its mechanism because the system itself indiscriminately damages friendlies.
    - meiraleal 2y ago
      You see, it is not because something is logical that we should accept the immorality of it as a fact. You don't need to be evil because the world is full of evil people :)
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        You do, however, need a system that accomplishes what you want it to in practice, rather than only on paper, if your goal is to make things better rather than just getting reelected by telling people what they want to hear.
    - anal_reactor 2y ago
      I completely agree with you. It's astonishing how many policy makers think in terms of how they wish the world to function, instead of how it actually functions.
curiousthought 2y ago
My understanding is this is why it's a "Jury of your peers". Someone from outside the community is an alien and would convict differently than someone who is more integrated with the scenario. Not only is the understanding of the situation different, but the incentives are different. The scale of society has changed, but imagine what this was like when communities were smaller.

shombaboor 2y ago

this just reminded me of the warriors video of draymond green punching his teammate. the organization was more mad that the video got out than anything else. Steve Kerr who likes to moralize carries endless weight for the misdeeds of his players. Institutions protect themselves foremost as a law of nature

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> Groups approximately never like outsiders imposing consequences on group members. It's also worth considering why this happens, instead of just regarding it as something people do because they're inherently malevolent. Suppose you suspect your organization of violating some law. You think they're supposed to be using some safety feature on their equipment and they're not, or what have you. In a normal organization, you report this to the leadership and if it's a real problem they fix it, because they know what happens if you report it to law enforcement or it causes someone to get hurt and they don't want that. Now suppose one of your members reports it to law enforcement instead of the organization's leadership. Government inspectors show up and you have to pay lawyers to deal with them, and lawyers are expensive. Reporters write negative stories about you. These things happen even if the person reporting it was wrong and there was never a real problem. Worse, these outsiders are not always that diligent and you could be prosecuted or dragged through the mud despite the person reporting it being the one who made an error. And if they didn't make an error -- if the problem was real -- that's even worse, because now you're getting convicted instead of having an opportunity to correct the problem. Many laws are even implicitly written under the expectation that honest mistakes are handled internally and only intransigent bastards get reported to the government, so anyone who goes there first is going to be a pariah. This is legitimately hard to fix because there is a trade off between cost and accuracy. If investigators are more diligent, so they get the result right more often, they have to spend more time finding out what's really going on in an organization they don't come into it with any internal understanding of. Which imposes costs on both the government and the possibly-innocent subject of the investigation. But if they're less diligent then they'll be imposing penalties on innocent people more often. In both cases, any group is not going to want there to be an investigation and is going to be resentful of anyone who causes there to be one. Governments often make this worse by trying to make it better and imposing penalties on people who fail to report. Because that requirement doesn't eliminate the structural incentive -- if nobody reports then nobody gets punished for not reporting -- but now the group is going to respond with more severe retaliation for reporting because you've just given everyone who didn't report it the incentive to protect the perpetrators to protect themselves and to retaliate against anybody who does. What you really want here is to do the opposite. Limit the costs and consequences to the unrepentant actual perpetrators, and make sure they're actually guilty, so you don't give the general group the impression that they're all in the same boat and should be collectively fighting against their enemies in the other tribe.

meiraleal 2y ago
Your mindset is responsible for so much corruption and abuse. It is sad to see someone smart spend so much time on this - even worse is to imagine the untalkable things you have seen and done.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  If you want systems to work they have to reflect how people will respond to them in reality. Otherwise you get unmitigated fiascos like the War on Drugs. If you make something more expensive, people do it less. If you make engaging with the government more expensive, it's not different. Imposing costs on group members who are not themselves the perpetrators will do that. Creating a system that can ruin the accused even if they're innocent motivates people to circle the wagons. This isn't an argument that the way people respond is normatively good. But the way people respond is what actually happens, so if that's not what you wanted, you need a different system that doesn't cause people to resist its mechanism because the system itself indiscriminately damages friendlies.
  - meiraleal 2y ago
    You see, it is not because something is logical that we should accept the immorality of it as a fact. You don't need to be evil because the world is full of evil people :)
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      You do, however, need a system that accomplishes what you want it to in practice, rather than only on paper, if your goal is to make things better rather than just getting reelected by telling people what they want to hear.
  - anal_reactor 2y ago
    I completely agree with you. It's astonishing how many policy makers think in terms of how they wish the world to function, instead of how it actually functions.

curiousthought 2y ago

My understanding is this is why it's a "Jury of your peers". Someone from outside the community is an alien and would convict differently than someone who is more integrated with the scenario. Not only is the understanding of the situation different, but the incentives are different. The scale of society has changed, but imagine what this was like when communities were smaller.