5 ms·

>What is certain is that a great majority of people decided not to uphold their end of the bargain. Phrased that way, the statement is absolutely incorrect. Wh

>What is certain is that a great majority of people decided not to uphold their end of the bargain. Phrased that way, the statement is absolutely incorrect. What is very likely is that a great majority won't uphold their end of the bargain. What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. Anybody who had that intention from the outset would have simply torrented the book. Anybody who didn't have that intention from the outset is unlikely to switch intentions. This is known as "consistency bias". But what does happen is that people make commitments and then forget about them if the stakes are low. That is almost certainly what has happened in virtually every case of noncompliance in Schneier's experiment. I have a lot of respect for Schneier and his security and cryptography work. But his science fu is revealed in this article to be rather weak, as is his understanding of human psychology.

B-Con 14y ago
> What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. I disagree. Although I agree that it is unlikely that it was their intent from the outset, there is a threshhold at which point someone has practically decided not to do something. Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. It could happen, but the odds are, what, maybe 10%? If you assume that a commitment to do something is giving a 100% guarantee and a commitment to not do something is a 0% guarantee, a 10% chance is, pragmatically, a "no". Also, part of the implied deal was that you write the review promptly. From the original blog post where Schneier made the book offer: > Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it's selling great, I'd like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers. I don't think he was hoping they would send in their reviews a year or two later. Those who do would have a hard time arguing that they met the spirit of the deal. The initial blog post was almost exactly 5 months ago and the offer was closed in two days, which means that a lot of readers probably got their books at least 4 months ago. (In my experience he does ship promptly, as I have gotten a book from him before.) If he was hoping that they would write their review in a reasonable amount of time, say 8 months, and only 9% wrote a review in the first half, I highly, highly doubt that even 41% will write a review in the second half. And the majority of those who will not probably subconsciously know it by now. Edit: To be specific, I don't think he expected 90% turnout by this date, he's just disappointed that the turnout is so low by now. It's not even 1 in 10. 4 months is a decent amount of time to review a book you agreed to review.
- AnthonyMouse 14y ago
  >Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. I think the point is that a decision is an affirmative act. Nobody decides to forget to do something. It's like the difference between incompetence and malice.
  - MBCook 14y ago
    > I think the point is that a decision is an affirmative act. Nobody decides to forget to do something. But didn't they choose not to ensure they remembered? That sentence sounds ridiculous. But if I care about something I'll ensure that I get reminded somehow so I can't forget. The experimental subjects that didn't provide a review either explicitly chose not to, or acted in a way that made it possible for them to forget.
    - mistercow 14y ago
      I don't think that's in the spirit of the concepts of "deciding" and "choosing". When they made the commitment, they believed they would remember to do it. They may have made an error of judgment in not taking more precautions to ensure that they remembered, but that is not the same as choosing not to do it.
CanSpice 14y ago
The phrase should have actually read "a great minority of people decided to uphold their end of the bargain". You can't read people's intentions through their inaction. The same sort of argument is made by people who protest a vote by not voting. Not voting doesn't convey any information as to the reason for not voting; it's lumped in with "didn't vote because of apathy" or "didn't vote because of illness". There's no way to infer intent from a non-action.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
This is something I've been thinking about a bit lately, the difference between 'intent' to renege, vs 'just happened' to renege on a previous agreement. I had a manager once who well tell people in all earnestly that he was going to work to get them promoted, but when that didn't happen the question became did he lie? did he do the work and not succeed? Could he have even succeeded ? The person who stuck around waiting for the promotion feels completely let down and lied to, regardless. So how do we make conditional commitments? Sometimes it annoys people when I won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best." When pressed I can articulate the various uncertainties between now and the execution of the commitment that could derail it, but they are just that uncertain. Sometimes people say "Just say yes, and if something comes up let me know." I've done this in the past and had people accuse me of 'making excuses' which of course I feel is unfair :-). There is certainly an element of 'value' here in that the consequence of not doing something has a cost and if the cost is small sometimes less effort is made in the follow through. If money is involved that is generally a more explicit definition of cost. But if someone says, "Hey my son Jimmy is on the special team at this weekend's High School football game, can you come by and cheer him on?" what is the cost of being unable to do that? Sometimes small (there are lots of people at the game) and sometimes large (this person really wanted to see you validate their support of their child's athletic activities) and sometimes in the middle. Schneir positioned the transaction into the 'trust' category, you say you will do something and I trust that you will do it. The consequence of you not doing it is a loss of trust on my part. But the trust currency isn't previously established. Clearly my kids have a vested interest in keeping my trust level high because I can restrict access to the vehicles, but Bruce doesn't know me, and if he trusts me more or trusts me less do I care? Do I care $29 worth? Or more importantly do I care 'marginal value of Bruce's book minus $11' worth? As you can read its something I wonder about but have few really solid lines of reasoning about. A lot of questions, a lot of speculation about the intrinsic forces in the 'trust market' and no clear experimental path.
- wamatt 14y ago
  You raise a really interesting point here, and it seems there may be an opportunism vs principles dynamic at play. Without debating the orthogonality of that assumption, (because it really won't change the overall point), let me begin by saying, most if not all humans I've encountered, have varying levels of principles and opportunism, but we are not made equal (CF fallacy of gray). >I won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best." I am one of those, that have traditionally found that statement slightly annoying, especially in a business context. It just seems slippery. What does "doing your 'best' mean? Are you truly going to do your very best and drop everything to fulfill the request? I think not. Hence the precision one is aiming for, does not seem like an improvement on the original brevity of the yes/no. Furthermore it could give one an opportunity to flake and blame the environment, versus sticking to one's word.
caseysoftware 14y ago
A decision is a decision whether it is made consciously or passively.
- mistercow 14y ago
  Sorry, that's just nonsense. A decision is an action. There is no such thing as "passive" deciding. If you expand the definition of "decision" to include "not deciding", you render the term completely useless.

B-Con 14y ago

> What is also very likely is that few if any of those made a decision not to uphold their end of the bargain. I disagree. Although I agree that it is unlikely that it was their intent from the outset, there is a threshhold at which point someone has practically decided not to do something. Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. It could happen, but the odds are, what, maybe 10%? If you assume that a commitment to do something is giving a 100% guarantee and a commitment to not do something is a 0% guarantee, a 10% chance is, pragmatically, a "no". Also, part of the implied deal was that you write the review promptly. From the original blog post where Schneier made the book offer: > Liars and Outliers has been out since late February, and while it's selling great, I'd like it to sell better. So I have a special offer for my regular readers. I don't think he was hoping they would send in their reviews a year or two later. Those who do would have a hard time arguing that they met the spirit of the deal. The initial blog post was almost exactly 5 months ago and the offer was closed in two days, which means that a lot of readers probably got their books at least 4 months ago. (In my experience he does ship promptly, as I have gotten a book from him before.) If he was hoping that they would write their review in a reasonable amount of time, say 8 months, and only 9% wrote a review in the first half, I highly, highly doubt that even 41% will write a review in the second half. And the majority of those who will not probably subconsciously know it by now. Edit: To be specific, I don't think he expected 90% turnout by this date, he's just disappointed that the turnout is so low by now. It's not even 1 in 10. 4 months is a decent amount of time to review a book you agreed to review.

AnthonyMouse 14y ago
>Once they have procrastinated on doing something for X months and know that it is only #73 on their internal priority list, they have essentially decided not to do it. I think the point is that a decision is an affirmative act. Nobody decides to forget to do something. It's like the difference between incompetence and malice.
- MBCook 14y ago
  > I think the point is that a decision is an affirmative act. Nobody decides to forget to do something. But didn't they choose not to ensure they remembered? That sentence sounds ridiculous. But if I care about something I'll ensure that I get reminded somehow so I can't forget. The experimental subjects that didn't provide a review either explicitly chose not to, or acted in a way that made it possible for them to forget.
  - mistercow 14y ago
    I don't think that's in the spirit of the concepts of "deciding" and "choosing". When they made the commitment, they believed they would remember to do it. They may have made an error of judgment in not taking more precautions to ensure that they remembered, but that is not the same as choosing not to do it.

CanSpice 14y ago

The phrase should have actually read "a great minority of people decided to uphold their end of the bargain". You can't read people's intentions through their inaction. The same sort of argument is made by people who protest a vote by not voting. Not voting doesn't convey any information as to the reason for not voting; it's lumped in with "didn't vote because of apathy" or "didn't vote because of illness". There's no way to infer intent from a non-action.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

This is something I've been thinking about a bit lately, the difference between 'intent' to renege, vs 'just happened' to renege on a previous agreement. I had a manager once who well tell people in all earnestly that he was going to work to get them promoted, but when that didn't happen the question became did he lie? did he do the work and not succeed? Could he have even succeeded ? The person who stuck around waiting for the promotion feels completely let down and lied to, regardless. So how do we make conditional commitments? Sometimes it annoys people when I won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best." When pressed I can articulate the various uncertainties between now and the execution of the commitment that could derail it, but they are just that uncertain. Sometimes people say "Just say yes, and if something comes up let me know." I've done this in the past and had people accuse me of 'making excuses' which of course I feel is unfair :-). There is certainly an element of 'value' here in that the consequence of not doing something has a cost and if the cost is small sometimes less effort is made in the follow through. If money is involved that is generally a more explicit definition of cost. But if someone says, "Hey my son Jimmy is on the special team at this weekend's High School football game, can you come by and cheer him on?" what is the cost of being unable to do that? Sometimes small (there are lots of people at the game) and sometimes large (this person really wanted to see you validate their support of their child's athletic activities) and sometimes in the middle. Schneir positioned the transaction into the 'trust' category, you say you will do something and I trust that you will do it. The consequence of you not doing it is a loss of trust on my part. But the trust currency isn't previously established. Clearly my kids have a vested interest in keeping my trust level high because I can restrict access to the vehicles, but Bruce doesn't know me, and if he trusts me more or trusts me less do I care? Do I care $29 worth? Or more importantly do I care 'marginal value of Bruce's book minus $11' worth? As you can read its something I wonder about but have few really solid lines of reasoning about. A lot of questions, a lot of speculation about the intrinsic forces in the 'trust market' and no clear experimental path.

wamatt 14y ago
You raise a really interesting point here, and it seems there may be an opportunism vs principles dynamic at play. Without debating the orthogonality of that assumption, (because it really won't change the overall point), let me begin by saying, most if not all humans I've encountered, have varying levels of principles and opportunism, but we are not made equal (CF fallacy of gray). >I won't answer yes or no to a commitment but instead say "I'll do my best." I am one of those, that have traditionally found that statement slightly annoying, especially in a business context. It just seems slippery. What does "doing your 'best' mean? Are you truly going to do your very best and drop everything to fulfill the request? I think not. Hence the precision one is aiming for, does not seem like an improvement on the original brevity of the yes/no. Furthermore it could give one an opportunity to flake and blame the environment, versus sticking to one's word.

caseysoftware 14y ago

A decision is a decision whether it is made consciously or passively.

mistercow 14y ago
Sorry, that's just nonsense. A decision is an action. There is no such thing as "passive" deciding. If you expand the definition of "decision" to include "not deciding", you render the term completely useless.